Accountable for Building Sacred Community

I have always wondered about the narrative that precedes and follows the incident of the Golden Calf.  In Parashiot Terumah and Tetzaveh we find all of these instructions about how to build the ritual objects of the tabernacle. In modern terms, we are building the hardware for the system.  We learn about the crafting of the Menorah. We hear rich detail about the cloth and the bells around the hem of the priest’s garments. 

In Parashat Ki Tissa we learn that Moses has gone up to the mountain to get the law that will help provide the ethical software to bring the holy space to life. At the base of the mountain, however, the people are falling apart. They are unraveling. The people get anxious when Moses is gone for 40 days. Moses’ brother, Aaron, wants harmony. He is a people pleaser. He wants to quell their unrest. He agrees to make a golden calf to provide a tangible object of their lost leader (God and/or Moses). Aaron creates a mold to hold the outpouring of their gifts of fear. They react to his gesture by throwing their gold into the fire.

Moses reacts as well. When he hears the singing and sees the dancing around the calf he breaks the tablets of the law. The people are rebuked. Moses and God step back from the precipice and process the event.

When confronted by Moses, Aaron tries to remove his fingerprints from the crime scene.  On the retelling of the story, Aaron says that the people just threw their gold into the fire and “out came the calf.” He does not admit that he framed the situation, used his craft and made the mold.

God assures Moses that he will temper his anger. He will be “compassionate, gracious and slow to anger” (Ex 34:6). He commits that he will “go in their midst,” despite this betrayal, as long as they uphold the covenant (34:10-11). Good news!

Then, surprisingly, in the next parasha after Ki Tissa (Vayakhel), we pick up more details about the building of the tabernacle. “Why the bookend parashiot about building the tabernacle?” I wonder. My rabbi suggested, that as often happens, the texts may not be linear. He explains how the twelfth-century French biblical commentator Rashi argued for a different timeline:

Rashi’s Timeline

• The people mold a Golden Calf in Ki Tissa.
• God chooses to be compassionate. The people were weak and got poor direction.
• Now God provides detailed instructions for the structure in Parashiot T’rumah and Tetzaveh.
• In Parashat Vayakhel, God calls on the talents and gifts of the people.
• God chooses gifted leaders like Betzalel to build the tabernacle according to a plan.
• We hear about how the clothing of priests were constructed and how the tabernacle is built. We learn how the plan was completed.

The Sulam Accountability Plan

This now makes sense to me. In our Sulam Accountability Plan we follow a similar timeline from reflection to action:

Reflection

• We make an honest assessment about the ways we have failed to be a team with shared values, covenants and agreements. In the past we may have operated with unclear roles and expectations (like the Israelites in the story) which may have led to conflict. In the past, when things went badly leaders may have thrown up their hands and said, “We don’t know how our board became so contentious and dysfunctional” (i.e. “Out came the calf.”)

Action

• We design a set of structures that will help us move toward sacred team work.
• We call upon the gifts of all of those at the table to comment on what they expect from themselves and each other.
• We create a board expectations guide and then put these principles into action.  
• We conduct a self-assessment about how leaders are addressing these expectations.
• We make the expectations a living covenant by referring to them throughout the year.
• We provide them to the nominating committee so that we can ensure that new leaders are also committing to the covenantal board values.

Molding Sacred Teams

Sulam leaders take responsibility to mold their leaders into a team through reflection and action. In this series of stories we can contrast the leadership of Aaron and Betzalel. When the people complain, Aaron just reacts and gives in. Like many of our leaders, he enables the people. He buys some peace for a few hours. The cost for the people and their mission is high. In Rashi’s reading, Betzalel gets a chance to harness the gifts of the people and put them to work in an intentional step-by-step process. This process will allow them to contribute to the creation of sacred space for a committed leadership - a place God will dwell.