Ki Tissa D'var Torah

Ki Tissa Summary:

God started by giving instructions for taking a census, which involved every Israelite paying for an offering to God to make sure they were counted. God then gave people special skills so they would be able to successfully build the Tabernacle. He also told Moses to tell the Israelites that they still must keep Shabbat, and not work on the Tabernacle on Shabbat. 

While Moses was on Mount Sinai, Aaron and the Israelites made a golden calf to idolize God. When Moses came down, he saw this and was so mad that he broke the tablets God had given him. He then burned the golden calf, put the powder in water, and made the Israelites drink it. Moses then said “Whoever is for the Lord, come here!” and all of the Levites came to him. He then instructed them to kill the other Israelites. They did so, and over 3,000 died that day. Moses met with God again, and God brought a plague upon the people as additional punishment. Next, God said to Moses to “Set out from here, you and the people you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying ‘To your offspring I will give it’,” and God also said he would drive away other people and allow the Israelites to go to “a land flowing with milk and honey.” God also agreed to let Moses see his back (but he would die if he saw God’s face). Moses then made two new tablets and went back up to Mount Sinai, where he made a covenant with God. The covenant ordered the Israelites to always worship God, to never join with other groups of people because they would want to follow other gods, to observe Passover, and to observe Shabbat, among other things. In return, God would help lead them to Israel. Moses stayed and fasted on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights, and he wrote those commandments down and went down the mountain. 

Commentary:

In this portion, God gets very angry at the Israelites. When God sees that the Israelites were bad by making a golden calf to worship, he initially wants to kill all of the Israelites and start the people over with Moses. But, Moses doesn’t like this idea, so he convinces God not to kill the Israelites. He reminds God about his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he helps God realize that freeing the people from Egypt only to kill them in the mountains would be tyrannical. So, God hears this reasoning and decides to renounce his original punishment idea. However, when Moses comes down the mountain, he decides that the people do need to be punished for their actions once he sees what they actually did, and he makes the Levites kill thousands of the other Israelites along with making everyone drink water with the ashes of the golden calf in it. He is also disappointed in Aaron for leading the people in making the calf, and God casts a plague upon the Israelites. So, although the Israelites survived complete annihilation by God for creating the golden calf, many still died and the group was punished severely.