Download KI TISSA 5764

KI TISSA 5764
The recently passed-away historian and former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin was known for his
broad range of interests, and his ability to make historical narratives relevant to modern lives. His 1961
book The Image was a commentary on the advent of the political use of television in the 1960 presidential
election. It was also a prophecy of things to come: a culture built around celebrity and “pseudo-events,” in
which the line is blurred between substantive, genuine activities and empty, staged happenings.
In another of his books, The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know the World and Himself,
Boorstin makes an interesting observation about the study of botany in medieval Europe: “[The] sources of
medieval botany, the herbals, were the legacy of Dioscorides, the ancient Greek surgeon who had traveled
about the Mediterranean with the armies of the emperor Nero.” Dioscorides, Boorstin explains, had
engaged the substance of nature, writing his observations of plants he found around the Mediterranean. But
after him, the acquisition of knowledge about botany slowed to a halt for 1500 years. Why? “Dioscorides
had studied Nature, but Dioscorides’ disciples studied Dioscorides… Like other classic authors, he
produced few disciples and many exegetes. These treasured his words but forgot his example. He ceased to
be a teacher as he became a text.”
These insightful last words lead us into Parshat Ki Tissa. The parasha comes at the high point of the second
half of the book of Exodus, which is about translating the power of the experience of God’s revelation, both
in the liberation from Egypt and the event at Sinai (i.e. the first half of Exodus) into a sustainable
institutional framework. This tension is inherent in the building of any institution, from a corporation to a
political party to a marriage: the early energy and attraction that defines courtship and that brings a group
together gives way to a sustained, day-in day-out commitment. Without the institution, the energy of the
individuals remains unchanneled and ineffective; but without the spontaneity of the early relationship, the
life of the institution can turn into stifling drudgery. Just as corporations or political parties must keep
themselves fresh to avoid going stale, married couples must find ways of renewing and deepening the love
that brought them together.
The marriage metaphor is used by the prophetic and midrashic tradition in relation to God and Israel: their
courtship occurs when God rescues Israel from Egypt; their wedding is at Mount Sinai; their marriage is
tested after Israel commits adultery with the Golden Calf; and it is ultimately confirmed when God forgives
the people’s sin and renews the covenant.
But of course the relationship does not end there, it only begins. The marriage of God and Israel is tested
over and over throughout Jewish history. According to the Rabbis (Shabbat 88b), it is renewed by
Mordechai and Esther with their “affirmation of acceptance,” the words “kimu v’kiblu” in the Megillah.
And after the destruction of the Second Temple, the marriage is renewed by the transformation of Judaism
from a location-based to a text-based religion. The forum for encountering God ceases to be the Temple,
and instead becomes the Torah. While the Temple certainly provided the benefits of institutional stability, it
also ran the risk of becoming an empty shell—all religion, no religious experience. In essence, it ran the
risk of becoming a form of idolatry, and the critiques against the Sadducees who ran the Temple included
such accusations.
With the shift to text, Judaism renewed itself and released a tremendous amount of creative religious
energy. The efforts of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael and the generations that followed them, to unpack
the meaning of words, letters, and even the absence of letters in the Torah, provided the basis for all of
Rabbinic Judaism. And yet, even here, the risk of idolatry rears its head. As Rabbi Yehudah bar Nachmani
learns from Ex. 34:27 in our parasha: “It says, ‘Write down all these words,’ and it also says, ‘For by the
mouth (al-pi) of these words…’ Which is it: should the Torah be written or oral? The answer is: that which
is written, you may not say orally; and that which is orally transmitted, you may not write it down.” Rabbi
Yehudah makes one of the most important statements in the Talmud: the tension of institutional life must
be navigated through a balance between the written and the oral, the permanent and the developing.
A traditional understanding of the difference between the first and second tablets has it that, since the
second tablets were made by Moses and inscribed by God while the first were made completely by God, we
© 2004 Joshua M. Feigelson
learn that the giving of the second tablets included instruction in the Oral Law, which had been lacking in
the giving of the first tablets. According to this understanding, it was not that Moses destroyed the first
tablets in his anger at the people over the Golden Calf, but rather that since they were entirely made by
God, they could not survive in this world. The first tablets, the Written Law without the Oral, could not
survive, just as the Talmud tells us angels told God as He was creating the world: a world of only justice,
without mercy, could not sustain itself. The solidity and permanence of the written word is necessary; but it
is only sufficient when accompanied by an ability to be interpreted and reinterpreted anew.
Which brings us back to Boorstin’s botanist, Dioscorides, and further, to the title of his first major work,
The Image. When we think of images in religious terms, we think of idols. But texts are images too. The
difference is that texts can come alive through our reading and interpretation. This requires effort.
Disocorides’s students treated his works as idols rather than living words of a teacher. Likewise a couple
may be married on paper, but not engage one another in life. And Torah may be written down and not be
truly “read”—engaged with and encountered as a manifestation of the voice of God. Our task, as students
of the Rabbis and creations of the Teacher of teachers, is to give our texts and our relationships the time
and energy they need to live.
Shabbat shalom.
© 2004 Joshua M. Feigelson