Ki Tissa
What is the first step to forgiveness?
Reflection by US Community Manager, Carrie Watkins:
"This week’s parsha - the story of the sin of the golden calf - is a story of rupture, of a major breach of trust. It also has hidden within it an unexpected lesson on the nature of forgiveness.
The Piecezner Rebbe points out an interesting juxtaposition in a drasha in Aish Kodesh. Several chapters ago, Hashem told Moses `I am sending a messenger - an Angel - before you [the Children of Israel] to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have made ready` (23:20). After the people worship a golden calf, and Hashem forgives us, Hashem says `I will go in the lead` (33:14), no longer sending an angel but instead directly leading the people. What led to this change in protocol?
Each high holiday season we proclaim God’s capacity to forgive by saying `נושא עון` noseh avon, which is often translated as something like, `forgiving iniquity.` The Piecezner cites the Kedushat Levi as saying thatנושא can also mean to carry, or to bear, which means you can also translate noseh avon as God taking our sin upon Godself. This is why, the Piecezener says, God, not an angel, chose to lead us. God was picking up our sin.
It’s a beautiful model for forgiveness, showing us the way, in which forgiving someone else (or ourselves) starts with a picking up. Moving through the stages of blaming and othering towards a repaired future that can hold more complexity can be very hard work. To do that, we have to start by, in a sense, picking the avon, the rupture, up and bringing it closer to ourselves - to see what happened, to notice how it’s affecting us, to give up hope for a better past, and to figure out what we need to do to move into the future. Forgiveness is not saying that what happened was OK or should be allowed to happen again; God certainly never said the golden calf was ok. Forgiveness is entering into relationship with the subjective, away from how things should have been and towards how things are and can be. God picked up our sins and moved us all forward."