Parsha_Push, Parshat Ki-Tisa

One of the issues that I have pondered throughout my adult life concerns the relationship between acceptance and judgment, between seeking harmony, patience, and forgiveness, versus standing for truth, maintaining high standards, and aspiring for goodness and what is right. This tension exists within me both as a mother and as a Jewish Israeli woman living in our national framework.
It seems that recently many others feel their souls are being pulled in different directions. On the one hand there is the great desire to stand for truth and to cry out that people should do what is right (in my eyes, of course). And on the other hand, there is a great desire for unity, for bringing hearts together, for a whole nation acting in harmony.
In the Torah portion of Ki Tisa, we seemingly tend toward the first direction – there are people who commit a grave sin, bowing to the golden calf, just a minute and a half after hearing at Mount Sinai that it is forbidden to make idols and bow to them. We clearly hear the judgmental and angry voice, the criticism and the punishments. It’s very clear who is on the right side of history and who is not.
Nevertheless, this is neither the end of the story nor the whole story. Moses fights for the people. Despite God’s claim that the entire nation has sinned and therefore deserves destruction, Moses tries to separate the two. He advocates for preserving the entire nation and ties his fate with the fate of the people. But he also puts a sword in the hands of the Levites to go through and kill the sinners. He will purge the “heavy” sinners and fight for atonement and correction for the rest of the wayward children.
Moses dances the delicate dance between identifying the intolerable extreme cases and the ability to contain and educate the confused ones in the middle. God too, along with the second tablets, will bring down to the world the attributes of mercy, to balance between the “jealous God” of the Ten Commandments and the “merciful and gracious God” of the Thirteen Attributes.
In a world of goodness, justice, and truth, we must eliminate evil. But we don’t have to eliminate all evildoers. In a world that aspires to repair and progress, one cannot only denounce and fight.
One must recognize the world’s current state, understand the existing forces, and guide them forward. It is not enough to be right; one must also be wise. He is merciful and gracious, yet He also grants knowledge to mankind.