Ki Sisa: The Fragility and Resiliency of Memory

By Alan Morantz, delivered Feb. 26, 2005

This parsha holds special meaning for me. It is the parsha of my bar mitzvah, back in 1971 at Shaare Zedek in Montreal. This past week I took out a wooden plaque on which was embossed the invitation to the event. My mother thought it would be a good idea to have the plaque as a souvenir. Now I know I am among friends and can say, if it needs to be said, that my memory is not what it used to be, and what it used to be was not very impressive. But I was able to use this plaque as a portal, a doorway through which I could travel back to Shaare Zedek and remember some fragments from that wintry day in Cote St. Luc: waiting in the seat to the left of the bima to be called up for my aliyah, the feeling of how my voice projected through the sanctuary, the red piping on my new blue suit, talking to the coat checkers while my friends were dancing during the party later that evening.

It got me thinking how memory is both fragile and resilient at the same time. It does not take much to throw memory out of gear. A small blood clot, a shortage of oxygen – the slightest defect can cause irreparable damage. Yet even in the most drastic forms of memory loss, much is left intact. People with amnesia, for example, can still recall the meaning of words and symbols. There is even greater nuance in how memory – or echoes of it -- can be resilient. Have you ever felt the frustration of not remembering something that you know for certain is stored somewhere in your memory? Then there is the phenomenon known as implicit memory. This is a layer of experiences of which we have no conscious memory but which nevertheless influence our actions.

When I reread the Ki Tisa text recently, I sensed both the fragility and the resilience of memory among the Jewish people.

Why fragility? Well, if you were reading carefully this morning, you could not help but notice the several references to laws and lessons that appeared elsewhere in the Torah. There was the reiteration of the laws of Shabbat. And we are once again commanded to observe Pesach, Shavuot, and Succot at the proper times in the agricultural cycle. Through these Torah passages, we see that Hashem seems to have little confidence in humans to remember the articles of faith. He knows what a short attention span we humans have. Perhaps that is one of the purposes of organized religion and the reiterative nature of Jewish synagogue life. It serves as a continual reminder. A tickler. Consider even this service. Did you notice how long the first two aliyot were? They take up a large part of the parsha. That is because custom dictates that a Levi must be called up for the aliyah dealing with the sin of the Golden Calf. The thinking is that it would be too embarrassing for anyone other than a Levi to be called up at this juncture because only the tribe of Levi was innocent of that sin. This custom serves to remind us of the incident of the Calf, and the role of the Levis in killing some 3,000 of the men who were most responsible for venerating the golden idol.

And what of the resilience of memory? The centerpiece of this parsha is the construction of the Golden Calf, which is widely seen as the ultimate betrayal by the Jewish people. It is crucial for us to acknowledge, as many commentators do, that the sin committed by the Jews was not a sin replacing G-d with an idol. The Jews considered building the Golden Calf when, due to their miscalculation, they thought Moshe was late coming down from the mountain. When they saw he was not coming, they thought they needed a new intermediary between them and Hashem. They saw themselves as being unable to have a direct communication with G-d. This was a serious error. Unfortunately, it has always been one of our greatest stumbling blocks. We are loath to accept upon ourselves the responsibility of a personal relationship with Hashem. This has been human nature for thousands of years, the basic human need to seek an intermediary.

But the resiliency of memory that I see in the story of the Golden Calf is the desire to reconnect with our Creator. We may have wonderful experiences and clearly have within us more than we know, but we’re still trying to pass over and through self to the Other. We hear much today about the search within, but is it not true that what we really want, as individuals and as this collective consciousness called the Jewish People, is to go to the Other Side? In scholar Adin Steinsaltz’s words, we are searching for something from the other side of nowhere.

This is what I would consider to be implicit memory. The Kabbalists say that each one of us in this room is a spark from the primordial Adam. Perhaps in our biological memory bank we remember this elemental Day One and perhaps our present behaviour is shaped by it. Our ancestors in the wilderness must have sensed this even more profoundly. But at the same time we are afraid. People are willing to have small adventures, small thrills, and small frights. It can be a terrible burden to hear and heed the call. So we look to intermediaries who can somehow shield us from the full blast of spiritual power. I think the Torah’s message is that while our yearning to be reconnected to the Oneness is sacred, all people can and should beseech Hashem directly. Doing so strengthens one’s spiritual commitment. Operating through intermediaries can weaken our commitment to the point where some of us will actually end up worshiping the intermediaries themselves.

It is interesting to note that following the Golden Calf episode, the Tabernacle, the Mishkan, was erected at the centre of the Israelite camp to house the Divine presence. In Hashem’s words to Moses, “They shall make for Me a sanctuary, and I shall dwell amongst them.” The Tabernacle succeeded where the calf failed because physical objects become sacred only when they are so designated by Hashem. The Tabernacle was chosen at His behest and therefore became sacred.

Quite tragically, the story of the Golden Calf proved very resilient. Much later, the dismal tale, down to the cataclysmic finale, was replayed, this time by Jeroboam, the first ruler of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who commissioned the construction of two golden calfs. Jeroboam felt threatened by the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, which he felt would lure his people away and toward his rival, Solomon’s son. In a misguided effort to set up alternative religious centres, Jeroboam installed golden calfs in Beth El and Dan. He intended only to create a symbol for Hashem but, as in the wilderness, idolatry quickly set in. False priests filled the void and the kingdom eventually rotted away.

And so it has ever been. There is a story told in Sanhedrin that the soul of the sorry Judean royal King Menashe appeared to Rav Ashi, who asked him, “Since you were all so wise, why did you worship idols?” To which the king replied, “If you had been there, you would have picked up your robes and come running after us.”

Memory, of course, needs time and space as fuel. If time doesn’t pass, memory has no lift off. One thing I have noted about Judaism is its ability to collapse time and space. Sitting in shul on Shabbat it is not hard to imagine similar gatherings in Hong Kong or Buenos Aires. Listening to the reading of the Torah, you can imagine the same words being sung in the same tune five hundred years ago. You can easily find yourself in a reverie, travelling through time and space where memory lost and found is of no concern.

I invite you to try this some day. Imagine yourself back in the dusty wilderness. Three months ago with your own eyes you saw the ten plagues that struck Egypt, and the miracle of the red Sea parting and then subsuming your enemies. Forty days ago, you and three million of your fellow Jews and former slaves experienced the Divine revelation at Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments. Today, you are anxious. Your beloved Moshe has been up on the mountain for forty days. He was supposed to be back by now. You hear rabble rousing. The word is Avraham is asking for donations of gold so that a calf may be constructed to take the place of Moshe. This is your opportunity for redemption. What do you do? What do you say?

As for me, I will imagine myself back in 1971, wearing an ill fitting blue suit while reciting the very same haftorah that we just heard this morning. But instead of chilling out with coat checkers, I will be a mensch and keep my friends company on the dance floor. This will be my little act of redemption.