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Parshat Ki Tissa

A census is taken of all males over the age of twenty. This list was to be used in case a military draft was needed. Each person deposited a token in the form of a half shekel. This silver was then used in the construction of the Mishkan. A laver of brass was fashioned for the use of the kohanim. Oil made from a prescribed mixture was prepared. Betzalel, from the tribe of Judah, and Oholiav from Dan, were chosen to be the main supervisors in the building of the Mishkan.

Moshe ascends Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah and stays forty days and nights. When he does not return on time, the people persuade Aharon to fashion a golden calf which the Israelites will worship. They bring jewelry, stones, gold, and silver. They then dance around the calf and brought offerings to it.

God gets very angry and threatens to destroy the Children of Israel, but Moshe manages to soothe God’s wrath. Moshe returns from the mountain carrying the two stone tablets containing the Covenant (shnei luchot ha’brit) and in his anger, smashes them on the ground. A plague ravages the people and Moshe chastises Aharon for his part in this episode. Aharon himself is not punished as Moshe gathers all of his supporters to his side. Three thousand leaders of the revolt are killed. God says that He will not longer lead the people Himself, directly, but through a messenger. The Israelites will be condemned to wander in the desert for forty years because of their sin.

Moshe moves outside the camp and pleads for his people and demands to see God “face to face”. Instead, God places Moshe in the cleft of a rock and reveals only “His back”. Moshe goes back up Mt. Sinai where God will prepare a second set of tablets to be placed in the Ark of the Covenant. All aspects of the Torah (both written and oral) were communicated to Moshe at his time. When he returns to the people, he renews their faith in God, by enunciating the thirteen attributes of mercy.

“Ki tissa et rosh b’nai Yisroel…” This phrase is usually translated as,”When you take a census of the Children of Israel…”. The word “tissa” is also used in the Torah, in Bereshit and Vayikra, to denote “uplifting”, but the Aramaic translation of this verse by Onkelos implies taking a census (as in counting). This is how Rashi interprets the verse (according to its plain meaning). The gemara in Bava Batra (10a) states: Moshe addressed himself to the Holy One, Blessed be He, saying, ‘Sovereign of the Universe wherewith shall the pride of Israel be exalted?’ He replied: ‘Through Ki Tissa’.”

However, on a deeper level, the Torah is teaching us that the half-shekel was a means of uplifting the Jewish people through tzedakah. We can read the verse as “When you uplift the head (rosh) of the Children of Israel. This applied to each person (singular) and not to the collective whole. Each person was exalted since all gave the same amount. The Midrash Tanchuma states that God showed Moshe a fiery coin and commanded the Children of Israel to donate the half shekel for the building of the Mishkan. This implies that through divine service, each mean coin is transformed into something elevated, something holy. Through the power of giving, we have the power to bring a fire of divine service to all of our mundane acts. By making a simple blessing before eating, we transform a normal act of physical survival into a spiritual act. The “v’nat’nu” is a palindrome which is spelled the same forwards and backwards. This means that the giving of tzedakah is a “two way street”. The giver becomes exalted through the merit of this mitzvah as much as the recipient benefits from the charity.

The three letters of tissa (tav, sin, alef) spelled backwards is eishet ( alef, shin, tav) which means woman (as in the song eishet chayil). A wife uplifts a man and makes possible sanctification through kiddushin (marriage) or ne’su’in (also “marriage” in the sense of “uplifting”). Hence, the Torah is teaching us the uplifting nature of sanctifying God’s Holy Name and fulfilling the mitzvah of “you shall be fruitful and multiply”.

Finally, if we translate the word “ki” as “because of”, then the verse states that “because of the merit of the righteous women (like Shifrah and Puah who saved the Jewish males), the head of Israel is exalted. Just as the head controls the rest of the body through all of the nerve connections from the brain through the spinal column, so to the spiritual head of the Jewish people stemmed from the righteousness of the women who refused Pharaoh’s order. The sages also say that the women refused to give their jewelry over to Aharon for the making of the golden calf thus increasing their merit!

“And it shall come to pass, while My glory passes by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover thee with My hand until I have passed by. And I shall take away My hand and thou shalt see My back, but My face shall not be seen”. Anthropomorphisms are human descriptions or attributes assigned to non-human entities. The Torah, about which the Talmud states, “speaks in the language of Man”, is filled with anthropomorphisms about God. This verse from our parsha is no different. We read how God stretched forth His hand to smite the Egyptians. We read how God gets angry and “waxes hot”. We also read that God can be jealous and happy.

We must remember that God is totally incorporeal and that these metaphors are sued to help our minds grasp the wonder, awe, majesty, and glory of God. Therefore, when the Torah states in our parsha: “Let My anger wax hot so that I may consume them”, we must not take it literally. Indeed, the Torah states in Devarim (4:15): “ For you saw no manner of form on the day that the Lord spoke to you in Horeb in the midst of the fire.”

Onkelos, author of the authorized Aramaic translation of the torah, usually uses more neutral terms. For example, in Bereshit (8:21) we read: “And the Lord smelled the sweet savor”, is translated by Onkelos as “And the Lord accepted his sacrifice willingly.”

Sometimes, the sages assigned human qualities to God in their homiletic interpretation of Torah. In Vayikra it says :”You shall be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am Holy”. About this verse, the sages write in the Talmud, “The Torah begins and ends with kindness. How so? It says in Bereshit, ‘and He clothed the Man and the Woman’. This teaches us that just as God clothed the naked, so should we. It also says in Devarim, ‘and God buried Moshe’. This teaches us that just as God buried the dead, so should we…” All of this relates to this section of the Torah.

Parsha Ki Tissa can be divded into three parts. The first part continues the story of the Mishkan, the appointment of Betzalel as chief builder, and more aspects of the incense and offerings by the kohanim. The second part deals with the sin of the golden calf and Moshe’s prayer to God for the salvation of his people. The last part deals with the smashing of the first tablets containing the Ten Commandments, the receiving of the second set of tablets, and finally the enunciation of the thirteen divine attributes of mercy.

In chapter 34, verses 6 and 7 we read: “The Lord. The Lord God is merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity for transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the children’s children, unto the third and fourth generations…”

These thirteen attributes (middot) should be recognizable from the both the siddur and machzor. They are recited during the Torah service when a festival does not fall on the Shabbat and are filled with anthropomorphic images of God. Usually, these verses are repeated three times making a total of 39 middot. Rashi, in his commentary states that the repetition of the four lettered name of God indicates that God is with a person both before he sins and after he repents.

The number 39 alludes to the word “tal” which means “dew”. During the winter, we pray to God to bring rain to the Land of Israel to help the crops to grow. On the first day of Pesach, at musaf, we say a special blessing for tal so that the dew will continue to fall during the dry summer months. The number 39 also alludes to the word “ha-layvav” which means “the heart”. Prayer is often called a “service of the heart” and it is in the Shema that we are commanded to “love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul…” The word for “your heart”, is “l’vav’cha” spelled with a double letter “vet”. This, the sages say, alludes to our two “hearts” or two inclinations; the yetzer ha’tov and the yetzer hara (the good and bad inclinations). To be a “mensch”, is to be a person with a “good heart”. There are also 39 prohibited labors on the Shabbat. Even though the Israelites were commanded to build the Mishkan, they were commanded to stop work (stop creating anew) on the Sabbath.

Rashi now comments on the appearance of God’s “back”. He writes that God showed Moshe the “knot of His head tefillin.” Does God wear tefillin like a human being? This is a remarkable image of God. In the “song at the sea”, Moshe describes God as a “man of war”. Here, the medieval Rashi describes God acting like an observant Jew wearing tefillin. The gemara in Berachot 6a writes:

“Rav Avin bar Rav Adda says in the name of Rabbi Isaac: How do we know that the Holy One, Blessed be he, puts on tefillin? For it is said: ‘The Lord hath sworn by His right hand and by the arm of his strength’. By the right hand; that is the Law, for it is said, ‘His right hand wrote a fiery law for them’. By the arm of His strength; that is tefillin, for it is said, ‘The Lord will give strength unto His people.’ How do we know that tefillin are strength to Israel? It is written, ‘And all the people of the earth shall see the name of the Lord is called upon thee and they shall be afraid of thee’; and it has been taught that Rabbi Eliezer the Great says: these refer to the tefillin of the head.”

The gemara continues:

“Rav Nachman bar Isaac said to Rav Chiya bar Avin: Those tefillin of the Lord of the Universe, what is written in them? He said to him: ‘And what one nation in the earth is like thy people Israel?’ Does the Holy One, Blessed be He, laud Himself with praise of Israel? Yes…The Holy One, Blessed be He, says to Israel: ‘You made me a unique Oneness in the world (with the Shema)…”

In a later section of Berachot (7a), the gemara discusses the aspect of God praying: “How do we know that the Holy One, Blessed be He, says prayers? Because it says ‘Even them will I bring to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer.’ It is not said ‘their prayer’, but ‘My prayer’; hence you learn that the Holy One, Blessed be He, says prayers. What does He pray? ‘May it be My will that My mercy may suppress My anger, and that My mercy may prevail over My other Attributes, so that I may deal with My children in the Attribute of Mercy (is manifested my the four lettered name), on their behalf, and stop short of the limit of strict justice (under the name Elohim)”.

One might think that God should be able to control His own Attributes and manifestations. The lesson for us is that we must always temper justice with mercy. Throughout the journey of the wilderness, the Israelites will sin, repent, and witness the mercy of God. The word “teshuvah” is used for repentance but can mean “to return”. We must all strive to return to the proper path of righteousness.

Just as God is merciful and just, so should we be merciful and just. We do not need to be perfect, but we must strive for perfection. The goal is not the end of the journey, but the journey itself. Just like Jacob’s ladder, we must remain in constant motion, striving ever higher up the ladder of observance. Even if we stumble, we must get back up and keep moving. In the depths of the cold, it is a matter of survival to keep moving; to keep life’s blood moving through our veins. In the same way, we must keep the spiritual blood of our soul moving through constant study and performance of mitzvoth. If we add the thirteen attributes of mercy with the Rambam’s thirteen attributes of faith, we get the number 26 which alludes to the four lettered name of God (yud, hey, vav, hey; which numerically adds up to 26)!

	Oceanside Jewish Center Weekly Parsha By Jonathan Wolf
	Parshat Ki Tissa A census is taken of all males over the age of twenty. This list was to be used in case a military draft was needed. Each person deposited a token in the form of a half shekel. This silver was then used in the construction of the Mishkan. A laver of brass was fashioned for the use of the kohanim. Oil made from a prescribed mixture was prepared. Betzalel, from the tribe of Judah, and Oholiav from Dan, were chosen to be the main supervisors in the building of the Mishkan. Moshe ascends Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah and stays forty days and nights. When he does not return on time, the people persuade Aharon to fashion a golden calf which the Israelites will worship. They bring jewelry, stones, gold, and silver. They then dance around the calf and brought offerings to it. God gets very angry and threatens to destroy the Children of Israel, but Moshe manages to soothe God’s wrath. Moshe returns from the mountain carrying the two stone tablets containing the Covenant (shnei luchot ha’brit) and in his anger, smashes them on the ground. A plague ravages the people and Moshe chastises Aharon for his part in this episode. Aharon himself is not punished as Moshe gathers all of his supporters to his side. Three thousand leaders of the revolt are killed. God says that He will not longer lead the people Himself, directly, but through a messenger. The Israelites will be condemned to wander in the desert for forty years because of their sin. Moshe moves outside the camp and pleads for his people and demands to see God “face to face”. Instead, God places Moshe in the cleft of a rock and reveals only “His back”. Moshe goes back up Mt. Sinai where God will prepare a second set of tablets to be placed in the Ark of the Covenant. All aspects of the Torah (both written and oral) were communicated to Moshe at his time. When he returns to the people, he renews their faith in God, by enunciating the thirteen attributes of mercy. “Ki tissa et rosh b’nai Yisroel…” This phrase is usually translated as,”When you take a census of the Children of Israel…”. The word “tissa” is also used in the Torah, in Bereshit and Vayikra, to denote “uplifting”, but the Aramaic translation of this verse by Onkelos implies taking a census (as in counting). This is how Rashi interprets the verse (according to its plain meaning). The gemara in Bava Batra (10a) states: Moshe addressed himself to the Holy One, Blessed be He, saying, ‘Sovereign of the Universe wherewith shall the pride of Israel be exalted?’ He replied: ‘Through Ki Tissa’.” However, on a deeper level, the Torah is teaching us that the half-shekel was a means of uplifting the Jewish people through tzedakah. We can read the verse as “When you uplift the head (rosh) of the Children of Israel. This applied to each person (singular) and not to the collective whole. Each person was exalted since all gave the same amount. The Midrash Tanchuma states that God showed Moshe a fiery coin and commanded the Children of Israel to donate the half shekel for the building of the Mishkan. This implies that through divine service, each mean coin is transformed into something elevated, something holy. Through the power of giving, we have the power to bring a fire of divine service to all of our mundane acts. By making a simple blessing before eating, we transform a normal act of physical survival into a spiritual act. The “v’nat’nu” is a palindrome which is spelled the same forwards and backwards. This means that the giving of tzedakah is a “two way street”. The giver becomes exalted through the merit of this mitzvah as much as the recipient benefits from the charity. The three letters of tissa (tav, sin, alef) spelled backwards is eishet ( alef, shin, tav) which means woman (as in the song eishet chayil). A wife uplifts a man and makes possible sanctification through kiddushin (marriage) or ne’su’in (also “marriage” in the sense of “uplifting”). Hence, the Torah is teaching us the uplifting nature of sanctifying God’s Holy Name and fulfilling the mitzvah of “you shall be fruitful and multiply”. Finally, if we translate the word “ki” as “because of”, then the verse states that “because of the merit of the righteous women (like Shifrah and Puah who saved the Jewish males), the head of Israel is exalted. Just as the head controls the rest of the body through all of the nerve connections from the brain through the spinal column, so to the spiritual head of the Jewish people stemmed from the righteousness of the women who refused Pharaoh’s order. The sages also say that the women refused to give their jewelry over to Aharon for the making of the golden calf thus increasing their merit! “And it shall come to pass, while My glory passes by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover thee with My hand until I have passed by. And I shall take away My hand and thou shalt see My back, but My face shall not be seen”. Anthropomorphisms are human descriptions or attributes assigned to non-human entities. The Torah, about which the Talmud states, “speaks in the language of Man”, is filled with anthropomorphisms about God. This verse from our parsha is no different. We read how God stretched forth His hand to smite the Egyptians. We read how God gets angry and “waxes hot”. We also read that God can be jealous and happy. We must remember that God is totally incorporeal and that these metaphors are sued to help our minds grasp the wonder, awe, majesty, and glory of God. Therefore, when the Torah states in our parsha: “Let My anger wax hot so that I may consume them”, we must not take it literally. Indeed, the Torah states in Devarim (4:15): “ For you saw no manner of form on the day that the Lord spoke to you in Horeb in the midst of the fire.” Onkelos, author of the authorized Aramaic translation of the torah, usually uses more neutral terms. For example, in Bereshit (8:21) we read: “And the Lord smelled the sweet savor”, is translated by Onkelos as “And the Lord accepted his sacrifice willingly.” Sometimes, the sages assigned human qualities to God in their homiletic interpretation of Torah. In Vayikra it says :”You shall be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am Holy”. About this verse, the sages write in the Talmud, “The Torah begins and ends with kindness. How so? It says in Bereshit, ‘and He clothed the Man and the Woman’. This teaches us that just as God clothed the naked, so should we. It also says in Devarim, ‘and God buried Moshe’. This teaches us that just as God buried the dead, so should we…” All of this relates to this section of the Torah. Parsha Ki Tissa can be divded into three parts. The first part continues the story of the Mishkan, the appointment of Betzalel as chief builder, and more aspects of the incense and offerings by the kohanim. The second part deals with the sin of the golden calf and Moshe’s prayer to God for the salvation of his people. The last part deals with the smashing of the first tablets containing the Ten Commandments, the receiving of the second set of tablets, and finally the enunciation of the thirteen divine attributes of mercy. In chapter 34, verses 6 and 7 we read: “The Lord. The Lord God is merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity for transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the children’s children, unto the third and fourth generations…” These thirteen attributes (middot) should be recognizable from the both the siddur and machzor. They are recited during the Torah service when a festival does not fall on the Shabbat and are filled with anthropomorphic images of God. Usually, these verses are repeated three times making a total of 39 middot. Rashi, in his commentary states that the repetition of the four lettered name of God indicates that God is with a person both before he sins and after he repents. The number 39 alludes to the word “tal” which means “dew”. During the winter, we pray to God to bring rain to the Land of Israel to help the crops to grow. On the first day of Pesach, at musaf, we say a special blessing for tal so that the dew will continue to fall during the dry summer months. The number 39 also alludes to the word “ha-layvav” which means “the heart”. Prayer is often called a “service of the heart” and it is in the Shema that we are commanded to “love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul…” The word for “your heart”, is “l’vav’cha” spelled with a double letter “vet”. This, the sages say, alludes to our two “hearts” or two inclinations; the yetzer ha’tov and the yetzer hara (the good and bad inclinations). To be a “mensch”, is to be a person with a “good heart”. There are also 39 prohibited labors on the Shabbat. Even though the Israelites were commanded to build the Mishkan, they were commanded to stop work (stop creating anew) on the Sabbath. Rashi now comments on the appearance of God’s “back”. He writes that God showed Moshe the “knot of His head tefillin.” Does God wear tefillin like a human being? This is a remarkable image of God. In the “song at the sea”, Moshe describes God as a “man of war”. Here, the medieval Rashi describes God acting like an observant Jew wearing tefillin. The gemara in Berachot 6a writes: “Rav Avin bar Rav Adda says in the name of Rabbi Isaac: How do we know that the Holy One, Blessed be he, puts on tefillin? For it is said: ‘The Lord hath sworn by His right hand and by the arm of his strength’. By the right hand; that is the Law, for it is said, ‘His right hand wrote a fiery law for them’. By the arm of His strength; that is tefillin, for it is said, ‘The Lord will give strength unto His people.’ How do we know that tefillin are strength to Israel? It is written, ‘And all the people of the earth shall see the name of the Lord is called upon thee and they shall be afraid of thee’; and it has been taught that Rabbi Eliezer the Great says: these refer to the tefillin of the head.” The gemara continues: “Rav Nachman bar Isaac said to Rav Chiya bar Avin: Those tefillin of the Lord of the Universe, what is written in them? He said to him: ‘And what one nation in the earth is like thy people Israel?’ Does the Holy One, Blessed be He, laud Himself with praise of Israel? Yes…The Holy One, Blessed be He, says to Israel: ‘You made me a unique Oneness in the world (with the Shema)…” In a later section of Berachot (7a), the gemara discusses the aspect of God praying: “How do we know that the Holy One, Blessed be He, says prayers? Because it says ‘Even them will I bring to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer.’ It is not said ‘their prayer’, but ‘My prayer’; hence you learn that the Holy One, Blessed be He, says prayers. What does He pray? ‘May it be My will that My mercy may suppress My anger, and that My mercy may prevail over My other Attributes, so that I may deal with My children in the Attribute of Mercy (is manifested my the four lettered name), on their behalf, and stop short of the limit of strict justice (under the name Elohim)”. One might think that God should be able to control His own Attributes and manifestations. The lesson for us is that we must always temper justice with mercy. Throughout the journey of the wilderness, the Israelites will sin, repent, and witness the mercy of God. The word “teshuvah” is used for repentance but can mean “to return”. We must all strive to return to the proper path of righteousness. Just as God is merciful and just, so should we be merciful and just. We do not need to be perfect, but we must strive for perfection. The goal is not the end of the journey, but the journey itself. Just like Jacob’s ladder, we must remain in constant motion, striving ever higher up the ladder of observance. Even if we stumble, we must get back up and keep moving. In the depths of the cold, it is a matter of survival to keep moving; to keep life’s blood moving through our veins. In the same way, we must keep the spiritual blood of our soul moving through constant study and performance of mitzvoth. If we add the thirteen attributes of mercy with the Rambam’s thirteen attributes of faith, we get the number 26 which alludes to the four lettered name of God (yud, hey, vav, hey; which numerically adds up to 26)!