AND ALL THE PEOPLE TOOK

OFF THE GOLD RINGS THAT WERE IN THEIR EARS AND BROUGHT THEM TO AARON. THIS HE

TOOK FROM THEM AND CAST IN A MOLD AND MADE IT INTO A MOLTEN CALF. AND THEY

EXCLAIMED, "THIS IS YOUR GOD, O ISRAEL, WHO BROUGHT YOU OUT OF THE LAND OF

EGYPT."

(Shemot 32:3-4)

This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out – Were they

fools not to know that that the calf which had been made that same day did not

take them out of Egypt? Rather, all idolaters realize that our God in heaven

created the world. However, they were mistaken to believe that fetishes contain

the spirit of impurity in the manner that prophets possess the holy spirit. They believed that the calf could give voice to

the spirit of impurity as if speaking when inspired with the holy

spirit from above. That is why they said, This is your god, O Israel,

who brought you out – as

if to say that it possessed the holy spirit, making it as if the holy spirit

passed before them and in order to test Israel it endowed it with the spirit of

impurity of witches, and a ghost and familiar spirit endowed it with the

ability to spurn the celestial retinue and foretell the future, in order to see

if they would be wholeheartedly loyal to the Lord their God, that there be no

soothsayer, diviner or sorcerer amongst them, nor one who believes in the signs

and wonders of the prophets of the spirit of impurity, as is written, for

God… (Devarim

13:4).

 (RaShBaM on Shemot 32:4)

This is your god, O Israel – There is no fool in the world

who could think that the gold which hung from their ears until that day and

which was formed into a calf, had taken them out from Egypt. However, they did believe that the power of that form and the spirit residing

within it had brought them up from there.

(R. Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio, ad loc)

And you

shall walk in His ways: Just as He is compassionate, you too should be

compassionate

Yohanan and Tzvi Flusser

The

Holy One blessed be He reveals Himself in our parasha and discloses His attributes. The text invites two

central questions:

The

first is: Who is it who discloses God's attributes? Was Moses the one who cried

out God's attributes, begging for God's mercy? Or did God Himself reveal His

attributes? When we pray, we entreat God, "Lord, Lord, merciful and

compassionate God, long-suffering God." The reader of our parasha might similarly assume that Moses addressed God with

those words. Should we understand the text in this manner?

The

second question is: Why are God's attributes revealed? Is there a message here

for us as human beings?

When

my son and I wrote his bar mitzvah derasha (for Shabbat

Hol Ha-Moed of Sukkot) we typed Lord, Lord… merciful and

compassionate… the computer automatically marked the first two words with

a red underline, indicating that an error had been made: the words Lord,

Lord should not be repeated. The verse Lord, Lord, merciful and

compassionate God raises substantial questions. The late Prof. David Flusser, my father and my son's grandfather, once made a

seemingly peripheral comment which we have only lately investigated. Even after

checking it, we were left with questions and wonderment. As has been said in

various connections, "The matter requires further study."

The

verse Lord, Lord… merciful and compassionate in our parasha appears with slight variations in the book of Bamidbar (14:18) as

well. In Bamidbar Moses quotes God as revealing

Himself as He did in Shemot. However, there is an

important difference between Shemot and Bamidbar:

In

our parasha, Moses descends with the Tablets, sees

Israel sinning, and in response breaks the Tablets of the Covenant. God

commands him to make two stone tablets like the first ones. In an

exceptionally dramatic event, God descends in a cloud. Moses ascends towards

Him, while God descends towards Moses. God stands together with Moses in one

place – there is reciprocity in the relationship between them. Next is written,

and called in God's name. The Lord passed before him and

called out. Who called out Lord, Lord, merciful and compassionate God

longsuffering and abounding in kindness and faithfulness? The plain meaning

of the text, as attested to by the division of the passage into verses and by

the assignment of cantillation marks, may be

interpreted as being that Moses cried out to the Lord, Lord, Lord, merciful

and compassionate God!

The

book of Bamidbar saves us from this error. It works

like a camera, documenting the great event from an historical perspective. Today

it would be called a "close-up replay" which, luckily, was filmed

from a different angle. Moses himself serves as our correspondent on the scene,

allowing us to hear a description from the "original source," from

someone who was actually present. Moses' account has survived, and by reviewing

it we can clarify all of our difficulties:

Bamidbar (14:17)

presents Moses' plea to God: Now make great Your

forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, yet He does no remit all punishment.

Scripture emphasizes: as You spoke, saying:

You, God, spoke thus saying. You spoke! And according to this passage, what did

God say? The Lord is longsuffering and abounding in kindness, etc. This

is proof that the division of verses in our parasha

is not precise – in effect, the ambiguities I brought up earlier have been

resolved. There is no doubt that God was the speaker. That is how Moses himself

describes the event in the course of his retelling of the Israelites difficult

times in the wilderness, a kind of reconstruction of the history laid out in Shemot. It is interesting that the commentaries remain

indifferent to the possibility of using the passage in Bamidbar

to understand Shemot. Taking the verses in Bamidbar at face value, we are confronted by a new

question: Is there not something amiss in the way we read the verse Lord,

Lord, merciful and compassionate God in our daily prayers and in the High

Holy Days' liturgy? According to Bamidbar, the

correct and fitting thing to say is, Lord, merciful and compassionate God.

previous verse, serving as the subject of the ambiguous clause and called

out, making it the Lord called out.] The precise division of the

words into verses should be:

The

Lord passed before him and the Lord called out,

Lord,

merciful and compassionate God longsuffering, and abounding in kindness and

faithfulness extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving

iniquity, transgression, and sin…

It

is God's Self-description. If we have tended to misinterpret this passage, it

is due to the way the verses are divided.

All

through the year and on the High Holy days, we are accustomed to read the verse

Lord, Lord, merciful and compassionate God as a single unit. However, at

the climax of the holiest day, in the Ne'ilah

prayer we read:

Remember

to us this day your covenant of the thirteen [attributes], as You made it know to the humble one [Moses] long ago, as it

is written, The Lord passed before him and the Lord called out: Lord,

merciful and compassionate God

In

effect, if we believe the words of God and of His servant Moses as they appear

in Bamidbar, in every prayer and holiday, we would

recite the verse thusly: Lord, merciful and compassionate God… , and not Lord,

Lord merciful and compassionate God…

To

sum up: Even if we pay attention to the cantillation

marks of our parasha, it seems that they lead both

one who reads the Torah and one who listens to the reading to the conclusion

that the passage should be read: And called out: Lord, Lord, etc. However,

we have seen that the verses from Bamidbar make it

clear to us that the words Lord, merciful and compassionate God were

spoken by God when He described His own attributes. The idea that these words

constitute God's own self-description makes them all the more powerful, and

makes it all the more important for us to ask the second question: Why did God reveal

His attributes? Does this revelation also impose duties upon us as human

beings, who were created in the image of God?

Rabbi

Yehudah Amital writes: "The

only explanation for the astounding form of this revelation is that God wanted

to teach us how to behave." God informed Moses of His attributes and "dressed-up"

as a God-fearing human (as the Sages put it, "He wrapped Himself up in a tallit as if leading a congregation in prayer")

in order to teach us the attributes which we ourselves must adopt. The

significance of the thirteen attributes goes beyond a mere statement of fact – it

requires us to imitate God's

attributes. God revealed the attribute of mercifulness to Moses so that we

might acquire those same attributes, including the attribute of mercifulness. Humanity's

mission is to become like its Creator, for it was created in His image, and to

make the attribute of mercifulness an integral part of itself. If only we would

all take upon ourselves the commandment and walk in His ways as a duty,

and we could al be granted to become merciful and compassionate longsuffering,

and abounding in kindness and faithfulness towards all humans who were

created in God's image!

Yohanan Flusser works in special education, he and his son Tzvi wrote this article together in honor of Tzvi's bar-mitzvah, which he celebrated in Sukkot of this year.

Readers reply: On the respect due to teachers and parents

In her enlightening

analysis of the concept of the honor of parents and teachers, which appeared in

the Mishpatim edition of Shabbat Shalom, Devorah Greineman relates to the

four types of honor which I defined and presented in my book, A Matter of

Honor: Israeliness and Human Dignity. As she

describes it, hadrat kavod

– "honor" – is a form of hierarchical and positional respect which

grants its bearers status and social superiority relative to those around them.

Hilat kavod is

the honor of the Creator, a bit of which exists in each of us, as beings

created in the divine image, who reflect Him and His honor. Kevod

seguli – dignity – is the essence of one's humanity;

it is the source of the basic human rights which are owed to every human being qua

human being. Kevod hamehayeh

is the respect owed to every human as an individual and/or as a member of a

group. Greineman seeks in these four categories a

basis for understanding the honor of parents and teachers, but reaches the

conclusion that it cannot be found. I would like to suggest that the honor of

teachers, like that of parents, is first and foremost a matter of hadrat kavod.

Class-honor, which is

determined by one's position in the social system, is not a liberal, enlightened,

or progressive notion (unlike kevod seguli, for instance). However, despite its long

history in traditional societies, I believe that even today it remains

important and even crucial in certain social situations. An army cannot

function unless commanders are honored by those under them, and a school cannot

function unless students honor their teachers. Hadrat

kavod can appear in various forms. There are

times and places where it is gained through aggressive behavior, and even

through harm and humiliation. However, that is not always necessary: There are

societies and contexts in which honor is not connected with machoistic

militancy, but rather with restraint, self-control, and modesty. And there are

contexts in which it simply reflects the acceptance of a hierarchical system,

which can only function upon the acceptance of the societal burden. Not,

God-forbid, a submissive, blind, or total acceptance, but a dignified

acceptance.

Israeli society is, in

many ways, an "honor" society. This is not necessarily a completely

negative thing. The problem is that many Israelis hold traditional hierarchical

systems in profound contempt (e.g., the educational system), and refuse to

accept the rules of honor required by them. The anti-galut

tzabar (native-born Israeli) rejects

authority by rebelling against such rules. Instead, many Israelis adopt a much

more aggressive and belligerent notion of honor, which rewards offensive,

boastful, demanding, and unbending behavior with hadrat

kavod. Lack of respect for teachers is only part

of a much deeper phenomenon, which can be defined by the kind of "honor"

which Israeli society has chosen for itself.

In addition to hadrat kavod,

respect for teachers also involves kavod mehayeh, but that matter requires a detailed treatment

that would go beyond the limits of a rejoinder, and I will seek an opportunity

to deal with it.

Dr. Orit Kamir

Devorah Greinman replies:

I am honored that Orit Kamir saw fit to comment on

my article, and it is pleasant to think that these pages find their way to

people from beyond the expected readership of Shabbat Shalom, stimulating

dialogue.

In my opinion, one of

the elements of religion that people find attractive – and that even draws them

into Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox circles (not only in Judaism) – is the longing

for lost honor, which has a spiritual foundation and which constitutes a

central social and religious foundation in all aspects of life. This longing is

so powerful that people (especially women) are willing to accept an inferior

status, just so long as they can be integrated into the hierarchy of honor. In

the religious world, honor is an independent value, and not just a means for

achieving other ends (such as meaning) – and therefore it is easier to demand

it. This value possesses several very dangerous facets, but it seems to be

vital to the spiritual life and self-respect of many people in society. That is

why I saw fit to emphasize – precisely in the context of Shabbat Shalom's liberal-religious readership – the need to strike

a balance between the kinds of "egalitarian" honor described by Kamir – kavod seguli and kavod mehayeh – and the value of honoring parents and

teachers. This is a balance which is not easy to achieve, as Kamir hints at in her own statement. It is a point of

disagreement between religion and secularity, making the dialogue that has

evolved here especially interesting.

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