Next week when we gather for Shabbat morning we have a glimpse into the psyche of the newly liberated, newly committed people of Israel. There is a small break in the long discussion of the building of the Mishkan, the structure they will carry with them that acts as a sanctuary for the Divine presence. In this return to the people we find them asking for a leader (Ex. 32:1): 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 fellow Moses—the man who brought us from the land of Egypt—we do not know what has happened to him.” This is such a curious statement. We can interpret the desire and needs of the people in several ways.
One of my teachers, Rabbi Forman, suggests that all along, the people are having trouble distinguishing Moses from the Divine. Or better perhaps, they are equating Moses with the Divine. We can see how this is possible – Moses does all the acting during the plagues. He is also pitted against Pharaoh, who was believed to be divine. If you reread the hardness of heart and additional plague sequence as two divinities fighting it out, you can imagine the people feeling that Moses is more powerful than their previous spiritual leader. This can be compounded by the invisibility and possibly even inaudible nature of the Divine on the trip to Sinai. There is a tendency to give all the ‘active’ roles to Moses – splitting the sea, getting water, providing manna and instructions for its use. If we want to take this line of thought, then the god they are asking for is someone like Moses, who has mysteriously disappeared for too long. The odd thing is that they also acknowledge his humanity.
What if they are asking for something different – not a replacement, but a guide? Moses has been long on the mountain, too long for their comfort, and they are deeply aware of the dangers of approaching the Divine. Maybe what they are asking is for something that can take them up the mountain SAFELY to go and find Moses. Bear with me as we follow through with this idea. If so, perhaps the composition of the calf is important – the golden earrings. Where would the Israelites have gotten these but from their Egyptian captors? These may be the remnants of the wealth not given to build the temple, and note that they are set at the ears. What have the people taken or kept for themselves from the treasure of their trial? The metaphor points to enriching the capacity to listen. Aaron is asking them to follow their impulse, and to give over the capacity to hear in favor of the capacity to see, and the calf is primarily a visual thing. Is this not the way of babies? We watch them intimately, their growth and sleep patterns, waiting for the adult to show over the horizon of childhood. I’m suggesting that the lack for the people was exactly this gift given to every nurturer, the opportunity to care for something that will lead them into the unknown. In requesting the calf, they are asking to participate in the experience of the future.
Ironically, the experience is being created for them on the mountain, but in the form of space for the ineffable rather than something concrete. Perhaps this is why they must then eat the ground up gold of the calf – to say that there is no way to envision the Divine, but that there is a spark of gold in every person. We are indeed better at presence than at absence. We like our loved ones close, cell phone contact regularly, love expressed in myriad ways. It is harder to envision love so huge or so small that it does not have a connection with the reality of sight and touch, but rather with sound and inner knowledge. Yet that is what we are called upon to do as Jews – to see the Divine in sound, in hints, at the edges of the vision. Thus the calf is destroyed, and a new set of commandments issued – the same sound, but a tangible substance – stone, hand carved: G!d’s attempt to combine the need for a visible leader with the audible leadership of moral imperative. So we too, move into the mystery of the unknown as we try to connect to the Divine within and without.