CrashCourse12

Aish HaTorah:
THE BIBLE AS HISTORY

Crash Course in Jewish History -- Part 12

THE GOLDEN CALF

By Rabbi Ken Spiro

* * *

Only .1% of the Jews participated in worshipping the golden calf. Yet
God’s reaction makes it clear he is blaming the whole nation. What's going
on here?

The day for this infamous event is forever marked in the Hebrew calendar --
17th of Tammuz. This would be the day later in history on which the walls
of Jerusalem would be breached by the Babylonians and the Romans prior
to the destruction of both the first and the second Temple.

It is very important to analyze what happened with the golden calf and why
the Torah criticizes the Jewish people so harshly for this sin. And indeed
what is revealed here about how God views the Jewish people.

After the greatest national revelation experience in human history when the
whole nation hears God, Moses goes up the mountain and comes down 40
days later to find a group dancing around an idol.

Now if I’d had an encounter with the Infinite Creator of the Universe
speaking to me and I heard Him say “I am God, don’t worship anything
else,” I don’t think I would be stupid enough to be jumping around a golden
cow. So what’s going on in this story?

This is a classic case of knowing how to correctly read the text of the
Bible. When I say correctly read, I mean, ideally in Hebrew but certainly
with the commentators because there’s an oral explanation going along
with the simple, very brief description in the text.

When Moses came down the mountain, were all 3 million Jews dancing
around a golden calf? No. The Torah in Exodus 32:28 says it was only
about 3 thousand people, mostly the mixed multitude of individuals who left
with the Jews because they were so impressed by what went on with the
Ten Plagues.

That means only .1% of the Jews participated and 99.9% of the Jews did
nothing wrong. Yet God’s reaction makes it clear he is blaming the whole
nation.

AN EXACTING STANDARD

God holds the Jews to a very high standard because they have a unique
responsibility in human history. The world won’t get perfected without the
Jews and if, God forbid, the Jews blow it, all of humanity, not just the
Jewish people, will be doomed. Therefore, the Bible uses hyper-critical
language to bring home some important principles:

1) According to your level of knowledge is your level of responsibility.
The
mistakes of people in positions of power have huge consequences.

2) According to your level of responsibility is your level of
accountability.
The greater you are, the bigger the impact of your decisions, therefore you
must be held to an extremely high standard.

The Jewish people had been given the responsibility for the world at Mount
Sinai, and these principles explain the criticism that God levels against
Jews and why it is so super-strong.

We also learn here another fundamental idea of the Torah -- that every Jew
is a guarantor for every other Jew. The nation of Israel is a “body” and the
individual Jews are like cells in this body. If part of the body does
something wrong, the whole body is held accountable.

Judaism teaches you’re either part of the problem or you’re part of the
solution, and that you have a legal obligation to be part of the solution.
Being a by-stander is not an option.

This issue repeats itself over and over again in the Bible and throughout
Jewish history.

That’s why when a small group of Jews does something wrong and the rest
of the nation doesn’t stop them, all are held accountable.

THE AFTERMATH

Moses spends a lot of time back in the camp dealing with the aftermath of
the golden calf debacle. He smashes the idol, gathers loyal Levites around
him and executes those responsible. (As you might have noticed the Bible
is not a liberal book. While it is full of the merciful acts of God, it
also
emphasizes that there are serious consequences for wrongdoing.)

He goes back up the mountain on the 1st of Elul -- Rosh Chodesh Elul.
Elul is the month before Rosh Hashana, before the 1st of Tishrei, the
beginning of the Jewish year. He spends forty days on the mountain again.
He comes back down with the second set of tablets, and this is a clear
sign that God has forgiven the Jewish people. What’s the day Moses
comes back down? Yom Kippur.

All Jewish holidays are tied to specific historical events. Each of these
events implants within the holiday a certain spiritual power which can be
accessed.

>From Yom Kippur we get the spiritual power of teshuva -- of repentance, of
returning to closeness with God and repairing relationships with our fellow
human beings.

As a sign of forgiveness God tells Moses He will dwell among the Jewish
people, and He instructs how His “home” is to be built.

“They shall make for Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them.”
(Exodus 25:8)

Following this command, the Torah spends many chapters giving intricate
descriptions just exactly how to build this portable sanctuary.

The sanctuary consisted of a large tent -- called a “Tent of the Meeting” or
Tabernacle -- surrounded by a courtyard. Inside the courtyard was an altar
where sacrifices were offered. In the tent were two rooms. The outer room
held a seven-branched candelabra, a table with twelve loaves of bread on it,
and an incense altar. The inner -- called the Holy of Holies -- held the
Ark
of the Covenant.

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

Anyone who has seen Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark has
seen a pretty good replica of what the Ark looked like. It was a wooden box
covered with gold and it was decorated on top with two small statues of
winged cherubs facing each other.

The commentators say that the two cherubs -- a boy and a girl -- normally
faced each other but when the Jewish people were not getting along with
God they would be turned away from each other.

Inside the Ark were the two sets of the Ten Commandments -- the broken
set inscribed by God, and the second set inscribed by Moses.

The whole structure -- called the Mishkan in Hebrew -- was not a portable
synagogue or a museum. It was a tool to be used by the Jewish people
individually and as a nation, to connect to God.

When it was completed, the Torah relates that the “clouds of glory” -- a
manifestation of God’s infinite presence called the Shechina -- would
literally rest on the sanctuary as a tangible sign that God was with the
Jewish people.

When the sanctuary stood, people would feel holiness in the world in a
way we can’t begin to understand today.

Because we don’t have it, only 369 of the 613 commandments are
applicable and most of those are “don’ts.” Most of “do’s” are focused on
how to use the Mishkan to connect to God. The loss of that structure has
tremendous implications for the Jews’ ability to relate to God and fulfill
their
mission as a people.

This sanctuary -- which was readily dis-assembled and assembled -- the
Jews carried around in the wanderings in the desert for 40 years. Then,
when they came into the land of Israel they assembled it in four different
locations. After David became king and made Jerusalem his capital, he
planned to build a permanent structure just outside the city, atop Mount
Moriah where Abraham had offered Isaac as a sacrifice to God and where
Jacob had dreamt of a ladder to heaven. But he never got to do it.

Finally, in 825 BCE, his son King Solomon built the first Temple there, and
it became the permanent sanctuary until it was destroyed by the
Babylonians in 422 BCE. At this time the Ark of the Covenant disappeared
never to be seen again. (We will discuss the speculations where it might
be hidden when we reach that point in history.)

Seventy years after the first destruction and exile, the Jews returned and
the Temple was rebuilt and then again destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE,
never to be rebuilt again. The golden Dome of the Rock, which is there
now, was built on the site in the 691 CE and that Moslem building has
stood there ever since.

But we are getting ahead of the story. At this juncture in time, the Jewish
people have experienced a national revelation. They’ve been given the
Torah, and built the sanctuary for God to dwell among them. Now they are
ready to enter the Promised Land.

NEXT: THE TRAGEDY OF THE SPIES

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