What Is Your Golden Calf?

What is the “Golden Calf” that you worship? In this week’s Torah portion of Ki Tissa, we learn about the calf that Aaron created and the Jews worshiped, only 40 days after they received the Torah. Lest you might think that idolatry is a sin of the past, the Talmud explains that every generation since the exodus from Egypt carries a trace of the sin of the golden calf. It seems we are all idol worshipers, albeit in more subtle ways.

The Midrash tells us that the Jews feared that Moses had died on the mountain and that they felt an immediate need to replace him. Although they pledged their allegiance to G-d, they wanted an authority figure they could see. In their infantile state, after so many years of slavery, they saw Moses as a G-dlike figure who would answer all their needs. It would be years before they could take some responsibility for their own lives, assert their independence, and rely on their own moral and spiritual compass. Thus, the Golden Calf provided for them a solid god that they could see and set in the center of their camp. They danced and celebrated, secure in their confidence that their idol would answer their need for fulfillment and clarity.

Don’t we all create our own idols? We put our passion and energy in the people, ideas, or objects that we think will fulfill us. It takes great spiritual maturity to learn to live with uncertainty, to develop an ongoing relationship with G-d that will grow and wane. Like that first generation of Jews, we have to let go of our need for absolutes. True spiritual fulfillment comes from listening, not from seeing. You cannot point to the truth; you must hear it, feel it, and be ready for it to change as you grow. Judaism teaches that sacred space is not found in one place, but rather in relationships, between man and G-d, between husband and wife, between parent and child.

There is a fascinating Midrash that suggests that Moses broke the Tablets because he saw the passion with which the Jews were worshiping their idol. He feared that when they failed to find total fulfillment from it, they would try to make the Tablets themselves into another idol. They would attempt to transfer their need to submit in absolute terms to the Torah. In the process, they would abdicate their responsibility towards G-d, the need to become a partner with G-d in creating light. It would take them years to understand that the Jewish G-d is not found in the total submission of an angel, but in the sacred interplay between human achievement and divine inspiration.

Rashi explains that the Jews were mistaken in thinking that Moses was a day late in coming down the mountain. They began counting in the morning but a Jewish day starts at sundown. This is both a Halachic and philosophical reality. Our Jewish sensibility tells us that the light of day must begin with the darkness of night. True spiritual peace comes only with struggle and yearning. Ask someone who has struggled with a crisis of faith or worked hard to introduce another mitzvah into his/her life. This is the difficult work from which light emerges. Turning to idols, whatever they may be, is only a temporary solution for the human need to reach beyond ourselves and find the divine.