Ki Tissa 5766: The Second Tablets, A Third Covenant
Ki Tissa Exodus 30:11 – 34:35 32:15 Thereupon Moses turned and went down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, tablets inscribed on both their surfaces: they were inscribed on the one side and on the other. 16 The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised upon the tablets. 32:19 As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. 20 He took the calf that they had made and burned it; he ground it to powder and strewed it upon the water and so made the Israelites drink it.
The Commandments written on the first tablets were written by God. That covenant, in parashat Mishpatim (21:1-23:33) was broken when Moses shattered the tablets. This is why God offered to destroy Israel and create a nation out of Moses (32:10). In order to make amends, God had Moses write up a new covenant and put them on a second set of tablets. (Exodus 34:10-27, see Exodus 21:1-23:19 for the first one) The second tablets share with the first covenant the law of the firstborn, the exclusive worship of God, and the festivals. The second covenant doesn’t include any of the slave laws, murder laws, damages laws, poverty and justice laws, and sabbatical year law that was in the first covenant. The additions to the first covenant are in laws in reference to the sin of the Golden Calf, an expansion of the festival law, and laws dealing with covenants and interactions with other nations. In short, here we have a small pact focused on the covenantal relationship between Israel and God. It is either extremely xenophobic or exclusive of God-worship and cultural adoption depending on your point of view. It’s omissions show that it was not meant to be a law code, but rather a pact assuring that Israel worship only God, YHWH. (Some scholars say the Book of the Covenant is from the Elohistic source[E] while this is from the Yahwistic source[J].) In any event, we see the covenant reaffirmed with God by pledging allegiance to worship Him exclusively and regularly. This raises questions about how American Jews assimilate. I know this is a touchy subject, but I think that the sin of the Golden Calf raises serious issues about the extent to which Jews can adopt non-Jewish practices. See how Moses tests the people’s allegiance to God below:
For Moses, even worshipping an idol and calling it God was deserving of death. Today, the majority of American Jews are non-practicing or minimally practicing. Is there a line they have crossed where we can call, “Come back wayward children!”(Jeremiah 3:14) Or is there a point of no return?(Hagiga 15a) And this is far less severe than Moses making people decide between God and death!(I Kings 18:21-22) So, what are we to do with the unbroken covenant the Israelites made with God at Sinai to which we are beholden? I believe that just like allowing women to assume traditional male roles and the movement to allow homosexuals full-participation in Jewish ritual life, we have made a decision that the Bible was wrong on how it made a blanket prohibition of foreign practices. That being said, the Jewish adoption of materialism, I think, is a bad thing. The Jewish adoption of reliance on single authorities for religious wisdom and direction rather than constant learning is a bad thing. The Jewish dismissal of religious practices as inconvenient or quaint is a bad thing. I believe that American Jews have adopted a non-Jewish/Christian mindset towards God, Religion, and Practice. For Christians, God is everything. For Jews, God is personal. We have no creed, as long as you practice and respect the precepts, you’re good (ma’ase rav). Christians tend to understand the Bible literally. Jews understand it through homily, interpretation, and tradition. For example, biblically speaking, creation of the world is a minor theme and has not been understood by Jews as a fundamental belief. Lastly, Jews have a civilization of practices. Some are rooted in the Biblical times, some in Rabbinic, medieval, and modern. These practices fill our days and our lives with meaning, and sometimes challenge us with their dissonance. I believe that the future of Judaism can be found in redefining the covenant as in this portion. When Jews are no longer defined by their separation from non-Jewish culture, we will find our Jewishness in social action, text study, communal gatherings, and life cycle events. We will bring honesty to our practices. Bnei Mitzvah for children who do not believe in an obligation to Jewish practice (mitzvot) should be confirmed instead (as belonging to a faith community). Prayers should be printed and widely distributed for people who do not believe in God. Prayers should be in Hebrew and the local language. Hebrew should become the language of the Jews, once again. In short, Jews will able to universally understand each other’s practices, will respect differences of opinion out of understanding (pluralism), and we will find a way of respecting differences in serious matters such as who is a Jew, marriage and divorce, trustworthiness of kashrut, and possibly accessibility of prayer services. My point here is, that we have broken the second tablets. We need to reconstruct them. It is very exciting to live today, in the times when our covenant with God, with the Jewish people, is being rewritten before our very eyes(Hosea 2:20-25, Jeremiah 31:30-33, Ezekiel 36: 24-2). Send me your comments! (See comments below)
Sefer haBrit haKatan- The Small Book of the CovenantWith comments
This is the introduction of where the second covenant or pact begins. Before all your people I will work such wonders as have not been wrought on all the earth or in any nation; and all the people who are with you shall see how awesome are the Lord’s deeds which I will perform for you. 11 Mark well what I command you this day. This is the prologue where God explains why we should accept his Covenant. I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. God promises territorial dominance of the tribes in Canaan. The Covenant is reassured.
We are only to be bound by our Covenant to God. Nothing else must come in the way. Some xenophobia.
Destroy the natives’ religion and religious shrines. There can be no other religion with no other god, especially the Golden Calf.
Repeat with emphasis not to share food with the polytheists. This is another reference to the exclusiveness of God, e.g. not the Golden Calf. 16 And when you take wives from among their daughters for your sons, their daughters will lust after their gods and will cause your sons to lust after their gods. Do not intermarry with them. They will corrupt you. More xenophobia.
Do not make images. God has no image. No Golden Calf.
Festival: The Canaanite month Aviv corresponds to the Torah’s first month, now call Nisan. This is Passover.
God has high standards. Donkeys are not fit to be offered as they are dirty animals and are not kosher. Because God saved the firstborn in Egypt, they belong to him. However, because the Levites fulfill the maintenance tasks in the Temple, the firstborn are redeemed with money which is sent to the Temple.
Festival: On the festivals, you must be a gift. Everyone is blessed enough to bring something.
Festival: Shabbat is preeminent. No matter what is happening, even when time is of the essence, you must cease from labor on the seventh day.
Festival: Shavuot, Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks is the second major pilgrimage festival. Sukkot, Tabernacles, the Feast of Ingathering is the third major pilgrimage festival. Pesach, Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread (above) is the first major pilgrimage festival. The male Hebrews are told they must go to the Shrine and that their land will not only be safe while they are gone, it will expand, a miracle.
Festival: On Passover, leaving is prohibited at the Shrine. Leaven is a symbol of evil ferment. The offering should be eating when offered, otherwise it is an affront to God.
Festival: On Shavuot, in the summer, bring the harvest to the Shrine.
Festival: On Sukkot (by extension), when the ewes are birthing, do not follow the pagan custom of boiling the newly born lambs in their mother’s milk, it is a perversion of nature that the milk meant to nurture the young should cook it. This delicacy is immoral to make as are most pagan practices. It is no surprise that the sentiment here of the disgustingness of the practice later expanded to a general prohibition against deriving benefit from mixtures of milk and meat. One would think to add not mixing eggs with chicken or caviar with fish, but that hasn’t been done to the best of my knowledge. Did you know you can drink fish blood in milk according to the Halakhah? See Milgrom on a synopsis of ethics and kashrut.
The Covenant is formally ended. Comments
BZ wrote: I think this argument against Reform recognition of patrilineal descent is always disingenuous. It is the Orthodox who have become a “sect” by recognizing only Orthodox conversions. If the Reform movement were to require conversion for the child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, then (assuming this was a Reform conversion) this wouldn’t make one bit of difference as to how that child is viewed by the Orthodox — a Reform convert is a non-Jew in their eyes. And the Reform movement certainly can’t require its adherents to undergo Orthodox conversion, which involves not only going to the mikvah (a trivial requirement when, as you say, Jewish peoplehood is at stake) but committing to an Orthodox lifestyle. (Orthodox batei din require adult converts to send their kids to Orthodox day schools, for example.) So if the Reform recognition or non-recognition of patrilineal descent won’t make a difference one way or the other to whether the people in question are viewed as Jewish by the Orthodox, then the Reform movement might as well keep on making its own decisions rather than striving unsuccessfully for compatibility with other movements. I responded:I agree with you, but I suppose I wasn’t clear in that patrilineal threat poses a compatibility threat to both Conservative and Orthodox communities. Similarly, A friend of mine couldn’t marry someone because he didn’t consider her mother’s conversion Jewish which would mean she wasn’t Jewish which meant he as a cohen couldn’t marry her. This is a problem in the Jewish community right now, not the dikdukei halakhah, but that Shammai and Hillel are finding it harder and harder to intermarry their children. BZ responded: I don’t see the problem. If two people want to get married, and X doesn’t consider Y to be Jewish to X’s standards, then Y can always get a conversion that satisfies X’s standards. If Y isn’t willing to do that, and neither X nor Y is willing to reach a mutual solution, then they probably shouldn’t getting married.
But the majority of Reform Jews probably aren’t ever going to marry someone who doesn’t accept them as Jewish, and therefore they shouldn’t be worrying about that possibility until it actually comes up.And I disagree with your implication that this is a problem for the Orthodox only. At least in theory, Conservative communities have the same problem with respect to Jewishness. BZ responded: The Conservative movement has no business being on its high horse about this, when they themselves don’t do conversions that are universally accepted. (Ipso facto, they can’t, since the Orthodox don’t accept any conversions performed by non-Orthodox batei in.)
The question that I was trying to answer was, if our old covenant with God is that we are to be his exclusively and not intermarry or take on practices with the non-Jews, what will our new covenant look like? How will we now structure our community with so many conflicts that really make the different movements incompatible. How does this change our identity as Jews? Do we now require labels (of the sects we’re in)? I personally don’t like labels, beyond strict and liberal constructionism. So, I felt myself thinking in terms of how you describe pluralism as I was writing that, though I didn’t really flesh it out. Do you have any ideas on how we can all get along, are do we need to admit that we are incompatible?
I made the point that it is customary to accomodate the majority, strict or not. We don’t need Orthodox approval. We shouldn’t let them frame the debate. For example, I’m pro-choice and pro-life, but not anti-abortion. Pro-life is a frame that I reject as exclusively the anti-abortion frame. BZ wrote: I’m anti-coathanger-abortion. Bill Frist is pro-coathanger-abortion. This really helped me figure out which lines I want to draw and which I don’t.
And here’s BZ’s post on “Patrilineal” Descent |
