Commentary on Parashat Ki Tisa, Exodus 30:11-34:35
Judaism has three cardinal sins — sins for which Jews are expected to submit to death rather than commit them. They are: murder, adultery and idolatry. If someone puts a gun to your head and says “eat this pork,” Jewish authorities agree you should eat the pork. The reason is that, in keeping with Leviticus 18:5, Jews should live by God’s laws, but (as a corollary) they should not die on account of them. But if the same twisted person puts a gun to your head and says “kill George,” you are expected to allow yourself to die. Dying is preferable to committing murder. Or adultery. Or idolatry.
This is tough to contemplate. In our day, there is no question that murder is a heinous crime. While we might cringe at the thought, we can understand the obligation to die rather than kill another human being. But a small voice in our head might ask: Are adultery and idolatry really on the same level? Are they worth dying for?
Ancient and modern Jewish thinkers alike have offered a number of explanations for why idolatry is considered such a grievous transgression. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz characterizes the Talmud’s core posture as: “Whoever acknowledges idolatry denies the entire Torah.” Maimonides, influenced by Aristotle’s philosophical worldview, identified God as the source of truth, and saw idolatry as preventing the pursuit of that ultimate good. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel thought of idolatry as a modern spiritual disease, one in which the idolator devotes their energy to something that is ultimately unworthy of it — perhaps money, fame or power — and thereby wastes away. Each interpretation shows that idolatry is an existential threat not only to the individual (as murder is) but to society as a whole. Seen this way, idolatry is perhaps the more dangerous sin.
Parashat Ki Tisa gives an account of one of the most famous episodes of idolatry in Jewish history: the golden calf. While Moses is up on Mount Sinai receiving God’s law, the Israelites grow restless and scared. They beg Moses’ brother Aaron, who has been left in charge: “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that fellow Moses — the man who brought us from the land of Egypt — we do not know what has happened to him.” (Exodus 32:1) Aaron complies and soon the Israelites are melting down their golden jewelry to construct a statue about which they collectively declare: “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” God has relentlessly sought an exclusive covenant and relationship with this people. God has courted them by offering them the moon (OK, the land of Israel). God has shown up for them by redeeming them from Egypt. Yet, while still encamped in the shadow of Sinai, the place where God and Israel ultimately consecrated their relationship at the moment of revelation, the Israelites turn to a new and obviously false god. To add insult to injury, they credit a hastily constructed phony replacement with the true love and care they received from God. God feels cheated. Or more precisely, cheated on.
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This idea that idolatry is fundamentally adultery toward God explains a strange moment in the parashah. When Moses comes down from the mountain and catches the Israelites in the act of worshipping the golden calf, he is so enraged he hurls the tablets of the Ten Commandments to the ground and they smash to bits. (Later he will go back up the mountain for a replacement set.) Then he burns the golden calf, grinds it into a powder, mixes that powder with water and forces the Israelites to drink the concoction. What on earth is this about?
The Torah’s most famous classical commentator, Rashi, explains: “He intended to put them to the test as faithless wives were tried.” In Numbers 5, we learn that a husband who suspects his wife of adultery but has no witnesses to the betrayal can bring her to the Temple where the priests force her to drink a potion that is made by mixing dirt from the floor of the Temple with water, then writing curses on a slip of parchment and dissolving the ink into that liquid. This is a trial by ordeal: If the woman is innocent, the drink will not harm her. If she is not, it will destroy her health. By making the Israelites drink a similar concoction, Moses signals that they have committed a kind of adultery as well.
This idea is not unique to this week’s parashah. Indeed, throughout the Hebrew Bible, idolatrous behavior is described as “whoring after other gods” (to name just a few examples: Deuteronomy 31:16, Judges 2:7, Hosea 4:12). This means that idolatry and adultery are really two sides of the same coin: betrayal of the one to whom we owe our greatest loyalty.
The connection between idolatry and adultery helps us to understand why Judaism considers both to be cardinal sins, on par with murder. Both are a betrayal of trust and loyalty. They may not be literal murder, but they are actions that can (and often do) lead to the destruction of our core relationships — with one another and with God. And that may be a fate even worse than death.
