Ki Tisa- כִּ֣י תִשָּׂ֞א Shemot ~ Exodus Making Torah Personal 30:11 – 34:35

There is an important principle in Judaism, a source of hope and also one of the structuring principles of the Torah. It is the principle that God creates the cure before the disease (Megillah 13b). Bad things may happen but God has already given us the remedy if we know where to look for it. ~Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z"l

Quick Summary

God instructs Moses to collect a half-shekel from every person > age 20 as a census

Instructions for vessels for mikdash, including the ingredients for the annointing oil and incense. Instructions for Aaron and his sons to be annointed as Kohanim.

Bezalel, a skilled artisan, is appointed by God to supervise the building of the mishkan

Moses reminds the people that Shabbat is a reminder of covenant between them and God

Moses is given two tablets, engraved by God.

Forty days have passed, and the people are anxious and request that Aaron fashion a golden calf and he agrees

God tells Moses what happened, threatens to destroy the Israelites. Moses pleads for them and saves them

Moses, when he sees this for himself, anger wells up in him, shatters the tablets, destroys the idol, and punishes those who have not shown loyalty to God.

From Parsha Yitro, for context:

Besides responsibility for our own actions, we are also responsible for the actions of others. It seems that only about three thousand {Jews] actually worshipped the Golden Calf. However, more than half a million men stood by and allowed them to do so. That all of Klal Yisrael were then punished for the sin of the few teaches us that when we see others doing wrong, we have the responsibility to stop them. If we don't stop them, we shar the responsibility and share punishment for these actions as if we had sinned ourselves. ~Rabbi Yechiel Perr (mentor to Alan Morinis), on Ki Sisa.

Moses could not understand: How could a mere coin serve a person as “a ransom for his soul to G‑d”? G‑d answered him by showing him a “coin of fire.” G‑d was saying: When a person performs even a modest act of charity with the fire of passion and enthusiasm, he is indeed giving a piece of his soul. ~The Rebbe of Kotzk

Kedushat Levi, Exodus, Ki Tisa 1

Exodus 30,12. “when you take a census of the Children ‎of Israel according to their numbers, each shall pay the Lord ‎a ransom for his person when being counted.”
Seeing ‎that G’d so loves the Jewish people that He feels personally ‎oppressed by their troubles, He gives them an advice on how to ‎save their lives/souls from the attacks of the evil urge....The Jewish people are a means through ‎which G’d illuminates the universe, as we know from Isaiah 2,5: ‎בית יעקב לכו ונלכה באור ה'‏‎, “House of Yaakov, let us walk by the ‎light of the Lord.”) From internalizing the meaning of these ‎verses we come to the conclusion that when we pass through a ‎period of distress and troubles, one that has been brought about ‎by G’d’s having to discipline us, He Himself is also experiencing ‎part of this pain....Our verse commencing with: ‎כי תשא את ראש בני ישראל וגו' ‏לפקודיהם‎, reminds us of the meaning of the root, as we find it in ‎Numbers 31,49 ‎לא נפקד ממנו איש‎, ”not a single one of our number ‎is missing.” [After the 12000 men who took part in the ‎punitive campaign against Midian had returned. Ed.] G’d ‎tells Moses that if he is interested in raising the status of the ‎Jewish people from their depressed state, (after the sin of the ‎golden calf), he is to see to it that each of the men between 20 ‎and 60 pray to the Lord to redeem them from the attacks of the ‎perennial antagonist, Satan who is always at work trying to ‎seduce them into transgressing His commandments.

...our emotional ties to God—our love for Him, our fear of Him, etc.—are an expression of the part of the soul vested in our bodies. We love God to the extent that we understand Him and His goodness with our intellect; we feel the emotional response to this rational awareness in our hearts.

The penitent's love for God, however, extends beyond the limits of rationality. His unquenchable thirst for God inspires him to levels of love that are ordinarily too intense to be manifest in the limited capacities of the mind and heart. Repentance thus lifts us to the level of our soul's "head. ~Kehot Chumash

Shenei Luchot HaBerit, Torah Shebikhtav, Ki Tisa, Torah Ohr 35

Why did G–d not simply say: "they shall give a ransom for their lives in the amount of a half-shekel each?" Furthermore, the word איש in the verse also seems totally superfluous! Actually, G–d wanted Moses to have a chance to reflect in order that the process of atonement could begin. If the Torah had simply said: ונתנו איש, "They shall give a person," I would have concluded that there is no such thing as ransom-money to redeem a capital crime. G–d added: זה יתנו, "This they shall give" (there is such a thing as monetary ransom). I have explained elsewhere that when G–d imposes a punishment this must not be viewed as something that represents Him, the One who gave the commandment, but it should be seen as the natural consequence if the person who was commanded to do something failed to carry out that commandment. The reason this is so is to limit the scope of the punishment. Just as there is a גבול, limit, to our lives, so the punishment is limited in duration. When we speak about the reward for commandments performed, however, the process is reversed. The reward originates with the Law-giver. Just as He is not bound by any restrictions, so the scope of the reward for observing His commandments is unlimited. All this is hinted at in the word איש. If the penalty were directly related to the Law-giver, it would have to be unlimited in scope, i.e. it would consume the guilty person איש totally; he would have to die. Allowing the person in question to expiate his sin by a ransom payment demonstrates that the penalty is related directly only to the person who has committed the sin, not to G–d.

People differ in their intellect, character and talents, in the quantity of their material resources and the timbre of their spiritual sensitivities. But all are equal in the very basis of their bond with G‑d: the intrinsic commitment to Him that resides at the core of their souls. So while every man contributed to the making of the various components of the Sanctuary in accordance with their individual capacity, all gave equally of the silver of which its foundation was made. As regards the foundation of the relationship between man and G‑d, the “rich man” cannot give more, and the “pauper” cannot give less.

~The Lubavitcher Rebbe

The Ten Commandments, however, were engraved on the tablets themselves. Rather than two separate entities, there was just the stone itself, and the commandments were engraved onto it.

When something is written, it can be erased or scraped off; when it is studied orally, it can be forgotten. In the case of engraving, however, there is no way of separating the writing from the stone. It can be covered up, filled in, or additional parts of the stone can be chipped away so that the writing becomes illegible, but it cannot be erased or removed. The medium has become one with the message.

This is how we must approach the Torah. When we study the Torah, we should be so lost in it that all that exists for us is the Torah itself; the medium, the message, and the recipient of the message all merge to become one...This is the message that God imparted by carving the commandments in stone: "The Torah, you, and I are all one, and this unity can never be severed. ~Ki Tisa, Kehot Chumash

Ramban

What they needed was a new "man of God." You can learn from Aharon's excuse to Moses that it is as I have explained: "They said to me, 'Make us a god to lead us' " - not a god to worship. He explained to Moshe, "As long as you were gone, they needed a guide. If you should return, they would leave him and follow you, as they had done at first." In fact, this is exactly what happened. As soon as the people saw Moshe, they abandoned the calf contemptuously, letting Moses burn it and grind it to powder without anyone intervening. In fact, they fled from the calf without Moshe's saying a word to them. If they had really worshipped the calf, they certainly would not have let Moshe burn it without stoning him to death!

Chizkuni

ויקהל העם, “the people assembled;” whenever the expression ויקהל appears and is followed by the word: על, it means: “against,” i.e. it is the Torah’s way of condemning such an assembly. On the other hand, if the word following the word ויקהל, either in the singular or the plural mode is followed by the word אל, this signifies a positive development. “they said to him (Aaron) arise and make a visual image of G-d!” According to the plain meaning of the text there can be no question that Aaron had no intention to allow the people to revert to idolatry, G-d forbid, or somehow to replace Hashem or His prophet. Moses, while on earth, had frequently been referred to as elohim, either when compared to the creature issuing commands in the name of Hashem to Pharaoh, or as communicating G-d’s law to the people. If Aaron had intended to make an idol, Moses would have had to execute him as a false prophet! Not only that, but how could that “false” prophet subsequently have been appointed as the foremost instrument of securing Israel’s atonement?! Moreover, how could he have become the first priest and all his male offspring became the priests of the whole people? Not only that; We did not find that the Torah charged Aaron with any sin until the events at מי מריבה where Aaron did not stop Moses from striking the rock to produce water. There is not a single sage that ever suggested that G-d would appoint as a prophet someone who would eventually revert to idolatry. There can therefore be no question that what the people demanded of Aaron was not a return to idolatry. The problem had been that Moses had not announced by what date he would return from the Mountain. The reason that he did not do so was simply that he himself had not known when he would return. G-d had told him that He would give him the Tablets, but had not said when. When the people noticed that Moses took an inordinately long time, far longer than a normal person can go without food or drink, they worried that he might have died, in fact they were convinced that he had. They therefore requested from Aaron that he make for them a replacement whose function would be similar to what had been Moses’ function vis a vis Pharaoh, i.e. elohim. The Torah even spelled out what the assembled people had in mind, i.e. כי זה משה האיש אשר העלנו מארץ מצרים לא ידענו מה היה לו, “for this man Moses, who took us out of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.” In other words: they wanted to replace the Moses the man, not the deity, or semideity...G-d had performed so many miracles which had been orchestrated by Moses, that they had been quite prepared to prostrate themselves before such a leader. An alternate interpretation: the people asked for a creature that Hashem would use to imbue with His glory, [similar to how He spoke from between the cherubs on the lid of the Holy Ark, the cherubs and their faces of innocent children not being so much different from the golden calf, the principal difference being that no one ever got to see them. Ed.]

It seems to me that in Exodus 33 Moses is undertaking the most courageous act of his life. He is saying to God: "It is not my distance that is the problem. It is Your distance. The people are terrified of You. They have witnessed Your overwhelming power. They have seen You bring the greatest empire the world has ever known to its knees. They have seen You turn sea into dry land, send down food from heaven and bring water from a rock. When they heard Your voice at Mount Sinai, they came to me to beg me to be an intermediary. They said, ‘You speak to us and we will hearken, but let not God speak to us lest we die’ (Ex. 20:16). They made a Calf not because they wanted to worship an idol, but because they wanted some symbol of Your Presence that was not terrifying. They need You to be close. They need to sense You not in the sky or the summit of the mountain but in the midst of the camp. And even if they cannot see Your face, for no one can do that, at least let them see some visible sign of Your glory. ~Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z"l