Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on Parashat Ki Tisa
Our parasha for this week tells one of the most famous of Biblical stories – the story of the Israelite betrayal – the story of the Golden Calf. Impatient Israelites couldn’t wait any longer for Moses’ comeback from Mount Sinai, to the extent that they lost the hope that he would ever come back to them, so they decided to take the matters in their own hand.
They did what they were used to and it turned out that they were wrong, very wrong. Animals were supposed to be sacrificed not worshiped. Their beliefs turned out to be false and it had dramatic consequences. Around 3000 people got killed because of this event, out of the internal conflict within the Jewish nation, and the consequences could have been much worse, literally genocidal, if Moses didn’t intercede and stop the Divine wrath.
There was practically no leadership at this point among the Israelites. Aaron’s leadership was very weak at this particular moment. The weaker the leadership, the greater the price people will pay for their own and their leadership’s mistakes. And that’s the first lesson we can learn from this story.
What else can we learn from this story? That there are always consequences of our actions. It is a fundamental idea of all the world religions, it has different expressions, like karma in Buddhism or Hinduism, but the underlying ideas are quite similar. The consequences we face may be greater or lesser but there rarely is, if ever, a strict measure of proportionate response/punishment. In other words, if we do something wrong out of impulsiveness, ignorance or stupidity, we can’t expect that the punishment will match our expectations – it is not up to us to decide what the consequences should be; it will be decided by others or by objective reality.
When that happens, even in a small scale, namely – when we see unpredicted, negative outcomes of our actions, the proper reaction is to see those red flags and correct our beliefs and behavior stemming from them. It’s not correct, although recently quite popular, to double down on a wrong belief and to invent ad-hoc theories that would shift the blame to something or someone else. This is a defense mechanism that helps people avoid facing their own flaws. Blaming others protects the blamer from experiencing unpleasant feelings, such as guilt or shame. Instead of acknowledging their own mistakes, they shift the blame to someone else. That’s not how adult people behave. It’s immature, or I would even say – infantile behavior.
This is certainly not behavior worthy of a leader. The role of the leadership is to predict consequences of our actions and to mitigate them if they happen to be negative. That’s what Moses did for the Israelites, even though he knew their flaws and their guilt – he didn’t abandon them even though he absolutely could do it. The true leader always empathizes with his/her people, and despite knowing their flaws and sins, never gives up on them – always stands firm from them. The matter is particularly relevant now, in times in which every Jew should take a more active-role in our community life and become a bit more of a leader than to the extent we are used to.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Menachem Mirski
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