Ki Thisa: banality

Ki Thisa: banality

 

The Wall Street Bull

Is this the golden calf?  Belief in a future based upon better information, better judgement, ever upward, ever richer. The bull market is the market with faith in the future (Chronos) . Paroah's Par.  וַיַּרְא מֹשֶׁה אֶת-הָעָם, כִּי פָרֻעַ הוּא: The faith that time will solve all problems, just keep slaving away.

The people say: We never understood  what Moshe was about.  -כִּי-זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם, לֹא יָדַעְנוּ מֶה-הָיָה לוֹ  The purveyor of new missions, like liberation; and arbitrary new rules  like  Shabbath.  Inscrutable. 

The people ask Aron to give them a new object, something to sing and dance to. New rules, fun rules.  After all, all rules are arbitrary and arbitraged.

But to follow the wrong rules defines evil, the root of banality

Tetzaveh: the Elected 

Tetzaveh is primarily about the Cohen Gadol, the High Priest. The person designated (by Gd) to perform the sanctuary service.  This service maintains the line of communication between the Gd and the people, it permits the continued presence of the Divine in the sanctuary, Heaven's . embassy. 

The service requires an initiated individual.  The service is dangerous ( Nadav and Avihu) and fragile.  Deviations, even loss of concentration, are not tolerated.  

No one may enter the King's presence unless the scepter is extended to her. 

The election of the actor is an act of Gd. Is Gd recognizing a life of achievement?  the potential for greatness?  electability by the people?

Who is Aaron in the Purim story? Who is Moshe?

Trumah: Technical Torah

Trumah describes the construction of elements of the Mishkan.  It gives specifications,. details. The core object, the  tablets, were never to be seen again.  And the ark that contained them, with its covers and  cherubim,  was experienced only through a thick cloud of incense once a year, by one person - the Kohen Gadol.  So who needs all these details?  Why are the blueprints a sacred, public document read hundreds of generations later, preserved so closely that  an error in vowel brings shouts of correction from the audience?

The Messianic temple  may not follow these specs:  Solomon's didn't, nor did Nechemia's nor Herod's.  That is not likely the reason for the public preservation. 

The mystics consider the Mishkan in the mind of every Jew. The Candelabra of insight, the Table of sustenance, the Partitions of conciousness.  Maybe, but the symbolism seems forced on the objects. 

 

Then there is attention to detail lishmah,  for its own sake.  This is certainly an core quality of any orthodoxy.  But here is the joke, these  details in the parsha cannot be done! And all the details   the Orthodox person does daily -  in her eating, in his clothing,  are not in the text.  They are derived, calculated or assimilated. 

Function is more important than form, but if you lose the instructions you have to call the Ikea guy.

Mishpatim: Justice

Mishpatim: Justice

Mishpatim  introduces the type of thinking that becomes Talmud, the distinctive Hebrew way.  It devolves form the Ten Commandments, it is the synthesis of the human and the divine law. 

A notable property of the laws in mishpatim is that they are not only sympathetic to the victim, but they linit the liability and punishment of the perpetrator. If my ox kills your ox, I have to pay for the dead ox, but I get the carcass. Killing a fetus is settled with money.  

Mishplatim is just, the compensation to the victim is only ( just) what was lost and the defendant is not  generally penalized beyond that. 

The is no room  for vengeance.  Sometimes the compensation includes a premium - the thief pays double, the profiteer 4 or 5 fold, but there are always  limits.

This is Gd's law: all suffering has limits, even the suffering of the slave and the criminal.

Yithro: To the Core

Yithro:  To the Core

As I read the parsha this year was impressed by the various layers that surround the center of the parsha: the 10 commandments.  These terse statements are the nucleus of montheism.  The kernel is a single sentence: 

12 Thou shalt not murder. {S} Thou shalt not commit adultery. {S} Thou shalt not steal. {S} Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. {S}    Four of the ten in one sentence.  The four that are most universal and most comfortably understood ( although here too, Chazal have non-obvious  interpretations) . Six commandments surround these. 

The Ten Commandments are surrounded by their giving.  A spectacle of thunder, fire and earthquake.  A Rock show.  We are subsequently told that the spectacle was for the sake of Nasos (20;16), a word that means miracle (nais) and sign and test, but Rashi says that here it means elevate; JPS translates it as prove; and its  root letters are in Sinai.  It is all of these.  

The spectacle of the giving is surrounded by the preparation.  The people prepare themselves for 3 days.  This preparation seems to be a complex process, requiring several conversations between Moshe and Gd, Moshe and the people.  The gemarrah  (Shabbath 87a)  says that the duration of the preparation was extended  a day by Moshe and Gd approved. .The interaction is significant.  The Judge  is not  passive in the law.

It is the relationship between  Gd, and Moshe, and  other judges, and the law  that surrounds the Ten Commandments. The sound and light show demonstrates the validity of the source (20;18) Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven -  this is what GD tells Moshe to tell the people after the event.  And the product, the ten commandments, are written in stone, immutable and must be respected by all.  ( Note that another of Moshe's decisions validated by Gd  is the breaking of the tablets)

On the other side, prior to the event, motivating it, Jethro sees Moses counseling the people all day  and advises him to set up a hierarchy of justice.  But the system needs justification, it needs the connection to heaven - It needs a sign, miracle, test to prove and elevate it.  It gets Sinai.  The eternal proof of Gd's communucation. 

The tablets are entombed in the Ark,  but the event is never forgotten