Ki Tissa
What is God’s true nature? Loving? Just? Jealous? Punitive? Forgiving? There is contradictory evidence in our lives and experiences. Moses experiences the extremes of unparalleled closeness to God out of common concern and communication to Israel. Then he walks on the knife’s edge of divine anger threatening to wipe out Israel for betraying the covenant by worshipping a Golden Calf. This drives Moses to ask God directly “...show me Your way that I may know You…” (Exodus 33:13). Moses wants to understand what God’s nature is really like. The initial divine response is that humans can not grasp a true picture of God but only a partial, as it were, side view.1 But then God offers a self-definition. This became the most influential guideline in the tradition to the true nature of the Divine.
Exodus 34:6-7
[The] Loving God [YHVH—the Divine name expressing God’s close involvement with humans, including the covenant].
Loving God [YHVH—remains that way even after humans sin or betray the covenant].2
Mighty One [who is] Merciful and Gracious (gives goodness one sidedly without quid pro quo).
Slow to anger/long suffering and overflowing with love and commitment.3
Guards covenantal love for thousands of generations.
Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
but does not wipe out guilt.
Punishes the iniquity of the fathers up to the children, children’s children
and to the third and fourth generation.
Two observations leap out in reading this definition. One is that this is overwhelmingly a portrait of a loving, caring, giving, forgiving Deity. (So much for the stereotype that the God of Hebrew Scriptures is a God of Wrath). The second is that the last phrase [nevertheless does not wipe out guilt] is in contradiction—or at least, is in tension—with the main description. How can these two qualities be reconciled?
Implicit in this clash is a deeper message that there is no static, once-and-for-all definition of God. The divine-human relationship is dynamic and interactive. Furthermore, the act of entering into covenant, which turns love into commitment, has an effect both immediately and as the covenant continues. The clash of forgiving and of not wiping out is an invitation to the human partner to resolve the conflict. Indeed in Deuteronomy, Moses rules that “fathers shall not be put to death (punished) for children(‘s sins) and children shall not be put to death (punished) for father(‘s sins), every man shall be put to death (punished) for his own sins” (Deuteronomy 24:16). To which a midrash responds that Moses made this new ruling and God consented to his judgement (Bemidbar Rabbah 19).4
Since this was God speaking of God, later generations privileged this text as a kind of meta-theological, meta-halakhic, authoritative statement by which to write and rewrite what God was instructing for their time. They directly quoted—or intertextually referenced these verses—to understand God’s nature.
This begins even elsewhere in the Bible. When God wants to wipe out the people of Israel for accepting the spies’ negative report about the land of Canaan, Moses quotes these words back to God directly as a counter-argument (Numbers 14:18). In the prophetic period, Joel calls uses these words to encourage the Jews to repent before a combined famine and military invasion wipes out the land and its people. Since God is merciful and forgiving, he argues, repentance can reverse the decree of destruction (Joel 2:13-14). As a final example, the prophet Jonah explains that he fled from God’s call in order to avoid being the messenger to Nineveh. He explains that he knew that God, being merciful and forgiving, would let Nineveh off the hook, annul their punishment, and thus leave Jonah looking like a false prophet (Jonah 4:2).
The Rabbis continued the focus on the verses in Ki Tissa as the ultimate definition of God, so authoritative that one can depend on it in charting our religious behaviors. Calling the definition “The Thirteen Middot” (“Character Traits,” that are primary aspects of the Divine in encounter with humans), they placed them at the center of the Yom Kippur liturgy of repentance as well as in all Selihot (penitential prayers) services during Elul (in the run up to the High Holy Days) and throughout the year.
The Rabbis also continued the process of interpretation and reshaping of the divine words in a remarkable fashion. Despite their general rule in the liturgy to use verses from the Torah only in their exact primary textual form, they cut out the last part of the last verse which declares that God will not forgive but will punish in the following generations. Even more dramatically they cut it in the middle of the phrase, ve-nakeh lo yenakeh [literally; forgiving? No, not forgiving]. The Divine self-definition now read: ve-nakeh, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. By authority of these covenantal partnership actions, the Divine self-definition became that God is totally forgiving.5
This is not some arbitrary Rabbinic change. The dynamic of living in covenant with God for more than a millennium taught the Rabbis that God, in essence, was a forgiving, not a punishing, Deity.
One can argue that the dynamic of interaction in the covenant affected God—not just our understanding of God’s nature. After all, the Sinai covenant establishment could be interpreted as a conditional election of Israel: “If you listen to My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be my treasure among the nations…” (Exodus 19:5). This suggests that if Israel fails to obey God’s voice and betrays the covenant, then it could well forfeit its chosenness. This understanding is supported by God’s initial response to Israel’s betrayal of the covenant by building a Golden Calf. God proposed to wipe out the people, Israel, and replace it with Moses’ descendants and those who remained faithful (Exodus 32:9-10).
Moses insisted that whatever the fate of the Jewish people, it must be his fate. He persuaded the Lord instead to forgive the whole people. There is a replay of this scenario after the fiasco of the spies’ negative report. One might say that in these two incidents God learns that the attachment to Israel has grown so much that the Lord is not ready to kick Israel out of the covenant for failure to live up to its terms. The divine love has grown into unconditional commitment.
This understanding was the message of the great prophets of Israel when the First Temple was destroyed. Many Israelites were concerned that if God allowed the Temple’s destruction and the Jewish people to be exiled from Israel, it could only mean that the Lord had rejected Israel because of its repeated gross violations of the covenant—both in worshipping idolatrous cults and in stealing and abusing from fellow human beings. The prophets responded that God punished Israel only for the moment and for their own good. They assured the people that God’s love had grown in the course of living the covenant over the centuries. The covenantal dynamic showed that God had become all forgiving. Even better, the divine attachment to Israel and the covenant had become unbreakable. In the words of Isaiah “...I hid My face from you for a moment—but with everlasting covenantal love I will gather you to me in mercy… The mountains will dissolve and the hills crumble but my committed love shall not depart from you and my covenant of peace [with you] shall never be removed” (Isaiah 54:9-10).
Reading the Megillah
Reading the Megillah
The Scroll of Esther, which tells the Purim story, is chanted in synagogue twice on Purim.
The Scroll of Esther, known as the Megillah, is chanted in the synagogue on the eve of Purim and again the next morning. It is the last of the five scrolls that form part of the third division of the Bible, known as the Ketuvim, or Writings.
Megillat Esther tells the story of the salvation of the Jews of the Persian Empire. The Scroll of Esther is universally known as the Megillah, not because it is the most important of the five scrolls, but due to its immense popularity, the prominence that is given to its public reading, and the fact that it is the only one that is still generally read from a parchment scroll. At one time, it was normative for every Jewish household to possess a Megillah, and much time and skill were devoted to the production of beautifully illuminated texts and elaborate wooden and silver cases that would house the scroll.
The primary synagogue observance connected with Purim is the reading of the Book of Esther, called the Megillah (“scroll”). It is traditionally read twice: in the evening, after the Amidah prayer of the Maariv service and before the Aleinu, and in the morning after the Torah reading.
The Megillah is read from a parchment scroll that is written the same way a Torah is written — by hand, with a goose quill. If there is no such scroll available, the congregation may read the Book of Esther from a printed text, without the accompanying benedictions.
The Book of Esther is chanted according to a special cantillation used only in the reading of the Book of Esther. [This cantillation parodies the tropes used for reading at other times of the year.] If no one is present who knows this cantillation, it may be read without the cantillation, as long as it is read correctly. According to the Code of Jewish Law (Orach Chayim 690:9), it may be read in the language of the land. In practice, however, the usual custom is to chant the Megillah from the scroll in its original Hebrew.
Before the reading, the custom is to unroll the scroll and fold it so that it looks like a letter of dispatch, thus further recalling the story of the great deliverance.
The Megillah must be read standing and from the scroll, not by heart. During the reading, there are four special verses, called “verses of redemption” (pesukei ge’ulah) that are [traditionally] said aloud by the congregation and then repeated by the reader. [Esther 2:5, 8:15-16, 10:3]
At certain key points in the Book of Esther, it is a custom for the reader to raise his or her voice, adding drama to the story. [Esther 1:22, 2:4, 2:17, 4:14, 5:4, 6:1. In this last verse the king cannot sleep and commands that the book of records of chronicles be read to him. This is considered to be the turning point in the Esther story.]
Another interesting part of the chanting of the Book of Esther is the four verses (Esther 9: 7-10) enumerating the 10 sons of Haman. The custom, already mentioned in the Talmud (Megillah 16b), is for the reader to chant the names of Haman’s sons in one single breath, in order to signify that they died together. Another reasons for this custom is the fact that we should avoid the appearance of gloating over their fate, even though it was deserved.
Congregational Participation
It is a widespread custom for the listeners at the Megillah reading to make noise, usually with special noisemakers called graggers, or in Hebrew ra’ashanim, whenever Haman’s name is mentioned. Some congregations also encourage the use of wind and percussion instruments as noisemakers.
The custom of blotting out the name of Haman appears to be the outgrowth of a custom once prevalent in France and Provence, where the children wrote the name of Haman on smooth stones, then struck them together whenever Haman was mentioned in the reading so as to rub it off, as suggested by the verse “the name of the wicked shall rot” (Proverbs 10:7).
Many modern-day congregations today are known to hold concurrent readings of the Megillah, each reading specially tailored to a particular age group or level of understanding. The singing of Purim songs during the reading of the Megillah, dressing up in costume, and other acts of frivolity are also part of today’s modern Megillah-reading festivities.
Rabbi R. Isaac’s
The Greater One
You don’t have to HUNT for it, if you have HIM
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Mt. 6:33
You don’t have to SEEK greater when you POSSESS the greater ONE!