Ki Tisa – Changing God’s Mind

“To err is human. To forgive, divine.” This week, God is divine as ever. God forgives the people, reestablishing a covenant with them, after the dastardly and, well, close to unforgivable sin of the Golden Calf. But sometimes, God’s forgiveness stretches our religious imagination. After all, when God announces to Moshe (Moses), that God will destroy the Israelite people, is it not safe to assume that God’s decree is just? How can משה justify trying to talk God out of this decree? And yet, משה does just that.

In the Babylonian Talmud (Berachot 32a), Rava comments on the words of (Ex. 32:11): “and Moses besought the Lord his God”. Rava says that God had made a vow to destroy the people, and that Moses would not stop praying until God rescinded. Rava uses a play on words, pointing out that the word vayichal (and Moses besought) is similar to the word “yachal, rescind,” where in Num. 30:3 we are told that one who makes a vow may not rescind. The Gemara explains about God: God does not rescind, but others can make God rescind. In this case, Moses’ prayers were enough to change the situation so that God would not destroy Israel.

In Destination Torah (p. 65-66 on “”Until (or while) thy people pass . . . “), our teacher Hakham Isaac Sassoon discusses a piece of Talmud (Sanh. 98b) that states that there were certain miracles that were destined to be done on behalf of the Jewish people, but that the sins of the Jewish people stopped those miracles from happening. Hakham Sassoon writes: “. . . sin can cost a promisee his entitlement even to divine blessing. . . . How much more, then, must predictions of doom be seen as conditional, being liable to reversal as the Divine Justice sees fit. When Jonah prophesied, ‘In forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown’ (Jonah 3:4), from great to small his audience understood that if they repented they might yet avert the overthrow of the city.”

We learn from this that although God’s will is immutable, our actions can change how God’s will operates. We can change God’s mind. All we need to do is to work to become more worthy of God’s graces.

“To err,” is indeed human. And “to forgive” is divine. But in order for the divine to forgive, the human should first work to correct his or her error. Every year on the High Holidays – hopefully every day – we ask God for forgiveness. As well we should. But sometimes, we don’t spend enough time giving God a reason to forgive us. When we ask God to forgive us for our wrongdoing, do we also demand of ourselves that we make right whatever we did wrong? When we recognize our failure to follow God’s Torah and mitzvot (commandments), do we redouble our efforts to fulfill those mitzvot? Maybe choose one more mitzvah that we can make a regular part of our lives? God’s capacity to forgive, God’s power to change God’s mind, is conditioned on our ability to change our own behavior!

Return us, our Father, to Your Torah, draw us, our Sovereign, to Your worship. May we be privileged to always grow in our observance of Torah and fulfilling of mitzvot. And may our efforts be worthy of divine reward.

Shabbat Shalom!