The parsha for this week is Ki Tisa, “when you take a census.” The parsha covers wide ranging events and is filled with searing drama.
It begins with God’s directive to Moses to count the sons of Israel by collecting from each a half shekel to be used to build the Mishkan.
It describes in detail how to build the Mishkan, and then moves to the high drama that unfolds after Moses ascends the mountain and seemingly disappears from the scene.
We read about the anxiety of the People, the fabrication of the golden calf, God’s anger and resolve to destroy the People, and Moses’ intercession with God.
Moses successfully convinces God not to wipe out the People, but when he descends from the mountain and surveys the scene, he becomes enraged. He smashes the sacred tablets, and orders the Levites to slaughter some three thousand of their brothers, neighbors, and kin, the ones who were “not for the Lord”.
Following this saga of fear, betrayal, and bloodletting, the parsha ends with reconciliation: Moses receives a second set of tablets and the Covenant is renewed.
The Plaut commentary on the golden calf asks an interesting question: why does God give the People a second Covenant if the building of the golden calf was, in fact, a return to idolatry?
According to the commentary, one answer is that the People’s creation of the golden calf was not idol worship. It was simply the reaction of an anxious People who missed Moses, who had been their only link to an unseen and invisible God. In the place of Moses, the People fashioned a new link to God, in the form of the golden calf. Feeling abandoned by Moses, the People found another way into their faith.
After all, the commentary asks, what is the basic difference between the two cherubim, also fashioned from gold and placed in the ark, and the golden calf? The answer, according to Plaut, is that there is no essential difference between the two.
Why are the cherubim holy objects, and the golden calf forbidden?
The medieval poet philosopher Judah Halevi said “the only difference between the cherubim and the calf was that one form had been permitted and the other one had not”.
Reading this made me think of the differences between the practice of orthodox judaism, and the way we in the reform movement practice and express our judaism. And it led me to reflect on the marginalization of reform practice in Israel; the tensions between the two; the instances of outright hostility violence against some reform practices.
How else to view the ban on women praying at the western wall, the harassment and arrest of women in prayer wearing tallit and tefillin, the vast inequality of funding between orthodox institutions and reform schools and shuls, and the overwhelming sense that reform judaism is inauthentic, less than, trayfe.
While not the golden calf, reform practice in Israel is not treated as an equal and legitimate form of Jewish religious expression.
As zionists and reform jews we can and should support the reform movement in Israel. Indeed, that is a large part of the work of the Israel Committee.
At today’s meeting we will select a new reform project, and we’ll ask the larger Rodeph Sholom community to support it financially. There won’t be a census, but we will be asking our community to contribute rather more than half a shekel to support one of the three projects that our tzedakka subcommittee is recommending. Each of these projects has, at its core, the goal of “broadening and strengthening a type of Judaism that is egalitarian and inclusive; that promotes justice and cares about the world, and that educates and convinces rather than compels.”
But this year we can do more.
This year we all have the opportunity to vote for reform judaism in the World Zionist Congress Election.
This week’s parsha is Ki Tisa – when you take a census.
It is time right now, not merely to take a census but to stand up to be counted.
It is time not only to enjoy our worship here, within our beautiful reform shul, but also to help legitimize and strengthen reform worship and institutions in Israel.
It is time to vote, and the time is now.
Dvar Torah given by Monica Jacobson on 3/4/15