WHEN THE PEOPLE SAW THAT MOSES WAS SO LONG IN COMING DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN, THE PEOPLE GATHERED AGAINST AARON AND SAID TO HIM, "COME, MAKE US A GOD WHO SHALL GO BEFORE US, FOR THAT MAN MOSES, WHO BROUGHT US FROM THE LAND OF EGYPT - WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HIM."

 (Shemot 32:1)

 

When the people saw that Moses was so long [boshesh] - bo shesh sha'ot [six hours passed], and forty thousand [gentiles] who came up with Israel [from Egypt], including two Egyptian wizards assembled...and they all gathered against Aaron, ...that Moses had not yet again descended. On that very day, the fortieth day at the sixth hour, Aaron and Hur told them: "Now he descends from the mountain," but they did not see him, and some say that a Satan and showed them an image of his funeral bier from the mountain, [which is inferred] from their utterance for that man Moses. Hur immediately stood up and castigated them and they arose and killed him. When Aaron saw this he feared and began keeping them occupied with talk, and they told him Come, make us a god. It was all obvious what they wanted - He who spoke and brought the world into existence. Aaron told them: Take off the gold rings that are in your wives' ears - Aaron asked them to do something difficult that the women would resist, for they had seen all of the miracles and valor that the Holy One blessed be He had performed in Egypt, by the sea, and at Sinai. They went to the women, who stood against them and said, "God forbid that we should deny the Holy One blessed be He, Who performed all of these miracles and valor for us, by worshiping idols." When they [the men] saw that they would not listen to them - what is written [regarding their next deed]? It does not say all of the people took out the gold rings from their wives' ears, but rather: that were in their ears.

(Tanhuma Ki Tisa 19)

 

Come, make us a god who shall go before us - They surmised that Moses had died in an accident, and so they demanded of Aaron some image of "Moses" that would never be lost. Incidentally, their notion of basing their confidence regarding their future on the existence of Moses' image, and the superstition that a person is allowed to make for himself an image of "Moses," that he is even obliged to do so - these are the products of an imagination which is diametrically opposed to the truth of the foundation of Israel's faith regarding the essence of God and the reciprocal relations between God and human beings.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Shemot 32:1)

 

For my daughter-in-law, Orit and my son Yair

in honor of their wedding day.

Any stranger who encroaches shall be put to death

Haim Rubinstein

The Sages describe the relationship between the Holy One blessed be He and Israel as being intimate. The equation of I am my beloved and my beloved is mine serves as a central image; it resonates in prayer-customs and appears dozens of times in the Prophets, finding one of its loftiest expressions in the Song of Songs. It is the ultimate expression of closeness and deep mutual understanding that develops into a strong personal tie as the mutual relationship advances. Study and contemplation reveal complexities that strengthen the reciprocal bond, developing it to levels which influence the participants in the process. The Sages compare the Torah, which serves as the "umbrella" for the relationship, to an infinite sea. This expresses the growing force of the connection; the more one dives into it, the more one discovers deeper, infinite vistas. That which is seen from one vantage-point gains new significance and coloration when seen from a more distant vantage-point in the depths of the sea.

The relations between the Holy One blessed be He and Israel are intimate. They belong to man's inner space, between him and himself; they belong to his core. The bond built through prayer and study is woven from comprehension and inner awareness that reflect the soul's insights and the depth of intellectual understanding. It has no outward expression and is realized only in the human spirit. It is a conscious and internal relationship, which is expressed in the most intimate bond between man and his God, between the nation and the Holy One blessed be He. It is bought through toil and exertion, through processes of pondering and contemplation, prayer and thought, excitement and acceptance. It exists in the real dimension of spirit, in personal experience.

A quorum of people creates a congregation when they synchronize their expressions in prayer of closeness to the Holy One blessed be He. Individual bonds are woven together into a relationship between a people and its God - a relationship that reflects their inner existence more than it reflects the public sphere. The expression of Hebrew behavior reflects their forming, ever-changing experience. This behavior is directed by the internalization of values and ideals that almost completely lack outward, earthly expression. All of the princesses' riches are within. There is no significance to material expressions. Material language is unable to express the feelings and understandings that lie at the foundations of this bond. Existing images are limited in their capacity to contain lofty ideas.

An entire nation labors and acts by the light of its connection with an abstract God. He is inconceivable; He lacks bodily form; it is impossible to imagine Him, He cannot be described; His places of worship are free of images.

Images are instruments of the imagination. Between abstraction and conceptualization stands an instrument for the abstraction of ideas and the processing of that which cannot be contained by the imagination. Concretization is a similar tool - it makes the abstract tangible, as a visual language that uses familiar images as its words, and artful design as sentences. It is a language in which ideas are embodied in forms which serve as instruments for expressing thoughts and world-views. Abstract apprehension and the ability to abstract require tangible mediation. It requires the language of clear and tangible forms. A familiar image makes a lofty idea tangible, and stands in for it.

The Israelites viewed Moses as their mediator with God. The quick transition from being an enslaved people to receiving the Torah - a Torah that signifies the ultimate liberation from subjugation to humans - did not allow enough time for the inherently slow process of insight into and internalization of supreme values and attachment to them. And then: When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain ...we do not know what has happened to him (Shemot 32:1). They did not yet know the language. The mediator, the translator was gone. They lost their grip on the new bond, the bond which had not yet been consolidated or internalized.

This he took from them and cast in a mold, and made it into a molten calf. And they exclaimed: "This is your god, O Israel who brought you out of the land of Egypt! (Shemot 32:4). They made themselves a masekha ["molten" alternatively: "mask"], for they could not see without a mediator. They expressed what they understood in language familiar to them, in the international language of idolatrous forms. In their moment of loss, in their bewilderment, they grasped onto the familiar form, which was known to them from their past, from their earlier environment. They grasped onto the familiar in order to renew the lost connection with the new concepts that were still external to their mindset. They retreated to the world from which they had been liberated.

Spoken language bears a certain character. The timbre of the syllables and the tone of the words are appropriate to the concepts they relay. New worlds require new expressive tools that are capable of describing them. It is difficult to capture unfamiliar regions with expressive tools belonging to the old world. When language is alien to the concepts it needs to express, it deceives its speakers and leads them to false insights. When a tool is not appropriate to its task, it becomes a source of interference and disruption.

Such is the essence of idolatry - avodah zarah [alien worship]. It is alien in that it is a different language, a foreign language. It is an instrument that cannot be used in this context. A language that does not allow for the inner, intimate bond, since it is a language that is entirely devoted to external sensation, to the world of visible forms. Its world can be felt but not internalized, nor abstracted, nor developed spiritually.

The golden calf was a creature born of the unknown, made of the most material of materials - gold, with which any other material on earth can be purchased. The golden calf is the most concrete expression of the language of the tangible, the language of forms. It is the diametrical opposite of the abstract, the spiritual, of that which exists in the imagination. It is the exact opposite of the intimate bond; it is the externalization of that bond. It is a foreign language - a foreign cult - avodah zarah.

The breaking of the Tablets symbolizes the breaking of the new language. Thereupon Moses turned and went down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact...the writing was God's writing, incised upon the tablets...It is the sound of song I hear!...and he saw the calf and the dancing, and Moses became enraged and he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it; he ground it to powder... (Shemot 32:15-20).

"For it says harut [incised] do not read harut, but rather herut [freedom]" (Eruvin 54a). Instead of freedom, a strange noise - the noise of song, the sound of servitude are heard. The scene that is revealed makes void the tablets upon which the words of God were inscribed - God's writing. The calf's language and God's language cannot coexist. Only grinding the idol into fine powder - eliminating its tangible form - can make room for the new concepts. The Tabernacle is a composite of the concepts.

They shall make me a Sanctuary that I may dwell within it - When was Moses told this passage regarding the Tabernacle? On Yom Kippur itself, and this even though the passage dealing with the Tabernacle precedes the story of the calf. R. Yehudah beRav Shalom said: There is no chronological order in the Torah, for it is said her course meanders you shall not know it (Proverbs 5) - the paths and passages of the Torah wander. How do we know that they shall make Me a Sanctuary was said on Yom Kippur? Because Moses ascended [Mount Sinai] on the sixth of Sivan and spent forty days and forty nights [there], and another forty and yet another forty, that gives one hundred and twenty, so you find that they received atonement on Yom Kippur. On that very day the Holy One blessed be He told him [Moses] They shall make me a Sanctuary that I may dwell among them, in order that all the nations would know that they had received atonement for the sin of the calf. That is why it is called Mishkan ha'Edut [the Tabernacle of witness], for it testifies to all the world's inhabitants that the Holy One blessed be He dwells in your sanctuary. The Holy One blessed be He said: Let the gold of the Tabernacle come and atone for the gold from which the calf was formed, for it is written regarding it [i.e., regarding the gold of the calf]: the people took off all the gold rings, etc. therefore, they are atoned for by gold [of the Tabernacle:] and this is the gift that you shall take from them: gold. The Holy One blessed be He said: I will bring healing to you u'mimakotayikh arpa'ekh [and cure you of your wounds; alternatively and cure you by that which wounds you] (Jeremiah 30). (Tanhuma, Terumah 8)

Haim Rubinstein works in education

 

 

The Breaking of the Tablets

A soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing... (Shemot 32: 19): Rabbi Hilkiyah said in the name of Rabbi Aha: "From here we learn that a person should not judge on the basis of an assumption."

(J. Ta'anit 4:5)

 

Rabbi Meir said: Moses did not break the tablets [of his own volition] , but was directed to do so by the All Powerful, as is written Asher shibarta [Literally which you broke]: [Understand it thus] Ye-yasher kochacha sheh-shibarta [More power to you] for having broken them.

(Avot DeRabbi Natan, 2:3)

 

When Moshe saw how they had sinned by making the calf, he said: How can I give them the tablets? I will be obligating them to observe serious commandments and I will be condemning them to death by divine power [when they transgress those commandments], for it is inscribed upon them You shall have no other gods before Me. He turned to go back. Seventy elders saw him, and ran after him; he held the top of the tablet, and they held the top of the tablet. Moshe was stronger than all of them, as is written (Devarim 34): And in all the strong hand and in all the great, awe-inspiring acts that Moshe did before the eyes of all Israel.

(Avot DeRabbi Natan 2:3)

 

Saw the calf and the dancing: around it. Another says: The writing on the Tablets disappeared, so he broke them.

And some say that God commanded him to break them. It seems most reasonable to me that it happened as it is written, that he was zealous for God and broke them in his anger.

And I have already told you about the allegory of "the husband of youth" in the beginning of the parasha [i.e., God is the husband of Israel in her youth, the sin of the golden calf was Israel's infidelity, etc.]. The Tablets were the marriage contract, their shattering the tearing-up of the contract.

(Ibn Ezra's Short Commentary on Shemot 32:19)

 

There is no Holiness in Stones or Objects

The point is that the Torah and faith are what is essential for the Israelite nation. All of the types of holiness, [that of] the Land of Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple, they are but details and branches of the Torah, and they are sanctified through the Torah's holiness. Therefore, there is no distinction between different places in regard to matters of the Torah, and it is the same both within and without the Land of Israel. Similarly, it [the Torah] applies in the same way to both the loftiest of men - Moses, the man of God - and to the lowliest of men...Do not imagine, God forbid, that the Temple and the Tabernacle are intrinsically holy objects! God dwells among His sons, and if they, to a man, have transgressed the Covenant (Hosea 6:7), all holiness is removed from them, and they become like profane vessels "intruders came and desecrated it." Titus entered the Holy of Holies with a prostitute and was not harmed (Gittin 56b) because its holiness had been removed. More than that - the Tablets - the writing of God - are not holy in themselves, but only for you. When the bride fornicated under her canopy [i.e., the Israelites committed the sin of the golden calf], they [the tablets] became as mere pottery shards - they lacked any intrinsic holiness - they are only [holy] for you when you observe [that which is written on] them. The conclusion is that there is nothing in the world to which holiness can be attributed and which can be an object of worship and submission, except the Holy One blessed be He, Who is holy in His necessary existence, and to whom praise and worship is fitting. All of the other holy things are [holy] only in respect of the commandment which the Creator commanded to build the Tabernacle in order to offer sacrifices within it to the blessed Lord alone. As for the Cherubs - God forbid [that you be confused]! They are not worshipped, there is no [such] thought or matter regarding them. Rather, it is like a sea-captain who sets up a flagpole to know the way the wind is blowing. Similarly, the blessed Creator made signs and markers to indicate that Israel is doing the will of the Omnipresent when [it is indicated by the fact that] the Cherubs face each other.

(Meshekh Hokhma Shemot 32:19)

 

The Revelation at Sinai and the Sin of the Calf

Is it possible that the Children of Israel - only forty days after the Revelation at Sinai, while the words I am and You shall have no gods still echo in their ears - are seeking other gods?!

It appears that the Torah wished to teach us, by presenting a number of examples, that indeed, such things can occur. The assumption that people who stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai are incapable of again sinking into ignorance, into foolishness, into the abomination of idolatry - such an assumption is basically fallacious...

Overt miracles - one-time wondrous happenings - do not change a person, his personality, his habits. They may strongly impress him temporarily, but they do not cut him off from his world, his accomplishments, his past, his lifetime habits.

(From Studies In The Book of Shemot, Nehama Leibowitz z'l)

 

The First and Second Tablets

The first tablets were shattered because they were given with noise. However, regarding the second tablets, of which it was said and no man shall ascend with you, endured. Even Jerusalem was destroyed because of this [evil] eye, the city of which they called perfect in beauty.

(Yalkut Shimoni Bereishit 42, from the middle of section148)

 

and no man shall ascend with you: Since the first were given with cheers, and noise, and a large assembly, the evil eye had power over them. Nothing is better than modesty!

(Rashi Shemot 34:3)

 

 

 

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