Torah Portion

Ki Tisa

כי תשא

Exodus 30:11-34:35
First Kings 18:1-39

After the Golden Calf, Is the Covenant Renewed with a Ritual Decalogue?

After the Golden Calf, Is the Covenant Renewed with a Ritual Decalogue?

YHWH instructs Moses to carve a second set of tablets and come up the mountain (Exodus 34). YHWH then presents a set of laws, including: Don’t intermarry with the Canaanites; don’t make idols; and do observe Matzot, Shabbat, Shavuot, Ingathering, and Passover. What is the nature of this collection of laws?

Dr.
Tina M. Sherman
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Sinai, Tabernacle, Golden Calf, and More Tabernacle: Compiling Exodus

Sinai, Tabernacle, Golden Calf, and More Tabernacle: Compiling Exodus

Was the Tabernacle constructed only in response to the golden calf? Rashi and Nachmanides’s disagreement on this fundamental question highlights the structural problem in the second half of the book of Exodus, created when the compiler of the Torah interwove the E and P sources.

Rabbi
Daniel Kirzane
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The Decalogue’s Opening Laws, Written in Response to the Golden Calf

The Decalogue’s Opening Laws, Written in Response to the Golden Calf

Originally, the golden calf story was just one among many incidents in which the Israelites sin and antagonize YHWH in the wilderness. Later scribes expanded the story as a critique of northern worship sites and also added the Decalogue, with the first few laws being composed as a point-by-point response to Israel’s sin.

Dr.
Gili Kugler
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The Golden Calf: Bull-El Worship

The Golden Calf: Bull-El Worship

Northern Israel worshipped El/YHWH in the form of a golden bull. The Bible mocks this graven representation of the divinity by describing it as a calf.

Prof.
Rami Arav
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Do Not Cook a Kid Still Suckling Its Mother’s Milk

Do Not Cook a Kid Still Suckling Its Mother’s Milk

The original biblical prohibition before it was interpreted to forbid cooking or consuming meat and milk together.

Prof.
Stefan Schorch
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The Non-Priestly Ohel Moed

The Non-Priestly Ohel Moed

Post-exilic scribes challenged priestly authority by supplementing the Tabernacle texts with a second Ohel Moed, Tent of Meeting, where Moses appoints the 70 elders. In contrast to the Priestly Tabernacle, any Israelite can go to this Tent of Meeting to speak with God. 

Dr.
Jaeyoung Jeon
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Moses’ Shining or Horned Face?

Moses’ Shining or Horned Face?

What happens to Moses’ face after his encounter with God on the mountain: Does he radiate light or grow horns? Ancient Near Eastern iconography can help us understand what Exodus 34:29–35 is trying to communicate.

Prof.
Brent A. Strawn
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The Golden Calf: A Post-Exilic Message of Forgiveness

The Golden Calf: A Post-Exilic Message of Forgiveness

Jeroboam makes two golden calves, and sets them up at Dan and Bethel. Post-exilic biblical scribes revised this archetypal act of apostasy by introducing a new version of the same sin set in a more ancient period: Aaron's Golden Calf at the foot of Mount Sinai.

Prof.
Nathan MacDonald
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Was Elijah Permitted to Make an Offering on Mount Carmel?

Was Elijah Permitted to Make an Offering on Mount Carmel?

In a contest with the prophets of Baal, Elijah rebuilds an altar to YHWH that was on Mount Carmel and makes an offering. Later, he bemoans the destruction of other YHWH altars (1 Kgs 18–19). But doesn’t the Book of Kings clearly state that only the altar in Jerusalem was legitimate once Solomon built the Temple?

Dr.
David Glatt-Gilad
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Atoning for the Golden Calf with the Kapporet

Atoning for the Golden Calf with the Kapporet

Atop the kappōret, the ark’s cover, sat the golden cherubim, which framed the empty space (tokh) where God would speak with Moses. Drawing on the connection between the word kappōret and the root כ.פ.ר (“atone”), and noting how the golden calf episode interrupts the Tabernacle account, the rabbis suggest that the ark cover served as a means of atoning for the Israelites’ collective sin.

Prof. Rabbi
Rachel Adelman
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What Was the Sin of the Golden Calf?

What Was the Sin of the Golden Calf?

Many scholars, traditional and academic, believe it was worship of another god, the first commandment in the Decalogue, but what Aaron actually claims about the calf points to a different collection of laws.

Prof.
Joel Baden
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Reading the Golden Calves of Sinai and Northern Israel in Context

Reading the Golden Calves of Sinai and Northern Israel in Context

The story of the Golden Calf overtly describes a religious sin in the wilderness generation, but aspects of the story also evoke the (later) behavior of King Jeroboam I of Israel. Ancient readers would have understood these resonances as having political ramifications.

Prof.
Frederick E. Greenspahn
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Punishing Children for the Sins of their Parents

Punishing Children for the Sins of their Parents

Ezekiel challenges the divine (in)justice of intergenerational punishment, even though it appears in the Decalogue.

Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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Does YHWH Remit Punishment?

Does YHWH Remit Punishment?

As part of the selichot prayer service, the rabbis cut the biblical phrase וְנַקֵּה לֹא יְנַקֶּה “[YHWH] does not remit punishment” to read only וְנַקֵּה, which yields the opposite meaning, “[YHWH] remits punishment.” Although this edit is surprising, the rabbis are responding to a serious tension in the biblical text: Is YHWH a merciful God who pardons, or a vengeful God who will never remit punishment?

Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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Moses Shatters the Tablets – in Anger

Moses Shatters the Tablets – in Anger

The Talmud has God congratulating Moses for shattering the Tablets, however, a midrash criticizes him for venting his angerquoting the verse, “Anger resides in the bosom of fools” (Ecclesiastes 7:9). Was his act commendable or lamentable? 

Rabbi
Uzi Weingarten
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Who Were the Levites?

Who Were the Levites?

The Torah describes the Levites as a landless Israelite tribe who inherited their position by responding to Moses’ call to take vengeance against sinning Israelites. This account masks a more complicated historical process.

Prof.
Mark Leuchter
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Yelamdeinu Rabbeinu: The Exclusivity of the Oral Law

Yelamdeinu Rabbeinu: The Exclusivity of the Oral Law

An ancient Yelamdeinu Rabbeinu homily connects the covenantal nature of the prohibition to write down the Oral Law, and recite the Written Torah orally, to a novel reading of Gen 18:17-19: God’s choice of Abraham and his descendants to be exclusive participants in God’s own mystery cult.

Dr.
Shayna Sheinfeld
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A Census Causes a Plague?

A Census Causes a Plague?

King David conducts a census, which brings about a divine plague killing 70,000 people. During the first wilderness census, Exodus requires the Israelites to pay a half shekel to avoid a plague. What’s so dangerous about a census?

Dr.
Shira Golani
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Prohibition of Meat and Milk: Its Origins in the Text

Prohibition of Meat and Milk: Its Origins in the Text

The Torah states “do not cook a kid in its mother's milk.” What does this phrase mean, and how did it develop into the prohibition of mixing meat and milk?

Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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The Other Ohel Moed

The Other Ohel Moed

Traditional and critical scholars agree that the Ohel Moed “Tent of Meeting” Moses erects in Exodus 33 is not the same as the Ohel Moed Tabernacle referenced in other biblical texts. But what is it?

Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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Ki Tisa

כי תשא

Exodus 30:11-34:35

...וַיִּקָּהֵל הָעָם עַל־אַהֲרֹן וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֵלָיו קוּם עֲשֵׂה־לָנוּ אֱלֹהִים אֲשֶׁר יֵלְכוּ לְפָנֵינוּ...

שמות לב:א

...the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us...”

Exod 32:1

Exodus

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