Torah Posting: כי תשא
We pick up where we left off, with administrative details about the whole Israelite encampment and its religious duties, but our attention is beginning to turn back towards the particular people who are there and their responsibilities for enacting and embodying all these instructions and ideals, rather than just letting them sit on paper. We will immediately see that this is easier said than done.
The beginning of this parashah is about defense. The men who are tallied for their enrollment in the army, starting at age 20, must pay a small monetary ransom to God upon their enrollment for spiritual and physical protection. It’s a flat tax for all the men regardless of their family’s station. This money, which is for expiation, goes into the funds for the Tent of Meeting, supporting the ongoing priestly ritual that keeps the whole community intact and safe.
After that, a copper laver and stand are established for the Tent of Meeting, and the priests are given instructions to wash their hands and feet with water from this laver before entering the tent or approaching the altar, “that they may not die.” As mentioned last parashah — and not just because I know something is coming — I feel like the repeated insistences and additional precautions around altar service are foreshadowing something, and not just to the readers but to the characters, such that any failure to heed these warnings in the story will be all the more poignant.
The commandment to wash hands before ritual service will become one of the biblical ritual instructions from this part of Torah most readily translated to rabbinic Judaism, and ornate lavers are part of the material culture of any practicing Jewish home.
Next, the ingredients of the Mishkan’s anointing oil are given, and this gives me an opportunity to enter something I often rant about informally into the written record. In Shemot 30:23, a primary ingredient of the anointing oil is given as “קנה-בשם” — “kaneh-bosem.” Kannabosem. Cannabis. It’s weed. Marijuana. It means “fragrant cane” in Hebrew.
Some people may attempt to engage in embarrassing displays of sophistry in order to avoid the fact enshrined in the written sacred text of the Jewish people that cannabis was used ritually by the Israelites. You may ignore them. In case you do not find the explicit presence of the word “cannabis” in the Torah convincing, perhaps archaeological evidence of well-preserved cannabis residue on Israelite ritual altars will do the trick.
With that established, God instructs Mosheh to create sacred cannabis oil for anointing the Tent of Meeting, the Ark of the Pact, the table and all its utensils, the menorah and its fittings, the incense and offering altars and all their utensils, the laver and its stand, to consecrate them and make them most holy. The bodies of Aharon and his sons, the priests, are also to be anointed with cannabis oil.
Then God tells Mosheh to speak to the people to warn them of the dangers of this practice as well. It shall not be rubbed on the bodies of laypeople or even made outside of the auspices of the priests. Unauthorized use of this anointing oil is punishable by being cut off from the community.
The recipe for this oil is very specific, of course. Surely the laypeople could make their cannabis oil according to a different one.
Next the ingredients of the incense to be offered at the altar are given, coming with the same warnings about unauthorized production or use.
In the next chapter, God singles out Betzalel, son of Uri, son of Hur, from the tribe of Yehudah, as a divinely endowed craftsman with all the skills necessary to oversee construction of the Mishkan and all its implements, including the priestly vestments. God also assigns to him a lieutenant — Oholiav, son of Achisamakh, of the tribe of Dan — and a crew of laborers. God instructs Mosheh to hire this divinely appointed crew for the job.
That wraps up the Mishkan section! Now we turn back to more universal and public observances.
Though we have already been introduced to Shabbat and the importance of its observance several times — including in the 10 Commandments — as well as in narratives demonstrating the activities that are allowed and prohibited on Shabbat, here the mitzvot of keeping Shabbat are laid out in terms of their communal and civic importance — and seriousness. Desecrating Shabbat is a capital offense.
It is reiterated more than once that the eternal observance of Shabbat is an “אות,” a “sign” of the covenant between the people Yisra’el and God, and this illustrates the importance of this particular instance of Shabbat law. Now that we understand the people will live in a complex, busy religious community together, in which religious and secular roles are carefully designated, we know that careful observance of God’s commandments is not just a matter of inner spiritual importance. One’s practice is a sign to the whole community that the communal practice is intact. This is a good reason for the gravity of these laws; if the people don’t maintain these signs, everything could fall into chaos.
Though the narrative is choppy as always, this section records this as the final instruction before God inscribes the Pact into stone tablets with the Divine Finger and gives them to Mosheh.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the people have gotten bored waiting for Mosheh to come down from the mountain with all this information. It has been that quintessential biblical duration of 40 days and 40 nights, after all. Apparently that’s long enough to forget a public mass revelation full of thunder and lightning. Although, it was long enough to flood the entire world, also, so perhaps the mystical significance of this duration is that it really is a big deal.
In any case, the people suround Aharon and demand the exact opposite of everything God is currently commanding them to do. They need a comforting material sign of the divine. They need to build a god.
Aharon, amazingly, complies. He instructs the people to take off all their gold jewelry and bring it to him. Some commentators try to retcon this into a stalling tactic, so that the freshly minted high priest is not implicated in idolatry, but that feels like a massive stretch to me. Aharon melts down the gold and casts it into a statue of a calf. The people exclaim, “This is your god, Yisra’el, who brought you out of the land of Mitzrayim.”
Um, no.
And yet Aharon goes ahead and builds it an altar and declares the next day a festival. To יהוה, no less! The people make offerings, feast, dance around, the whole bit.
Up on the mountain, God says to Mosheh, “You’d better hurry back down the mountain. Your people are losing it. In fact, these people are so stubborn, I am going to blow them to smithereens, and you, Mosheh, will become the new forefather of a great nation.”
Mosheh must be in touch with the healing his ancestors did in processing God’s impulsive and destructive wrath. He makes a poignant argument that God should not do this, and God relents. Then Mosheh walks down the mountain carrying the two tablets of the Pact. The text makes extra sure we understand that God literally, physically made these.
Mosheh’s aide, Yehoshu’a, informs Mosheh that he can hear the cry of war in the camp. But God told Mosheh what is happening, and Mosheh replies that this is not the sound of victory of defeat; it’s just people singing.
But when Mosheh sees the idolatrous festival with his own eyes, he gets angry and smashes the tablets at the foot of the mountain. He grinds the golden calf into powder, dumps it in the drinking water, and makes the people drink it. Then he turns to his brother, the high priest, and asks how he could have let this happen.
Aharon makes an excuse. He blames the people, and he makes the outrageous claim that he threw the people’s gold into the fire, and this calf just sort of magically sprung out of it.
It is not going to be easy to bring this community into integrity, and Mosheh knows it. He stands up before the camp and calls for anyone who truly stands with God to rally to him. All the men of the tribe of Levi come. Mosheh, on behalf of God, instructs these men to sweep the camp and kill everyone who willingly committed this idolatry. They comply, killing 3,000 people. Mosheh went from telling God not to wipe out the people to wiping out a subset of them personally pretty quickly, didn’t he?
He takes it in stride. He offers to go back up to face God again and try to earn forgiveness for the rest of the people, and for the Levi’im, who just murdered a bunch of their kin. He begins his plea by begging personal forgiveness, but God says he has done nothing wrong and should continue to lead the people where God will send them. God does promise, though, that there will be an accounting for this, and soon a plague comes.
Once that’s settled, God sends Mosheh out toward the land flowing with milk and honey. God offers to send a messenger ahead of them to drive out all the peoples who already live in the land, but now God will no longer travel in the midst of the people. This is for their own protection, God says. God might get mad again and destroy them along the way.
This bad news sends the people into mourning, and they no longer march in their finery.
The new regime of relationship with the divine is that Mosheh will pitch the Tent of Meeting outside the camp at some distance, and anyone who needs God’s help would have to leave the camp for it. That is where the pillar of cloud of God’s Presence would dwell when Mosheh was in session as prophet. The text says that there God would speek with Mosheh “פנים אל-פנים,” face to face, as one person speaks to another.
This is a new level of intimacy between Mosheh and God, and Mosheh will need more from God in order to establish this. He prays to God to show him God’s ways and let him behold God’s Presence for real this time.
God agrees to go in front of Mosheh and the people in all kinds of secondary ways, but this is not the direct apprehension and knowledge Mosheh is requesting. Interestingly, even though we’ve just heard that God and Mosheh speak “face to face” in the Tent of Meeting, now God says, “לא תוכל עת-פני כי לא-יראני האדם וחי” — “You cannot see My face, for an earthling cannot see Me and live.”
This is a hard one to grasp. I think the best place to start is to remember that the situation in the Mishkan is tightly choreographed and facilitated by a lot of structure and material. Speaking “face to face” with God through that well understood medium is one thing. Really seeing God’s face here, walking in the open desert, is another.
God gives Mosheh an option, though. God instructs Mosheh to stand on a certain rock, and God’s Presence will pass by, and God will shield Mosheh from the full glory with God’s hand. Then God will take away God’s hand, and Mosheh will see God’s back.
The scene cuts here, after God tells Mosheh how it will go. We don’t get to see even that.
After this indescribable experience, God instructs Mosheh to carve two new stone tablets himself, and God will then inscribe the words on them again. The next morning, when Mosheh goes back up the mountain with the new tablets, God speaks a paragraph of elaboration of God’s own four-letter name יהוה and essential qualities, after which Mosheh bows low to the ground and prays for forgiveness. This exchange, including that God-uttered paragraph in full, understandably becomes a climactic part of the Jewish High Holiday liturgy.
God agrees to forgive the people in response to Mosheh’s petition, and God makes stark declarations about the peoples living in the promised land who will be driven out. God explains that these people worship false gods, like the one the people Yisra’el just erred in worshipping. When the people enter the land, they must tear down all the altars and temples of these old gods. They are not to make any kind of covenant — including marriage — with the inhabitants who worship those gods, for the people might be tempted. God then gives an overview of the calendar of worship and offering the people Yisra’el must observe in the land instead.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread shall be held in the spring. The firstborn of the livestock shall be for God, with exceptions for donkeys and children, who can be redeemed. Shabbat must be kept. The Feast of Weeks shall be held at the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering should be held after the new year. Three times a year, the men of Yisra’el must appear before God in these festivals. We’ve heard all this before, actually, and several more ritual details as well. This repetition has an obvious narrative purpose: Mosheh smashed the tablets, and God is making him listen to it over again.
In fact, this takes 40 more days and nights, and then Mosheh comes down again. His face is glowing with the glory of God, and the people are afraid of it. But Mosheh summons the priests and chieftains, and he relates all the instructions. Then he veils his face, and he continues to do this for a while except when in the tent, in God’s Presence, so that the people are not overwhelmed by his glow.
This parashah is important on many mystical levels, but it also shows the way the mystical gives rise to the political for these people. The temptations to be like all the others are great. But God will not allow the children of Yisra’el to be just like everyone else. The details of all this law must be followed precisely in order to distinguish them. There’s no chance of loss or confusion of identity with this much specialized work to do, and with only, under any circumstances, one God to serve.
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