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Our annual party planning guide features party photographs from local

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guides. A must have for any simcha.

Parshat Ki Tisa: Exodus 30:11-34:35;
I Kings 18:1-18:39

udaism boasts of a revelation
that no other religion comes
close to. Whereas other reli-
gions are based upon the revelation of
one person, the Torah speaks of a rev-
elation of 600,000 men, each
hearing God speak to them
all in unison. Never before
and never after was there
ever such a claim.
Each Jew claims to be
Jewish by virtue of ancestry,
(unless we converted, and
even if we are Jewish by vir-
tue of conversion, our chil-
dren will be Jewish by virtue
of ancestry!), ultimately
claiming to be a descendant
of those who were at Mount
Sinai for that mass revela-
tion.
The first words of the revelation
were, "I am the Lord your God who
took you out of the land of Egypt. You
shall have no other gods before Me."
A clear command not to worship any-
thing other than the One God.
A mere 40 days after this unique
revelation we find the Jewish people
engaged in what seems to be a clear
violation. Once Moses has been gone
for 40 days to receive the tablets of Ten
Commandments, the people gather
around Aaron and demand that he
make a god for them that will go before
them because Moses, who led them out
of Egypt, is no longer with them and
they do not know what has become of
him. (Exodus Ch. 32, verse 1)
Were they asking for a "new" god to
worship or were they asking for a god
that would replace Moses?
A close examination of the text
reveals that they were actually asking
to replace Moses, not God. They felt
that until now their connection to God
was exclusively through Moses; now
that Moses was gone, they needed to
connect to the Divine in some new,
tangible way. In order to fill the void,

j

they asked Aaron to make them a
god that would go before them in the
same way that Moses had "gone before
them:'
What was their mistake? All they
wanted to do was to con-
nect to God; surely craving a
connection with the Divine
is a good thing?
They created their own
religious ceremony and
it was not long that their
worship became corrupt.
The Torah tells us that they
brought offerings, perhaps
at first with good intentions;
but very shortly after they
reverted to the paganism
that they had witnessed in
Egypt; "They sat to eat and
drink and they arose cor-
rupt:' (Exodus Ch. 32, Verse 6)
Since Judaism is a religion made by
God, communicated to Moses and the
entire Jewish people by direct revela-
tion, there is no place for divergence
from the Divine law; "no other god"
means not even an intermediary, even
if you crave the Divine.
In describing the sin of the Jewish
people, God tells Moses that they are
"a stiff-necked people meaning that
they craved the worship that they had
witnessed in Egypt and were not will-
ing to cherish the unique relationship
with God.

AD DEADLINE: MARCH 9, 2015
PUB DATE: MARCH 19, 2015

DETROIT
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Conversations
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