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Shabbat Parah/Parshat Ki Tissa

Unearned generosity

Please. Anna. Much more than simply a polite way to open a request, the Hebrew word for please, anna, appears only twice throughout the entire Torah. First, when Joseph’s brothers plead with him (Gen. 50:17) to bear their sin, forgiving their malicious actions against him so many years earlier. And again in this week’s Sedra following the sin of the Golden Calf, we hear the word ‘please’ anna (Ex 32:31), as Moses asks God to bear the iniquity and forgive their blasphemous idolatry. Both instances of the word anna share in common is the desire to “bear a sin” for which there are no grounds for defense. There is no effort to persuade, to exonerate, or to excuse. Guilt is clear. And a wronged party – Joseph in Genesis and God here – is asked, perhaps as a gesture of pure grace, to bear the offense. Saying anna, please, transforms the ‘redressing of a wrong’ into a potential moment of ‘unearned generosity.’

Twice in the Torah we glimpse the possibility of rectification as one in which responsibility is entirely assumed, so entirely in fact that the gift of “bearing the sin” is possible. Clearly this is not the norm in Jewish tradition. But the notion that Judaism has such a rich culture of teshuva (responsibly rectifying wrongs) that can make it more than a ‘correctional system.’ Moses’ anna suggests that atonement also admits of the potential for forgiving moments of glowing humanity. As rare and distinctive as such moments were in the Torah, so may they find a way into our lives on occasion as well.

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