Bulletin Hol Hamoed Pesach

SHABBAT CHOL HAMOED - PESACH
19 Nissan 5784 • April 27, 2024
Shabbat Shalom • ouka ,ca
Yahrtzeiten
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Apr. 27 • Nissan 19 Sara Jacobs Mother of Howard Jacobs
Sophia Rosenblatt Grandmother of Susan Schehr
Apr. 29 • Nissan 21 Evelyn Moss Mother of Neil Moss
Apr. 30 • Nissan 22 Leon Aronson Brother of Rosalee Bogo
Netti Shapiro Mother of Linda Wertheim
May 1 • Nissan 23 Ronald Goldsmith Husband of Susie Goldsmith
J. Allan Friedman Father of Melvin Friedman
May 2 • Nissan 24 Ronald Rothstein Brother-in-law of Stephen Iser
May 3 • Nissan 25 Fanny Freund Mother of Sidney Freund
William Feldstein Father of Gail Sherer
Birthdays
Apr. 27
May 3
May 4
Sidney Freund
Franklin Baum
Steven Schachtman
Yom Tov Service
YIZKOR
Anniversaries
Aug. 10
Angela & Harvey Jacobson
Monday April 29
9:00 a.m.

Torah & Haftarah Readings:
Shmot: Exodus 33:12-34:26 (Etz Hayim p. 528)
1. 33:12-16 2. 33:17-19 3. 33:20-23 4. 34:1-3
5. 34:4-10 6. 34:11-17 7. 34:18-26 M. Numb. 28:19-25 ( p. 1308)
Haftarah: Ezekiel 37:1-14 (Etz Hayim p. 1000)
Torah Commentary
Points of No Return Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Sometimes, we mess up so badly that we don’t feel we
deserve a second chance. There are moments when it seems
that we are, as God says after the flood, evil from our youth.
We do something so egregious and recognize it as such, that
we can only conclude that there is no hope that we might
ever do good or count ourselves as decent people again.
It’s hard when this happens on a personal level. It’s harder
yet when it happens on a peoplehood level. The idea of
responsibility is complicated when thinking about our
nation. The idea of recovering from wrongdoing as a nation
is even more so.
We’ve recovered from horrific wrongdoing before. In
this week’s parashah, while God speaks to Moses, we ask
Aaron to make us gods to go before us. Aaron, our leader,
acquiesces in that he takes our gold and makes us a molten
calf. We see it and declare that it is our gods. Aaron does not
stop us then, but rather, builds an altar, declaring tomorrow
as a festival for HaShem, and not for these gods we had been
referencing. The next day, we offer sacrifices on the altar,
we eat, we drink, and we tzahek, we play, or act sexually,
or make a mockery. God will want to wipe us out, Moses
prevents God from doing so, and then Moses rallies the
Levites to slaughter 3000 of us. Moses then bargains with
God to forgive us and God concludes that only those of us
who sinned will be held accountable.
We act wrongly. Aaron acts questionably. Perhaps, he was
trying to nudge us into realizing our own error. Aaron never
refers to the calf as a deity. Aaron remains steadfast in his
verbal commitment to HaShem. Aaron may even set up the
altar for us to sacrifice ourselves on. After, one could read
tzahek as playing or becoming Isaac, Yitzhak. We got onto
the altar Aaon built in order to be sacrificed. The Levites will
comply when they slaughter 3000 of us. Perhaps, as soon as
we’ve suggested the building of gods, Aaron sees this death
as the only way to reform the Israelites, the punishment
which might change our nature. But Aaron doesn’t try to
stop the transgression. He even aids us in committing it.
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Moses, meanwhile, is absent. We feel abandoned because
he is not there. We act out from this sense of abandonment,
demanding a new leader. When Moses returns, he will put
his life on the line to spare us our own, he will demand to be
erased from the book if God erases us. But it is too late. He
was not there with us when it mattered most.
The Sifrei to Deuteronomy offers two very different accounts
of how to understand this whole episode by interpreting the
place name in Deuteronomy 1:1, Di Zahav, literally as “enough
of gold.” One interpretation understands the phrase as God
speaking, saying that the gold, the creation of the Golden Calf,
was enough, was too much. God could have forgiven us for
everything else we did wrong, but the Golden Calf broke the
proverbial camel’s back. This interpretation understands the
Golden Calf incident as unforgivable, as necessarily changing
the relationship between us and God. Another interpretation
in the Sifre, however, understands the phrase as saying that
we had enough gold not only for the golden calf but also for
the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. Here, the voluntary donations
of gold for the Mishkan are seen as atonement for the making
of the golden calf. It’s extraordinary. We who did the very
worst thing are permitted to make an abode for God.
The Talmud (b. Berachot 32a) takes the interpretation of this
verse even further. It reads that it was the surplus, the more
than enough gold that God gave to Israel abundantly that
caused Israel to make the golden calf. The gold was burning a
hole in our pocket and so we built a calf. This interpretation,
shockingly, holds God responsible. God gave us the materials
and so we sinned.
The amazing thing about all these interpretations is that no
matter what, the story continues. We move on. We build the
Mishkan, we dedicate the Levites, we journey through the
desert to Israel. It seems we have learned from our mistake.
We will grumble and we will rebel - our basic nature does not
change - but we won’t do something of this magnitude again
for hundreds of years. Likewise, Aaron and Moses change.
Moses will no longer be an absentee leader. Aaron will no
longer improvise, trying to lead us without a script. Standing
in the ruins of horrible mistakes, the only thing we can do is
keep moving, accepting responsibility rather than appointing
blame and changing behavior rather than despairing about
our essential nature.