Rav Yitzchak Karo prefaces his commentary on the events of the golden calf, with two questions: ‘First: how could Bnei Israel make the calf, and forget all that Hashem had done for them - the ten plagues, the splitting of the Sea, the manna and the well of water, and how could they have become such ingrates - all this so soon after receiving the Torah, and they had not yet left Har Sinai, where they had received the Torah.
‘Second: What did they mean in asking: ‘Make for us gods’? If their intention was for idolatry, why did they say:’For this man Moshe..we do not know what became of him’?, as clearly they did not think Moshe was a god.
‘If their intention was for a leader in place of Moshe, why do we read that: ‘they have made themselves a molten calf, prostrated themselves to it and sacrificed to it, and they said:’This is your god, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt’?
Before examining the insights of our sage commentators to these perplexing questions, let us bring Rav Avigdor Nebenzahl’s cautionary words, in defence of Bnei Israel.
Expounds the Rav: ‘How can there be any criticism whatsoever against Bnei Israel? Were they not ‘lost’, thinking that their distinguished leader, Moshe Rabbeinu, who was the connection, as it were, between them and Hashem, had disappeared, and was no more; and, in one instant, millions of people, men, women and children, were left in the midst of the awesome desert, not knowing what and how to proceed.
‘How easy it is to understand their great concern in the face of the unknown; conceivably the manna, which fell miraculously in the merit of Moshe, might not, in his absence, fall in the coming morning; perhaps, too, the miraculous well of water might also not give of its waters, and the wondrous clouds of glory might also cease to protect then.
‘If the attribute of judgement applied even to Moshe, ‘the man of G-d’, who knows what would be the fate of the people?
‘How, then, can one come with complaints against these terrified people, who now sought to find a means that the shechina should continue to dwell upon them, without delay?.’
To savor the answers of these sages, and of other parshanim, let us read the relevant psukim:(32:1-10)’The people saw that Moshe had delayed in descending from the mountain ( Rashi: They erred in their calculations, Moshe had told them that he would return after 40 days, meaning on the 41st day, and they thought that he said he would return on the 40th day ), and the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him:’make for us gods that will go before us, for this man, Moshe, who brought us up from the land of Egypt - we do not know what became of him.’
The Torah then relates the miraculous emergence of the golden calf, and (32:4)’They said:’This is your god, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt. Aaron saw and built an altar before him.. they offered up offerings ..’, and, as the Torah relates, the offenders were punished, and the whole of the people, but for the intervention of Moshe, faced annihilation from Above.
Rav Nebenzahl explains why, despite the factors that brought the people to this deed, thousands were in fact punished for their part in the sin of the golden calf.
Wonders the Rav: ’Here we ask: Why? Were they not אנוסים: compelled by the circumstances to act as they did, rather than being deemed מזידים: intentional transgressors?
‘Answer: there was an element of blame because, before he ascended, Moshe had said to Bnei Israel (24:14)’Wait for us here until we return to you, and here, Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a case, let him go to them.’
‘Bnei Israel, instead of consulting them, killed Hur - for opposing their proposed actions - and next went to Aaron, not to ask him what to do, but to tell him what to do; and Aaron, the great lover of the people, bearing in mind the fate of Hur, felt compelled to do their bidding, fearing that were they to kill him also, the people would have been doomed to Divine extinction.
‘This was the reason for their punishment.’
The Rav adds:’ if all of the people - after all they had seen - truly believed that the golden calf which had just been created, was indeed ‘Your god..which brought you up from the land of Egypt’, they should have been adjudged as complete ‘fools’, and exempt from all that the Torah commands, and not punished!
‘The answer, as the Kuzari - amongst other early parshanim - expounds, is that they, having been misled by the Satan into thinking that Moshe was indeed dead, and he being the one on whom the shechina resided, and only by his guidance were they able to traverse thr desert, now sought in his place, another ‘guide’ on which the shechina would dwell, so that they could remain connected to the Creator.
‘In truth, this thought was not completely unfounded, as immediately after these events - according to Midrash Tanchuma - the command to build the Mishkan was given, where the shechina would dwell; and, in it, were the two cherubs, whose being enabled the residing of the shechina in Israel.
‘Their error, however, was only in this, that they created this entity without being commanded to do so by Hashem, and, in so doing, transgressed the prohibition (20:20)’gods of silver and gods of gold you shall not make for you’; they certainly did not believe that the molten calf had any independent power, and assuredly there was no intention of idolatry.’
The Malbim also prefaces his commentary on our events, by elucidating:’The people made it clear, that they were not seeking a god to worship, as, had this been their intention, they would not have said:’for this man Moshe..’.
‘Rather, they sought a leader who would lead them as Moshe had, on whom Hashem would rest his shechina, as he had on the physical Moshe.
‘They made this clear by their words ‘for this man Moshe’, meaning that, though it was clear to them that the ‘spiritual’ godly Moshe still existed, and would return to them, as he had promised to do, Moshe ‘the man’, the physical Moshe, who ‘brought us up from the land of Egypt’, in his physical form, and spoke to us face-to-face with them, and judged them and led them, ‘we do not know what became of him’, as it was not possible that a physical entity - in their minds - could continue to exist such a long period, without food, and they therefore now needed a new leader in physical form.’
Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky, also, first notes the perilous position in which Bnei Israel found themselves, in the absence of their leader, Moshe, and asks:’Since our Sages ( Eruvin 41:) teach that fears for one’s sustenance can cause a person to lose his mind and the ‘mind of his Creator’, how much more so in the desperate situation of the people, at that time.
‘Why, then, should we wonder that they did not stand up to the נסיון: the testing position in which they found themselves, knowing that the manna fell till then only in the merit of Moshe, and when the Satan ‘showed’ them that Moshe was dead, who knows if there would be manna the next day, and there was no other scrap of food to be found, how would a parent answer his offspring who asked for a piece of bread?
‘Therefore, they felt compelled to create an immediate substitute in the place of Moshe - so much so that, when Hur counselled them to wait another day, they killed him, and, similarly, when Aaron told them to remove their wives’ jewelry - thinking that this would take at least a day - they did so immediately.
‘From this, we can deduce that the foundation of the golden calf and its creation, was a lack of בטחון: of trust, thus explaining a seemingly difficult rebuke from the prophet Yechezkiel ( 20:13-14 ):’The house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness., My sabbaths they desecrated; then I said to pour out My wrath upon them..to make an end of them’, but did not do so so My Name ‘should not be desecrated before the eyes of the nations before whose eyes I had brought them out.’
‘But, we do not find desecration of the Sabbath except in regard to the manna, nor that Hashem sought to annihilate them except in the instance of the golden calf and the later instance of the meraglim - in neither of which do we find desecration of the Sabbath.
‘The answer is that in all of these cases, we find a common thread of a lack of בטחון: of trust, in Hashem’s hashgacha pratit over Bnei Israel - a defect which we first saw in the behaviour of many of them on that testing first Shabbat of the manna.
‘It was for this reason that on the first Shabbat at Mara, Hashem taught them a lesson, in trust, by the bitter tree, at Hashem’s command, turning the bitter water, sweet.
‘To the same end, Moshe Rabbeinu instructed them that the manna was to be ‘eaten that day’, this being the essential message of the Shabbat, to show our trust in Hashem’s ‘conduct’.
‘This, too, was the underlying sin of the golden calf - the lack of trust in Hashem.’
Rav Karo, whose queries we brought at the outset, answers:’All of these queries can be answered in one - and that is, that in the episode of the golden calf, there were two groups, one of which sought a leader in place of the absent Moshe, and the second, who were idolators, sought gods.
‘The ערב רב: the mixed multitude, who, like their forebears, were idolators, sought an idol, but Bnei Israel sought a replacement leader, for the absent Moshe.
‘This is why the Torah relates: (32:1) 'and העם gathered around Aaron’, as, when Bnei Israel are bad, they too are referred to as an עם, and both groups demanded:’make for us gods that will go before us, for this man Moshe who brought us up front the land of Egypt - we do not know what became of him’.
‘This pasuk brings the demands of each of the two groups: the erev rav said:’make for us gods that will go before us’, whilst Bnei Israel said:’for this man Moshe who brought us up from the land of Egypt - we do not know what became of him’.
‘This is why, in the first half, they said אלוה: gods, whilst in the second part, they said האיש: the man, as their request was not for an idol, but for a man in place of Moshe.
‘This is also why, when the calf emerged, the erev rav said to Bnei Israel:’This is your god, O Israel’, meaning: not as you thought a leader in the place of Moshe, but ‘this is your god..which brought you up from the land of Egypt’ - not who brought ‘us’ out of Egypt, because it was Moshe who, without consulting Hashem, permitted the erev rav to leave, with Bnei Israel.’
The Kli Yakar adds:’Most of the parshanim, in their commentaries about this wondrous episode, sought ways to remove blame from the seed of Avraham, in respect of this shameful deed, and, agree that the major share of the blame does indeed fall on the erev rav, who were the instigators, and who caused Bnei Israel to also stray.
‘In honor of the entire house of Israel, I come to summarize the understanding of these parshanim, augmented with thoughts which have occurred to me, so as to cleanse Bnei Israel.
‘The opening phrase: ‘The people saw’ refers to the erev rav, as’ - unlike Rav Karo’s view, - ‘wherever העם: the people, appears, it speaks of the lesser people, as we find in a number of instances in the Torah; ‘that Moshe had delayed’: as they knew that their exodus from Egypt was not by Hashem’s command, but by Moshe’s decision, they feared that, should Moshe not return, Hashem would command that they be sent away from the people, lest they lead them to sin, in the idolatry of Egypt, and that the reason He had not commanded their removal till now, was only out of respect for Moshe.
‘They therefore contrived to seek a leader in place of Moshe, because ‘this man Moshe, we do not know what he had’: we don’t know from where his powers derived, as he must have the image of some picture or star by the power of which he led and performed miracles, ‘because we don’t know what he had’.
‘You, Aaron, his brother assuredly know what that image was, and we therefore want you to make for us an image thst will be an intermediary between us and the stars, as Satan had deceived them, showing them the image of the bed of Moshe between heaven and earth, as an intermediary between the two - and they therefore wanted another intermediary, and asked for ‘gods’, in the plural, as they did not know which image to choose.’
The Torah then relates, that, to delay them, Aaron instructed them to remove the personal jewelry from their wives, expecting that the wives might resist, but the men deceived him, bringing their own jewelry and saying it was from their wives; and, as Aaron later related to Moshe, whilst he thought that the gold which was cast into the fire would require work to shape it, which would take a day or two - in which time he was certain that Moshe would return - the erev rav, by their sorcery, caused the molten gold to emerge in the shape of the calf.
‘And they said:’This is your god, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt’, which is proof that this was said by the erev rav, as a Jew would not say to a fellow Jew ‘your god’, as was he, too, not also his G-d?
‘When Aaron saw that the contrivance of the Satan had succeeded, he sought to delay them, by building an altar, as without it there could not be offerings, and proclaimed:’A festival for Hashem tomorrow! - not for the calf, but ‘for Hashem’ - but the erev rav did not wait, but immediately made their offerings.
‘And then - as we read - Moshe returned.’
Here we are compelled to ask: if all this was the work of the erev rav, why were Bnei Israel so severely punished?
The Beit Halevi provides an answer:’The Midrash Tanchuma relates, that when Bnei Israel at matan Torah proclaimed: ‘All that Hashem says we shall do and we shall observe’, two angels were sent to each of them, with a crown and a weapon for each.
‘Let us clarify: should each man not have proclaimed in the singular: ‘I will do and I will observe’, and not in the plural ‘we shall..’?
‘They so, because each man made two commitments: first, that he would do so, and second: that he would also ensure that his fellow Jews did likewise.
‘We can now understand their transgression: true, the declaration’This is your god, O Israel..’ was indeed made by the erev rav, not one of Bnei Israel accepted this heresy on himself, but they transgressed their committment to also be concerned for their fellow Jew, by not objecting, and killing, those who said so.
‘The proof of this, is that they were now commanded to return the weapon they had received, as it was to symbolize the duty towards their fellow Jews - to compel them to ‘do and to obey’ - and, as they failed to do so, they did not merit this heavenly symbol.’
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