Ki Thisah: to know and love

Ki Thisah: to know and love

The parsha begins with the poll tax.  Every man over 20 years of age is assessed a tax of half a shekel,  The rich give no more and the poor give no less. It is a  blind, perhaps insensitive,  equality.  This  tax is a an atonement.  It is an atonement in advance of the great sin which is to follow: the creation and worship of the golden calf. 

When it comes to making the golden calf, the funds are raised by the voluntary donation of  gold from the earrings broken off the ears of the women and children.  Is this redirecting of gifts a better economics? 

Moshe returns from the mountain, hears the party and sees the golden calf. What was the calf? 

The people had requested  an E-ohim, a power that would go before them.  An entity to answer to .  An entity to unify the people,  a place to deposit their worship. Because 

 כִּי זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לֹא יָדַעְנוּ מֶה הָיָה לוֹ.

That man Moshe,who took us out of Egypt,  we never understood what was with him. 

The people wanted something they could understand, something from the old days in Egypt, something that felt right in the context of the culture they had grown up in. Apple pie, pretzels, beer, TV, tolerance.

The people had a stiff neck, they could not change their value system. 

The golden calf was made before the Moshe had descended, before the law had been formally given.  Moshe saw that the people had broken the law by making the calf, so he broke the (tablets of the) law.  The people were not ready.  They did not understand, because: even when they stood under the mountain where Gd displayed glory, there actions were perverse. 

Then comes the great act of forgiveness. The people had made a most fundamental error. Moshe begs their pardon from Gd and receives it , after threatening to be eliminated from the book. For his intercession, Moshe becomes something more than a person, he becomes a person whose face shines , who must wear a veil and live separately. He is the Beloved of Gd who stood in the cleft of the rock. The man who understands Gd

Perhaps the people also have intuition regarding Gd. The people remove their edyo, jewlery, the gift bestowed upon them, the testament of Gd's love for each of them.  And then Gd commands them to remove the jewelry. Gd commands what Israel has done .

My mother told me: "You do not have to understand your wife, you just have to love her."