TORAH PORTION
League of Jewish Women's Organizations of Greater Detroit
cordially invites you, your family and friends to our
47th ANNUAL
YOUTH AWARDS PROGRAM
An Opportunity to Honor Our Outstanding Young People
RABBI ERIC KROHNER
SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 1992 at 1:30 P.M.
Special to The Jewish News
A
CONGREGATION B'NAI DAVID
24350 SOUTHFIELD RD., SOUTHFIELD
Speaker/Former Award Recipient
JOANNA ABRAMSON
Special Presentation
BETTY SILVERFARB
A RECEPTION WILL FOLLOW THE PROGRAM
Co-Chairmen Youth Awards
Hannah Moss
Sandra Schwartz
President
Charlotte Edelheit
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44
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The Golden Calf:
A Lesson In Patience
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contemporary author
once remarked that
"An eternity is a mo-
ment captured with pa-
tience."
The Torah's sequential
characterization of the events
leading up to the sin of the
golden calf points to the
Jewish people's impatience
and lack of self-control as the
root causes of their sin. Their
over-anxiousness for Moses'
return from Mt. Sinai led
them to the sin and ultimate-
ly to forfeit their eternity.
The Talmud explains that
had the Jews waited for
Moses to return from Mt.
Sinai with the First Tablets,
"hand-written" by God, they
would have merited an ex-
alted level of human ex-
istence. They would have
reached a level of spirituality
that would have changed
their appearance from all
other human beings; they
would have attained domi-
nion over nature and achiev-
ed immortality. In this case,
patience, or the lack of it,
meant the difference between
a physical, temporal ex-
istence, and eternity.
The Torah's account of the
events leading up to the sin
appears unclear. (Ki Tissa
Chap. 32) Before Moses
ascends Mt. Sinai to receive
the Ibrah, he told the Jewish
people that he would return
in 40 days. His statement
allowed for the possibility of
his return on the 40th day or
after 40 complete days, on the
41st day. In fact, Moses
returned on the 41st day. If
Moses' original declaration
was inherently ambiguous,
then why were the Jewish
people so impatient, and why
was Aaron unable to delay
their actions by explaining
that Moses intended,
perhaps, to return on the 41st
day?
The Maharal, one of the
great rabbinical commen-
tators of the 15th century of-
fers a truly deep insight into
the meaning behind this
puzzling question. He ex-
plains that the number of
total days that Moses spent
on Mt. Sinai has enormous
spiritual significance. Our
tradition teaches us that
numbers have deep meaning.
It is not a coincidence, for ex-
Rabbi Krohner is the director
of development for the
Yeshiva Gedolah of Greater
Detroit.
ample, that God created the
world in six days, rather than
five days, and rested on the
seventh. Seven in Hebraic
terms represents natural pro-
cess or a natural cycle.
The number 40, the
number of days Moses spent
on Mt. Sinai, according to our
Hebraic frame of reference,
represents a dramatic change.
We find, for example, that in
order to uproot evil from the
world the flood of Noah lasted
40 days. The Talmud tells us
that 40 days following concep-
tion, a fetus is considered a
human life, and 40 multiplied
by seven (a natural cycle) is
280 which represents a full-
term pregnancy.
Another example where 40
signifies dramatic change is a
mikvah (ritual bath) which
must contain 40 measures of
Shabbat Ki Tissa
Exodus 30:11-34:35
Kings 1 18:1-39
water to be kosher. A mikvah
tranforms one from an im-
pure state to a pure one. In
the case of a convert the in-
dividual must submerge in a
mikvah (the Zohar explains
that a mikvah symbolizes a
womb) to be transformed and
considered in a spiritual
sense a new-born Jew.
According to this under-
standing, the difference be-
tween Moses' returning on
the 40th day or on the 41st
day, after 40 complete days,
represents the difference be-
tween Moses' returning at
the level of the "man" he was
when he left, or Moses "the
man" transformed into a new
spiritual being.
In fact, the Ohr Somayach,
a famous rabbinical commen-
tator of the 19th and 20th
centuries, writes in his in-
troduction to the book of Ex-
odus that after Moses' ex-
perience on Mt. Sinai he ceas-
ed to be a normal man with
free will.
The Torah states (Chap. 32)
that the Jews told Aaron, "We
have no idea what happened
to Moses, the man who
brought us out of Egypt."
Why did the Torah write
"Moses, the man"? Is it not
obvious that Moses is a man?
The Jewish people knew
that if Moses would descend
the mountain after 40 com-
plete days he would no longer
be the same man to whom
they once related. The Jewish
people were concerned that
the spiritual level of Moses
would be so exalted that they
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