{"id":7860,"date":"2018-03-02T12:41:03","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T17:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.torontoheschel.org\/?p=7860"},"modified":"2018-03-02T12:41:03","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T17:41:03","slug":"message-moreh-greg-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.torontoheschel.org\/news-views\/blog\/message-moreh-greg-19","title":{"rendered":"Message from Moreh Greg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This week&#8217;s parshah, Parshat Ki Tisa contains the famous narrative of the Golden Calf.\u00a0\u00a0While Moshe is at the top of Mount Sinai learning from God, the people become anxious at the absence of their leader.\u00a0\u00a0Their anxiety causes them to fall back on the forms of idol worship with which they had become familiar as slaves in Egypt.\u00a0\u00a0They call on Aharon to help them build a golden calf to worship.\u00a0\u00a0Seeing this lapse into idolatry, God suggests destroying the wayward people, and providing Moshe with a new people.\u00a0\u00a0This suggestion arouses in Moshe compassion for the people, and Moshe reminds God of the covenant and asks God not to destroy the people.\u00a0\u00a0When Moshe descends the mountain and sees the people praying to the calf, his own anger is aroused and he smashes the tablets of law which he received from God.\u00a0\u00a0Unlike God, who was able to restrain anger, Moshe cannot.\u00a0\u00a0Thus, when God offers to provide a second set of tablets, and Moshe prepares to receive them, he recognizes God as: &#8220;compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and full of kindness and truth.&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0This verse is repeated often in Jewish liturgy, particularly between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.\u00a0\u00a0In Hebrew, the verse is more evocative.\u00a0\u00a0The word translated as &#8220;compassion&#8221; &#8211;\u00a0<em>rachum<\/em>, has the same Hebrew roots as the word &#8220;womb&#8221;<em>\u00a0rechem<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0And the words translated as &#8220;slow to anger&#8221; &#8211;\u00a0<em>erech apayyim<\/em>\u00a0&#8212;\u00a0\u00a0literally mean &#8220;long (or deep) nostrils.&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0Translated more poetically, the verse suggests that God is &#8220;womb-full&#8221; and &#8220;takes deep breaths.&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When we teach this verse to our students, we don&#8217;t shy away from these evocative readings.\u00a0\u00a0For while we know that God has no body parts, we might better understand God as role model for how we are to behave by translating the words as metaphors rather than concepts. From this week&#8217;s parshah, we learn the feeling of &#8220;womb-fullness&#8221;, the feeling of deep care that a parent has for her or his child.\u00a0The 19th century Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen wrote that God&#8217;s love for human beings is a &#8220;womb-love.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This week&#8217;s middah is &#8220;Be compassionate and slow to anger.&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We can understand it to mean &#8220;Be womb-full and take deep breaths.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This Shabbat, may we all aspire to be womb-full and take deep breaths.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shabbat Shalom,<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Moreh Greg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s parshah, Parshat Ki Tisa contains the famous narrative of the Golden Calf.\u00a0\u00a0While Moshe is at the top of Mount Sinai learning from God, the people become anxious at &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.9 - 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