Nothing Is Carved In Stone: The Ishbitzer Rebbe on Parshat Ki Tissa

So this is one of my favorite interpretations not only of the breaking of the first set of commandments but also of the injunction that one shouldn't make graven images. Particularly relevant in this week's Torah portion because of the story of the Golden Calf, Jews (and others) have long taken the "graven image" commandment to be a prohibition regarding making idols. The Ishbitzer Rebbe, however, interprets this commandment differently (here and elsewhere in the Torah). In his Torah Commentary Mei Hashiloach or, Living Waters, The Ishbitzer writes:

"'Do not make molten gods.' (exodus 34:17)

"Molten or graven images means principles."

How revolutionary!!!! Elsewhere, he writes, "do not make any carved form, meaning positive commandments, and any image, meaning the prohibitive commandments, for nothing is revealed to man until it reaches its completion [and the Ishbitzer doesn't believe ANYTHING can 'reach its perfect completion' except God itself]"---

So...another way of saying this is: don't believe anything so much that it's as if carved in stone--not even that which is actually carved in stone! Jewish law bears this out--all mitzvot can be negated for the protection or preservation of life for instance, or for the preseravtion of human dignity (lying so as to not embarrass someone publically etc...) What a deep idea to think about. The question of course, is whether the rule about not interpreting anything in a "graven" or "fixed" way, is in itself, a graven law!

This also helps partially explain the decision by Moshe to destroy the Golden Calf by throwing the original tablets of the ten commandments at it--the commandments themselves (and the stones they are written upon) are not nearly as important as the dignity of the people who were humiliating themselves by supposing that God was ONLY in one place--the sin of the golden calf, from a nondual perspective, is not that they believed that the molten calf was God and that they prayed to it--because indeed, if all is God, so is the Golden Calf--the problem was in the supposition that God was ONLY in the Golden Calf, or more clearly, that God could be MORE in one thing than another. The Zohar and the Chassidic masters constantly teach us that Hashem both "fills and surrounds" the world.

Good Shabbos.