Ki Tisa is an iconic parsha, which begins with Moshe taking the census of the Jewish people by collecting a half a shekel from everyone and then as most of us know Moshe ascends to Har Sinai for forty days and forty nights and receives the torah. The Jewishpeople miscalculate the days and because Moshedoesn’treturn on the day they believed he would returnthey make a golden calf as a substitute for their leader and worship it. When Moshe descends from Har Sinai he sees what the Jews have done and drops the ten commandment, which were in his hands.  The Jews repent, Hashem forgives them, and Moshe re ascends up to har Sinai and rewrites the Ten Commandments. This week is also Purim If we think about it Parshat Ki Tisa and Purim have a direct correlation, in both stories the Jews fall to there lowest of lows, in the parsha the Jews worship the golden calf and in the Purim story the Jews go to Achashveroshs party. Yet in both of the stories the Jews are able to regain their faith, belief and trust in Hashem and rise from the lowest of lows to their normal high level of spirituality. In addition at the end of the parsha Moshe is a granted a vision of Hashem’sthirteen attributes of mercy, which recite on YomKippur. In the torah Yom Kippur is also known as Yom kippurim. Ki Purim= a day like Purim, where the Jews were at their lowest of lows and rose up to holiness. In both circumstances hashem forgave us and showed us mercy. It may sound un original or cliché to say that we can go to such a low place yet still rise, but seriously every day we either make stupid decision or face hard circumstances and it tends to way us down, to eat away at our faith and hope, we wonder how we can ever be content and how life could go back to normal? If we look at the Jews in Ki Tisa we literally were at the lowest we could be, we were about to get the torah, the symbol of our people, we were about to receive what we fought for in all those years of serving as slaves in Egypt yet we messed up and we automatically went to serving a golden calf, in the Purim story we went to a party in which Achashverosh mocked our people, where he used the vessels of the mishkan to have a good time, and because we were there it meant that we didn’t care about the mishkan we didn’t care again for the things of which we had fought so relentlessly for. So if the Jews at they’re literal lowest levels could be forgiven and rerise again to the normal god fearing lives they had lived before then the mistakes we make today and the challenges we face seem to be trivial. Rather then being weighed down by our challenges and our mistakes us as the Jewish people should repent and have faith that Hashem will forgive us just like he forgave the Jews by Har Sinai and just like he forgave the Jews in Shushan.