Tshuvah
From the Golden Calf to the Mishkan
It’s an amazing opportunity to come together to celebrate and share this time of deep reflection. Doing Tshuvah means returning to that which is essential. We look at our lives and see where we’ve missed the mark. (That’s what the word for sin — “Cheyt” is — missing the mark.) We see the ways that we have become alienated and then we connect ourselves back to the whole of life. We return to center where we can remember what’s really important and open our eyes to the miracle of life itself, and then we take aim again from a clearer center towards the work we were born for, towards our true calling. I’ve come to trust this process… and yet there is a place in me that questions…
Haven’t I done Tshuvah from the very same sins every year of my life?
Why do we keep making the same mistakes? Feeling the same remorse? Shouldn’t we be addressing the patterns of sin? Shouldn’t we be addressing the roots of those patterns?
Whenever I examine the mistakes I have made, I find a pattern and then try to understand the source of that pattern. It is understood by our Tradition that the quintessential sin of our ancestors as they wandered through the wilderness was the sin of the Golden Calf. I’ve wondered sometimes… what was so bad? After forty days of waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain, the people grew restless and afraid. Moses was, after all, the exclusive mediator between God and Israel. His absence left an unbearable void and so the people cried out to fill that emptiness with a form that would comfort them.
The only way to understand the sin of the Golden Calf is to compare it to the Sanctuary/Mishkan, for the building of the Mishkan is the context for this story. The drama of the Golden Calf is inserted smack in the middle of the Mishkan text. The main difference between a golden calf and a mishkan is that the Mishkan exists for the space within it. It is a structure that is built to send us to that holy inner-ness. All of its beauty, color and design are dedicated as a nexus point between the Human and Divine, between Heaven and Earth. The important part is not the outer form, but what’s inside, for that is where God speaks to us. The further within you get, the more holy is the space. The further within you get, the more you touch a shared mystery. Not only is it the meeting place between Human and Divine, it is also the place where we meet each other, where the differences between us dissolve.
We emerge from the Mishkan, transformed by this mystery of our essential unity. And then true Tshuvah can happen. We can turn to each other and know the secret that there is no “other.”
In contrast, The Golden Calf is solid, existing of and for itself. We supply the gold, but then the Calf seems to take on a life of its own. Aaron describes the process saying, “I cast the gold into the fire and out came this Calf!” The Calf has no interior space. It glorifies itself. It is “full of itself.” It represents the most dangerous hindrance in the life of spiritual practice: that of worshipping and staying attached to the forms, rather than allowing those forms to send us to the essence that they might point towards. The difference between building a Mishkan or a Golden Calf is sometimes very subtle.
The sin of idolatry is the key to understanding and unraveling every other sin. Perhaps the greatest idolatry, the real Golden Calf that must be confronted, is the fixed sense of self that we build up in reaction to the constant threat of pain and separation. Ironically , the self we construct isolates us further. Sometimes our golden calf is called “Ego.” The personality or sense of self that we construct can become our fortress, which we must then protect at all costs.
At this time of Tshuvah I ask myself, “How have I made for myself a Golden Calf, limited my reality, closed myself off from the infinite unknowable Mystery that surrounds me? How do I defend this idol of Self with the delusion of separateness?” And I ask, “How can I make my life into a Mishkan, a place where the infinite presence of God dwells?”
At this time of Tshuvah, we see the ways that we have become alienated — through the building of our precious Golden Calf — and then we connect ourselves back to the whole of life — by building a Mishkan — a doorway to the infinite and to the realization of our Unity.
It is possible that every sin has its roots in fear and that every fear can be traced back, if we dig deep enough, to the root fear of Death. The Golden Calf is built when we lose faith in an invisible, unnamable God who may have abandoned us to die in the wilderness. We can build a life around this Golden Calf, placing something other than God-the-essential-mystery at the center of our attention. That life built around the worship of security or happiness or wealth or fame obscures the root fear of Death that has unconsciously driven us.
Where do we begin this work of Tshuvah? This year we begin with Shabbat. The season that is supposed to move us towards change begins with a day when our practice is to acknowledge a changeless perfection and rest in what is.
Carl Rogers said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
Shabbat gives us just this medicine: the opportunity to accept Reality just as it is. In that acceptance we can experience the freedom to respond from our deepest power, our truest sense of being essentially good enough. When in our secret heart of hearts we don’t feel good enough, our egos will fight to defend the status quo and we’ll end up blaming everyone else. The medicine of Shabbat says, “Relax, you’re good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough to deserve this miracle of re-creation and freedom.” In this knowledge, in this radical acceptance, we regain our power to change, to transform, to grow.
We are told by Nehemia, in his description of Rosh Hashanah, that we are to “eat rich food and drink sweet wine, and share with whoever has none.”
When we partake fully in the richness and sweetness of this present moment, our eyes will be open in compassion and our hearts will open in generosity. Then from this fullness we can participate in Tshuvah, the great dance of turning towards God.
©2003 Shefa Gold. All rights reserved.