{"id":49959,"date":"2019-02-21T19:15:15","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T17:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=49959"},"modified":"2022-05-30T16:53:02","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T13:53:02","slug":"absence-and-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/absence-and-counting\/","title":{"rendered":"Absence And Counting"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We return to a narrative in this week\u2019s Torah portion, after having experienced detailed depictions of the colors and materials for the portable tabernacle and elaborate descriptions of the clothing of the priests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All is not rosy in these chapters.\u00a0Along with the greatest experiences of God\u2019s might and power in the world seen earlier in Exodus, is the greatest of betrayals.<\/p>\n

This portion begins with census taking, with counting.\u00a0 All who are counted for the military, men from age 20 and above, are to contribute a half shekel (Exodus 30:11); the sum of these contributions is noted a few chapters forward in Exodus 38:24-28 for the portable tabernacle.\u00a0There is radical equality among the men here: all contribute the same and all are counted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One group does not contribute, notably. Women aren\u2019t part of this census.<\/p>\n

According to a midrash, women don\u2019t participate in the great betrayal either. Pirkei D\u2019Rabbi Eliezer, an eighth century midrash, says that only the men took jewelry to make the calf (PRE 45).\u00a0 The men broke off the earrings from their own ears (Exodus 32: 3) rather than those in the ears of their wives.\u00a0As a reward for their refusal, the women are rewarded, says the midrash, both in this world and the world to come, both by being able to observe Rosh Hodesh, the new moon, more stringently, and by being able to be renewed like new moons.\u00a0The verse Ps. 103:5 which speaks of having \u201cyouth renewed like an eagle\u2019s\u201d is used as a prooftext for this feminine renewal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite not being written clearly into the text here, their appropriate resistance and reward for it being found only in the commentaries, women are not absent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ki Tissa, with its building of the treacherous calf, compared to an act of adultery with their divine partner on the part of the people Israel, is very much concerned with who is present and who is not.\u00a0Even the people\u2019s greatest teacher, Moshe Rabbenu, Moses our teacher, asks God to potentially erase him in these chapters.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Moses asks God \u201cerase me from your book which you have written\u201d (Exodus 32:32) if God will not forgive the trespass of the people.\u00a0 Moses is not <\/em>erased and the portion ends with his receiving another set of instructions (Exodus 34: 27) which are interpreted as the oral Torah which accompanies the written one.<\/p>\n

The fear these sections address is that some will be erased, not be seen, uncounted. The power of Jewish interpretive tradition is to read anew, address what can be learned from tablets that are both whole and broken, for the ark must store both sets.\u00a0No one is absent and all are counted when the tradition is viewed as a whole with both its written and oral traditions, that stem from the tablets Moses throws down in anger in these chapters.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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