EXOD985 When offering personal prayers to God, we should make our appeal dependent on the merit of others, not our own. For example, when Moses beseeched God not to destroy the Jews because of their sin with the Golden Calf, he said, "Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" [this verse]. Still, a later biblical text credits him, not the Patriarchs, as deserving the credit for God's decision to save the Jews: "He (God) would have destroyed them had not Moses, His chosen one, confronted Him in the breach to avert His destructive wrath" (Psalms 106:23, see Berachot 10b). When we offer personal prayers to God--something almost all religious people do at least occasionally--we should make a request, at least sometimes, in the name of the parent, grandparents, or someone else who loved us, and who was a very good person.

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EXOD983 See [[EXOD366]] Exodus 20:5 children TZADIK 161-3

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EXOD986 See [[EXOD909]] Exodus 24:7 all AMEMEI 35

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EXOD987 See [[EXOD947]] Exodus 25:16 deposit AMEMEI 257

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EXOD988 Thus, through observance of the laws and restrictions one places upon oneself, one demonstrates a sense of freedom. This is precisely the intention of the Mishnah Avot 6:2 that connects the Hebrew word cherut, freedom , with a similar word charut, engraved. When the Torah says [this verse] that the hand of God was engraved on the tablets of the Ten Commandments, one should read freedom, not engraved.

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EXOD989 The levels of repentance and its virtues ["Where ba'alei teshuvah stand, complete tzaddikim many not stand" (Berachos 34b); "Great is repentance, whereby one's sins become merits" (Yoma 86b) (Zeh Hash'ar) are in accordance with the degree of one's bitterness and the intensity of one's anguish. It is this type of repentance [i.e., the higher levels of teshuvah] that emerges from the purity of one's soul and the refinement of its intellect. For the intensity and magnitude of anguish that one feels over his many sins is reflective of his understanding and awareness, as the pasuk says (Yeshayahu 57:16), "I shall not contend [with the sinner] forever, nor be angry for eternity, but only until the spirit before Me surrenders, and the souls [that] I made." This means: "When the spirit--which is 'before Me,' for it comes from the supernal realm [See Rashi]--surrenders and grieves, and the souls that I have made surrender, I will no longer be contentious with them, nor will I be angry. How can I not be graceful and merciful to a precious spirit that is 'before Me' and to the souls that I have made?" Consequently, to the extent that one's avodah [i.e. service of Hashem] of sighing weighs upon him, the transgression will be made lighter. This is because anguish emerges from the purity of the supernal soul, and leads to greater reconciliation than that which comes from intense bodily suffering and the pain associated with it. This can be illustrated as follows: A king shows compassion to his family members, who are brought up in his household and are part of the honored aristocracy. He will be more merciful with them than to those who are far removed and of lower status. The pasuk says, "the souls [that] I made," due to their closeness to the supernal realm, even though the body and all of creation are [also] His handiwork [i.e., Hashem shows greater compassion to that which is rooted in the upper spiritual domain.] In a similar vein [this verse]: "The tablets were Hashem's own work." [But isn't all creation Hashem's work? We see that such language points to a higher spiritual quality.] Furthermore, our Sages, z"l, said (Nidah 31a), "There are three partners to man: his father, his mother, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu." Since one's parents are not partners in the soul, therefore, the pasuk says, "the souls [that] I made." Thus, 'the souls [that] I made" is shedding light on the [beginning of the pasuk], "the spirit before Me," [i.e., as further proof that "before Me" denotes the soul's source from the supernal realm] the underlying idea being as we have explained [i.e., they are of greater significance in Hashem's eyes, and, consequently, the anguish of the spirit/soul lightens one's sin.]

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EXOD991 On occasion, even highly immoral people try to rationalize errant behavior. … Aaron's explanation recalls the words of the American writer Sidney Harris: "We have not passed the subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice; that is, until we have stopped saying, 'It got lost,'" and say, 'I lost it.'" Indeed, if you reread Aaron's explanation of how the Golden Calf came into being, his words do, in fact, sound childlike.

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EXOD990 It was taught: R. Shimon b. Elazar said: Let one always be careful with his answers, for because of Aaron's [heedless] answer to Moses, the heretics found room for their heresy, as it is written: "And I cast it into the fire, and this calf came forth" [the impression being given is that it came forth of its own volition] (Megillah 25b).

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EXOD992 What Moses had to do after the Golden Calf was Vayak'hel--turn the Israelites into a kehilla, a community. He did this in the obvious sense of restoring order. When Moses came down the mountain and saw the Calf, the Torah says the people were parua, meaning "wild," "disorderly," "chaotic," "unruly," "tumultuous." He "saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughing stock to their enemies" [this verse]. They were not a community but a crowd. He did it in a more fundamental sense as we see in the rest of the parasha. He began by reminding the people of the laws of Shabbat. Then he instructed them to build the Mishkan, the Sanctuary, as a symbolic home for God. Why these two commands rather than any others? Because Shabbat and the Mishkan are the two most powerful ways of building community. The best way of turning a diverse, disconnected group into a team is to get them to build something together.[See Jonathan Sacks, The Home We Build Together (London: Continuum, 2007)]. Hence the Mishkan. The best way of strengthening relationships it is set aside dedicated time when we focus not on the pursuit of individual self-interest but on the things we share, by praying together, studying Torah together, and celebrating together -- in other words, Shabbat. Shabbat and the Mishkan were the two great community-building experiences of the Israelites in the desert. More than this: in Judaism, community is essential to the spiritual life. Our holiest prayers require a minyan. When we celebrate or mourn we do so as a community. Even when we confess, we do so together.... In Judaism, it is as a community that we come before God. For us the key relationship is not I-Thou, but We-Thou. Yayak'hel is thus no ordinary episode in the history of Israel. It marks the essential insight to emerge from the crisis of the Golden Calf. We find God in community. We develop virtue, strength of character, and a commitment to the common good in community. Community is local. It is society with a human face. It is not government. It is not the people we pay to look after the welfare of others. It is the work we do ourselves, together. Community is the antidote to individualism on the one hand and overreliance on the state on the other. Darwin understood its importance to human flourishing. Tocqueville saw its role in protecting democratic freedom. Robert Putnam has documented its value in sustaining social capital and the common good. And it began in this parasha, when Moses turned an unruly mob into a kehilla, a community.

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EXOD993 … one who delays repentance, when subsequently the opportunity for sinning presents itself to him again, will fall prey to it as he initially did, in this latter sin will then be even more severe, and his crime will ascend before Hashem. [The reason for this is because] initially it had not occurred to him that this ruling yetzer would so unexpectedly come upon him; but now that he has seen his weakness, how his yetzer has prevailed over him and how much stronger it is, he should have realized that he is at a disadvantage [this verse, lit. "that he is exposed."] As such, he should have formulated a plan for increasing his fear of Heaven-- to case Hashem's fear over his soul, rescuing it from the yetzer's ambush and protecting himself from his sin. Shlomo [HaMelech], a"h, said (Mishlei 26:11), "Like a dog who returns to its vomit, [so is] a fool who repeats his foolishness." What this means is: a dog eats vile things, and when he spits them out, they become even more repulsive. Yet the dog returns to eat them again. So it is with the fool. By doing something reprehensible and [then] repeating it, it becomes even more reprehensible, as we have explained. (Continued at [[DEUT563]] Deuteronomy 12:17 eat GATES 9)

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