Parashat Ki Tisa is best known perhaps for the famous story of the golden calf contained within. It’s a great story with lots of material for discussion. What struck this year upon studying the parasha is the lesson Ki Tisa offers about anger management. God has just witnessed the scene at the base of the mountain. This people that God (him, her, itself?) has liberated and given law to – law to which the Israelites just agreed to כל אשר דבר יי נעשה ונשמע all that God says, we will do and listen - has now in their impatience created an idol of ba-al worship. Moses has yet to descend from the mountain with the tablets representing that law and already they are challenging it. To put it bluntly, God is beyond mad. If you’ll excuse my language, God is pissed. ועתה הניחה לי ויחר אפי בהם ואכלם..., “now let me be,” God says to Moses, “so that my anger will blaze forth upon them and consume them.” (Ex. 32:10). The biblical Hebrew for this anger provides a wonderful visual metaphor, literally “‘my nose’ became ‘hot’ or ‘inflammed’ at them.” Whenever I see this phrase ויחר אף I imagine an angry fire breathing dragon (nice image for God, no? – but there it is in the text). More subtle but perhaps more significant is how God now refers to the Israelites. No longer referred to by God as עמי, my people, as they were throughout their experience in Egypt, but now as “עמך” ‘your people’ – Moses people. God seems to be distancing, removing Godself from the relationship, the covenant. This isn’t ‘my people’, Moses, they are ‘your’ problem now.
At first glance, the peshat, the plain meaning of the text, tells us that Moses refuses to ‘let God be’ and proceeds instead to successfully convince God to rethink acting out such anger. Verses 11-13 of chapter 32 (pp. 588-589) narrate Moses imploring God not to let anger dictate action, but to think about the consequences.
But of course, Jewish textual study never leaves the peshat, that first glance, alone. The Rabbinic literature struggles immensely with the idea of God losing it so completely. Exodus Rabbah, for instance, a collection of midrashim gathered over time but codified in the early medival period, offers more than one opinion on this scene in parashat Ki Tisa. On the one hand, God is depicted in dire need of intervention while Moses is the ultimate conciliator. After Moses recognizes the extent of God’s anger, the midrash imagines him thinking to himself; If I leave Israel to their fate …they can never survive. I will not stir from here before I have sought mercy for them. Whereupon Moses begins to urge God, pleading with God – who in the midrash needs quite a bit of convincing – not to act harshly against the people. In the very next midrash in the compilation, however, a different scene is imagined. Noting the change in God’s language to Moses from the imperative לך רד, GO DOWN! to the softer preterite form, such as ויאמר, the midrashist comments, “God began to open up to Moses paths for pleading mercy for them.”
Another tactic of commentators who seek a kinder understanding of God is to reflect on this phrase ועתה הניחה לי now, let me be. This phrase is understood by many commentators not as a dismissal of Moses, but instead as an invitation to intervene. According to the 11th century Rashi, who himself draws significantly from the Midrash, ועתה הניחה לי is God’s cue to Moses to rally on their behalf. God’s behavior now depends on Moses (‘let me be’ Moses. These are ‘your’ people now; their fate at this moment is in your hands. Implicit in this understanding is God’s challenge to Moses, “so what are you going to do about it?”). Accordingly, God doesn’t want to act hastily, God wants Moses to act, to pray on their behalf, to care deeply about this people.
Moses apparently learns the lesson. He does intervene. God’s anger cools, and the Israelites are saved. Happy ending, right? Or perhaps not. Actions do speak louder than words, and God’s heated moment of anger made a far stronger impression on Moses then his ‘now, let me be.’ What happens when Moses descends the mountain and sees for himself what God has been talking about? As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, ויחר אפ משה, (there’s that fabulous metaphor again) he becomes enraged and throws down the freshly engraved tablets of law. Then he proceeds to not only make the Israelites drink the molten stew left after burning the Golden calf, but he rallies the men of Levi to attack their fellow Israelites.
Ooops! So much for that lesson of taking a moment to step back and think through the consequences of acting out of such rage. Moses took in God’s va-yichar af, the initial heated moment apparently far more than God’s v’atah ha-ni-cha li. Yet, perhaps there is a positive lesson in Moses’ heated reaction. Moses’ anger could be understood as a sign that he does accept responsibility for this people. Their actions make him angry because indeed he does care and wants the best of them and for them. In that sense he has modeled God.
God gets the reality of anger. God understands how emotionally heated one can get when those we love act badly. After this episode when God is sending the Israelites out on their continued journey, God says, (Ex. 33:3) “Since you are a stiff-necked people, I will not go in your midst, lest I destroy you on the way!” Sometimes we have to recognize our own limitations and that may require giving ourselves some space to reconcile our emotions before acting hastily upon them. It is unclear if Moses ever learns this part of the critical lesson. Anger is a valid emotion that can rise to the surface pretty quickly, but we can learn to recognize it and take a moment to consider how we express that anger.
In this week’s portion, both God and Moses have experienced the same pain and frustration resulting from the actions of ‘their’ people. They have each confronted such anger, panim el panim, face to face. Their ultimate reactions, the outcomes of their anger, were however gravely different and serve to remind us of the challenges and responsiblity of taming our humanity in the face of heated emotion.
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