Ki Sisa

When Moshe goes up to Har Sinai, he ascends to Heaven to receive the Torah.  Moshe had told the people that he would be up there for forty days. When forty days had passed, and Moshe still hadn't come down the people gather around Aaron & demand a new intermediary between them & Hashem.  

The Torah informs us that the Jews had miscalculated the forty days that Moshe had stated.  Moshe had said forty complete days, nights included, whereas they counted the day he went up, which wasn't included in the count because there was no night with it. 

The Midrash tells us that when they saw that Moshe wasn't coming, the Sattan came to them and asked, where is Moshe your leader? They answered he went up to the heavens. Sattan said to them that Moshe had died. He made the heavens dark & showed the Jews what looked like Moshe's coffin in the heavens, convincing them that Moshe had died. Then, they had Aaron make them the golden calf & the next morning the posuk tells us וישכימו ממחרת.. וישב העם לאכל ושתו ויקמו לצחק , and they got up early the next morning, they ate & drank & got up to party.  

The Chafetz Chaim asks if that was what happened & the Sattan had convinced them that Moshe had died, then what kind of behavior is that, to get up the next morning & party. Shouldn't they have been full of grief; shouldn't they be crying & mourning for their leader, the man who took them out of Egypt & performed all the miracles for them? Wouldn't that have been the appropriate response? 

Additionally, when Hashem told Moshe הניחה לי, desist from me ואכלם & I will annihilate them. Moshe should have agreed with Hashem, for here is his nation for whom he did everything & the minute they think he's dead, they throw a party. ‎They don’t even have a day of mourning for their leader? Yet we see that Moshe, setting his honor aside, davened & showed Hashem that it would not be in His best interest to destroy the Jews. Moshe only cared about what would bring more Honor to Hashem. 

‎A Jew’s job in this world is to bring honor to Hashem in all that he does, to show all around him how pleasant he is because he walks in the way of Hashem. There should be no doubt in the sincerity of his convictions like Moshe who, even though the Jews threw a party when they thought he was dead, still prayed to Hashem to save them. 

There was a story told about Rav Sholom Tzidkiyau who was one of the prominent Mohel's in Eretz Yisroel. He was once asked to come to Hertzelia on Shabbos to do a bris. He asked the parents when the child was born & was told that it was born after Shabbos started. All the preparations were made for the bris & then, on Friday, for some reason the Mohel asked again exactly what time the baby was born & was told that it was born thirteen minutes after shkia. Now, that is bein hashmushos; when a baby is born in that time, you cannot do a bris on Shabbos. When the Mohel told this to the parents, they were terribly upset. They had invited the whole neighborhood, rented a hall, got the best caterer & now they can’t have the bris? Finally, he convinced them to have the party & just call it the pre bris party.  Then, on Sunday, just do the bris with a minyan. 

That Shabbos was rainy, cold & windy. In the middle of the party on Shabbos, the Mohel, who was an older man, walked in soaked from head to toe, after walking an hour & a half to get to the party. They asked him why he had come since there was no bris.  He answered, “I didn't want anyone to think that I said you couldn't do the bris today because I was lazy & didn't want to walk. So I came all this way to demonstrate that the only reason we couldn't do the bris was that a baby born in that time cannot have a bris on Shabbos. It would desecrate the Shabbos!

This teaches us how careful we have to be to show that our actions are ‎L’shaim Shomaim & that all that we do is to bring honor to Hashem!