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Back to Question of the Week Q: Hello Dear Rabbi! I was wondering how the Jews who were present at Moses' delivering the 10 commandments could have even thought to have built a golden calf to worship - wouldn't what they had just been through reinforced their commitment and faith in God? They had just been witness to the God's miracles: parting of the Red Sea, the various plagues to Egypt and most importantly their release from slavery from the Egyptians. Did these miracles really occur (in such a grand fashion) or maybe they occurred like 'miracles' of today do - in a less dramatic fashion, and where one has to weigh up whether it was "good fortune"/ coincidence or God's intervention that something really good happens to us? Cheers, Walt |
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A: Cheers to you, Walt, for bringing up such a classic dilemma in Torah study! Let's work backwards through your question. First, regarding the miracles, well, I don't know what actually happened, I wasn't there! (Well, OK, it's possible that I was there in a previous life, but in this incarnation I don't have any of those memories.) As a religious person, I would not categorically rule out the possibility of dramatic miracles, but as an intellectually minded liberal rabbi, I would be more inclined towards your second theory, that the way history played itself out came to be regarded as "miraculous" by the Israelite people. This is not to say that God's hand, as it were, was not involved, but merely that we don't have much evidence for large scale exceptions to the rules of nature (like seas splitting in half). The most important thing - the most miraculous thing, really- is that God was at work in the hearts of the people, giving them hope and allowing them to dream of their freedom, even sustaining them with the courage to make a long journey towards a homeland. That's a miracle I can, in fact, believe in. Now, regarding your second question, about the Golden Calf, let's look at the relevant texts from Exodus 32. After the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, Moshe apparently goes back up the mountain, and then things get edgy: Meanwhile, the people began to realize that Moses was taking a long time to come down from the mountain. They gathered around Aaron and said to him, 'Make us an oracle to lead us. We have no idea what happened to Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt.' 'Take the rings off the ears of your wives and children,' replied Aaron. 'Bring them to me.' All the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took [the rings] from the people, and had someone form [the gold] in a mold, casting it into a calf. [Some of the people began to] say, 'This, Israel, is your god, who brought you out of Egypt.' When Aaron saw [this], he built an altar before [the calf]. . . . . (Exodus 32:1-5) Now, what's interesting here is the word that this translation (New International Version) translates as "oracle." This is the word elohim, which ordinarily means "God" in the Bible- i.e., The One God, the God of Creation and Covenant- but it can also mean "deity" more generically. Note the same word just a few verses later, when the Israelites see the calf and say "This, Israel, is your god, who brought you out of Egypt." Many of the commentators have the same problem you have- they can't believe that any reasonably intelligent Israelites would believe that the idol they just made is the Deity Who brought them out of slavery. If the Israelites couldn't have, or didn't, believe that the calf was God, then what did they think they were doing when they made the calf? One medieval commentator, Ibn Ezra, makes a very convincing case that the people weren't seeking a replacement for God, but for Moshe. This argument is supported by the fact that elohim is used to mean "divine beings" even in Exodus itself, in 20:3, for example. So it's quite possible that the people thought that Moshe was some kind of demigod or angel, who lead them out of slavery, and when he didn't appear right on time, they felt the need to make another kind of intermediary idol to replace him. (See also Exodus 20, where the people beg Moshe to be their intermediary with God after the giving of the Ten Commandments.) Now, this doesn't necessarily reduce the theological mistake of the Golden Calf, but it does put it in a different light. Perhaps the people were not trying to replace God, per se, but couldn't yet comprehend the basic idea of monotheism. After all, in Egypt the king was regarded as a kind of god-man, and maybe they put Moshe in the same category. To this very day, certain nations or groups of people still create "cults of personality" where their leader becomes more than human to his or her followers. Then again, maybe they were just really, really thick-headed, and didn't comprehend the meaning of the Exodus at all! NJL |
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