Parashat Ki Tisa contains one of the most infamous moments of Jewish history: the building of the Golden Calf. In the biblical narrative, the Golden Calf is the ultimate sin of the Israelites. Less than 40 days after the revelation of God on Mount Sinai and the sealing of the covenant, the Israelites lose faith and build an idol of gold to worship (Exodus 32:1-4). They abandon God, and with God, they abandon a new conception of themselves. Earlier, God told the Israelites

This is perhaps the greatest of God’s promises – that after centuries of bondage, we could be a light upon the nations. That through our faith and action, we will achieve holiness. However, in their rejection of the Covenant, the Israelites turn their back on the promise of their new faith.

How did this happen? How, in such a short time, did we forget our promise to God and ourselves? In Tractate Shabbat, the Talmud teaches that Satan, the great Tempter, saw an opportunity while Moses was on Sinai. Without Moses’s leadership, Satan thought, the Israelites were vulnerable. At the end of forty days, Satan appeared and told the Israelites that they should forget their promises because Moses was never coming back. However, the Israelites did not fall easily. “It has been too long,” Satan said. “He is gone, he abandoned you in the wilderness.” But the Israelites ignored him, confident in Moses’s loyalty. Still, Satan persisted. “He is dead,” Satan told them. “You have lost your guide. You are alone and vulnerable, no longer protected by his leadership.” But the Israelites still refused him, unwilling to believe Satan’s lies. Finally, Satan saw that the faith of the Israelites was too strong, he could not convince them with words. So, Satan conjured an image of Moses’s corpse, lying on his deathbed, and showed it to all the children of Israel. And only then, when their hope had been crushed, did the Israelites turn to Aaron and demand a new god.

The lesson offered by this story is that faith requires hope. We must see the possibility of redemption to maintain our beliefs and ideals. Every day, our values are challenged by the horror of war and the despair that comes from long cycles of violence. And tempters, leaders without principle, prey on this despair to convince us that the hope of peace is dead.

They argue that compassion is a weakness which cannot be afforded, and cruelty is a necessary by-product of our times. Their words fuel our fears because they know, in moments of fear, we are at the greatest risk of forgetting ourselves and our promises to love God and protect God’s creation.

Abraham Joshua Heschel once taught that our ban on idol worship is not because God cannot be depicted, but rather,

When we fail to recognize the holiness in others, we lose our ability to see God. It is the first sign of a loss of faith. It is the beginning of idolatry. I pray that we never forget our responsibility to see God in the people around us, that we reject the idols of racism and violence, and that we use the medium of our lives to pursue justice and peace.

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