Dvar Torah on Parshat Ki Tisa

This week, in Parshat Ki Tissa, we read about the sin of the Golden Calf - a major event in Jewish thought and tradition. This horrible sin, coming, unbelievably, immediately after the Jews received the Torah from God on Mt. Sinai, has a somewhat prosaic cause; it all starts because Moshe is late: 'And the people saw that Moshe was late in coming down from the mountain, and the people congregated against Aharon, and said to him, 'arise, and make us a god who will go before us, for this Moshe, the man who took us up from the land of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him.' Aharon then collects gold from the Israelites and fashions for them a calf, which they recognize and worship as their god.

This seems very strange. If Moshe has gone missing, why not just promote Aharon himself, or Joshua, or someone else from among the people? Why this ridiculously regressive turning to a golden doll? What kind of substitute is that for a living, breathing person to lead the nation? What could they possibly have been thinking?

Perhaps the seemingly extra phrase used by the Israelites,"Moshe, the man who took us up from the land of Egypt", tells us something about their thought process. The Israelites know that Moshe's problem is precisely that he is a man; human, fallible, imperfect. The Israelites found this nerve-wracking in a leader. That he could be late, that something out of his control could happen to him, that he might just disappear altogether, was very difficult for them to accept. And so, in their nervousness about the human frailty of their leader, about the fact that he is a man, they turn to Aharon and ask him not to choose another man as their leader, but, rather, to make them an object, something which is not a man, and therefore can never be late, or fail, or let them down. After all, an object, unlike a person, simply is what it is. It will never disappoint you. Put it somewhere, that's where it stays. Put it somewhere else, that's where you'll find it next time you need it. Without a will, without humanity, without fallibility, an object, so the Israelites thought, will never let you down.

By choosing a golden calf and rejecting a person as their leader, the Israelites were recoiling from the imperfections inherent in humans, the messiness, and opting for the relative predictability, stability, and solidity of that which is simply material. Gold doesn't change, doesn't go anywhere, doesn't even rust. If people let you down, don't show up, seem to not be there when you need them, then just put your faith in an object, it will always be there for you. That's the sin of the Golden Calf.

Now, I don't want to sound too preachy, but looking at our consumerist culture, looking at all the stuff we have and need and "love" (and looking, at the same time, at the state of interpersonal relationships, at how difficult it has become to sustain them), one can't help but think about what this story might have to say to us today.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix