There
are times we fail to live up to the standards of those we care about or to our
own. It would be nice if these can all end in complete redemption, is that how
it works? Let us examine the case of the Golden Calf.
The
context for this lapse is the overwhelming experience of a downtrodden people
being rescued and embraced by the most magnificent being. The exodus of the
Israelites from Egypt followed by the experience at Mt. Sinai has been compared
to a “great king showing great intense love to a lowly, despised man, who is
dirty and sitting in the garbage. The King goes down to him with all his
ministers and lifts him up from the garbage and brings him into the inner rooms
of the palace…and hugs and kisses him and forms an attachment with him of
“spirit to spirit” and real closeness”[1].
Part of what God wants is an exclusive
relationship with this people. But they go ahead and make a golden calf.
A
member of the Jewish community in Sydney told me about his conversations with
Muslims in Lebanon who seemed to suggest that the Jews were rejected by God and
replaced with the adherents of Islam. One of my religious, knowledgeable,
Muslim friends tells me that this not what Islam teaches, while an Imam I know explained to me that there is a view that the covenant was conditional, was not an all time covenant, and was broken by the Jews later on". There are also
arguments about whether Christians should see the covenant with Israel as
having been superseded[2].
Pope John Paul II was of the view that the original covenant is current and
continues to be binding. Still, the question is an interesting one. Can a
relationship recover after a great betrayal?
A
careful reading of the exact wording of God’s rage after the incident provides
some clues. “And the Lord said to
Moses: "… your people that you have brought up from the land of Egypt have
acted corruptly. They have
quickly turned away from the path that I have commanded them; they have made
themselves a molten calf! … Now
leave Me, and My anger will be kindled against them so that I will
annihilate them, and I will make you into a great nation.[3]"
One
the one hand God is distancing himself from the Jews. They are no longer God’s
people; they are now the people of Moses[4],
“your people”. He also seems quite open
to eliminating the Jews and replacing them with a new people to be descended
from Moses.
Yet
there are a surprising few words in which God tells Moses “leave me”, as if
saying; let me destroy them. Was Moses holding on to God that He needs Moses to
let go?! This is compared to a king who was angry with his son and took him
into a small room and began seeking to kill him. The king then begins screaming
from the room, leave me to beat him. The prince’s teacher is standing outside.
He thinks to himself, the king is in there alone with the prince why is saying
leave me? Surely it is because the king wants me to go in to appease him about
his son. This is what God was hinting to Moses, immediately Moses began to ask
for mercy[5]. God was “opening the door”[6]
and implying that this decision was negotiable and that “the matter depended on
him, if he will pray they will not be annihilated[7]”.
We are taught that Moses was
rewarded for this prayer, meriting a “shining face” in this world from what God
will give the righteous in the future, in the Messianic era[8].
We
can more clearly see the hint that Moses’ prayer would be accepted if we
compare this text with a similar text[9].
God tells the prophet Jeremiah. “And
you, pray not on behalf of this people, neither lift up a cry nor prayer, and
entreat Me not for I will not hear you[10]”. No ambiguity in that verse, in contrast
with ours where God is almost hinting to Moses that his prayer will be accepted.
When I think of God’s rage from a Chasidic
perspective I think of it (at least in a sense) as a bit of theatre[11]. God chooses to express
great rage so that the people understand the seriousness of their lapse. I
would see this as consistent with the following teaching about anger. “A person should train himself not to anger
even on a matter regarding which anger is appropriate. If a person wants to instil
awe upon his children and family[12],
or if he is an officer of the community and wants to anger at the community
members in order that they mend their ways, he should only feign anger in their
presence in order to castigate them, but his mind should be composed within. He
should act as one impersonating an [angry] man while not being angry himself[13]”.
I tried this once, when as a Yeshiva student I was
responsible for a performance at a Sydney Public School the morning after some
very late night Purim alcohol fuelled celebrations. One of the guys with a
minor part told he was going back to sleep. I did not really need him, but I
knew the guy I really needed to play the king in the other dorm room could hear
what was going on. I could not let this seem ok. I screamed as if I really lost
it. When I went into the other room, the other guy said, ok, ok, I am getting
up. Cool, I thought, that went to plan.
Regardless of how angry God really was, and putting
aside the view that the Golden Calf was not actually idol worship[14], the bottom line is that we
see the Israelites bouncing back from a dramatic betrayal of the 2nd
of the Ten Commandments. God’s reconciliation with the Israelites is also
illustrated by God’s instruction to them to create a house for him. It is
interpreted as a testimony to all the nations that they were granted atonement
for the sin of the calf[15].
Still, despite the reconciliation after the
Golden Calf, it is not forgotten. Whenever the Jews would sin in the future,
God would remember a little of this sin, (1/24th) together with the
other sins[16].
This reminds me of the story about the nails in the fence.
There once
was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and
told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the
back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence.
Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of
nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to
hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.
The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there[17].
Conclusion: Reconciliation is possible even after some serious lapses. In some cases the scars that remain are still serious. This should bring us hope about the problems we already have as individuals, groups and nations, and caution about inflicting harm that might never completely heal.
[1] Tanya
chapter 46
[2] I do not
have a lot of knowledge about this complex issue of supersession, but it seems
worth exploring
[3] Exodus
32:7-10
[4] Midrash
Tanaaim 177, Pesikta Drav Kahana 16:128
[5] Midrash
Shemot Rabba 42
[6] Midrash
Tanchuma 22f
[7] Rashi
[8] Seder
Eliyahu Rabba 4
[9] Rabbi
Avraham the son of Maimonides, cited in Torah Shlaima vol 21, p.103
[10]
Jeremiah 7:16
[11] This is
based on my understanding of the concept of Tzimtzum
– divine “contraction” in Chabad Chasidic teaching, God is compared to a father
who wishes to play with his young son, so he takes on a playful persona and
plays with the child. While the parent is present with the child in and in his
role, this is very different to the way the father is essentially
[12] This
text was written over 800 years ago in a particular social context, family
dynamics have fortunately moved on from then
[13] Maimonides,
Yad Hachazakah, Laws of De'os – 2:3, translation from http://www.torah.org/learning/mlife/ch2law3c.html
[14] Bchor
Shor
[15] Midrash
Tanchuma Teruma 8
[16] Rashi
to Exodus 32:34, Talmud Sanhedrin 102a
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