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In parashat Ki Tissa we encounter the sin of the Golden Calf. But the text does not explain the actual nature of this iconic transgression. What is idolatry?
On its face, the answer seems self-evident. Aaron creates a “molten calf” and the people declare: “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 12:4). The sin seems obvious. The people believed that the idol was God – pure and simple idol worship. But, as Rashbam (R. Samuel b. Meir, 1080 - 1158) points out: “Were they fools that they did not know that the calf made that day did not bring them out of Egypt?” Clearly, Israel did not believe that the Calf was actually God. “Rather,” as Rashbam explains, “all idolaters know that our God in Heaven created the earth. But their error is in believing that an impure spirit inhabits the images, in the way that the Divine Spirit is in the prophets, and they think that the Calf spoke with the impure spirit as if it were speaking in Heavenly Holy Spirit. Therefore they said ‘This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out’. In other words, the Holy Spirit is within it, and it as if the Holy Spirit is before us.” In other words, the idolater does not believe that the statue is God, but that God – who has an independent existence – infuses the idol with the Divine spirit and resides within it.
Indeed, as Prof. Robert Alter notes, “the golden icon was conceived as the terrestrial throne or platform for the deity (singular or plural), having precisely the same function as the cherubim over the Ark. The Golden Calf is thus a kind of anti-Tabernacle or anti-Ark, meant for the same end of making the divine dwell among the people but doing it in a prohibited fashion” (The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, 494).
But if we conclude that the nature of idolatry is somehow tied to the making of a graven image, the haftara forces us to reconsider. In the haftara we read about the prophet Elijah and the prophets of Baal. In reading the narrative, it is clear that the prophets of Baal are not worshipping idols, but are praying to an unseen, incorporeal deity. If that is so, then it would appear that the essence of idolatry is not the belief that a statue is God, or that God resides within an idol or a particular place. Moreover, one can legitimately worship a God that dwells in the Tabernacle, and commit idolatry by sacrificing to an abstract deity.
1. In what way is the Calf different from the Tabernacle, of which is said, “and the presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34)? In what way is the Golden Calf different from the Ark of the Covenant or the cherubim?
2. In the midrash we find several interesting and troubling statements about Israel’s attitude toward the Golden Calf: “R. Simeon b. Yohai and R. Eliezer b. Jacob, one said that Israel was perfect for 29 days, and one said Israel was perfect for 11 days, and both learned this from the same verse: ‘It is eleven days from Horeb, etc.’ (Deut. 1:2). One said, what is meant by 11 days? Moses said to them, you were perfect with God but 29 days and the 11 last days you planned how to make the Calf, as it says ‘eleven days’. The other says, for eleven days they were perfect with God, and 29 days they planned how to make the Calf. R. Simeon b. Halafta says, they were perfect with God for one day, as it says: ‘The day you stood before the Lord at Horeb’ (Deut. 4:10). R. Meir says, not the former and not the latter, for even when they were saying ‘All the Lord has spoken we will faithfully do’ (Exodus 24:7) they were saying one thing but thinking another” (Exodus Rabba (Vilna) 7). Clearly, the sages read the verses without regard to their context, but what were they trying to tell us about the nature of idolatry in saying that even when miracles were occurring before their very eyes, the Israelites were planning the Golden Calf?
3. In another midrash we read: “R. Samuel b. Nahman said, the fact is that on the day that the manna descended for Israel, on that very day they performed idolatry, and not only that but they took from the manna and sacrificed it to their idol, as it says: ‘Also my bread which I gave you – I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey – you set before them for a pleasing odor’ (Ezekiel 16:19)” (Pesikta DeRav Kahana (Mandelbaum) 10 s.v. aser ta’aser). What does R. Samuel b. Nahman wish to tell us about the nature of idolatry and human nature in asserting that the Israelites sacrificed manna to the Golden Calf?
4. What can we learn form the midrashim about how the sages viewed the relationship between our intellectual understanding and our emotional impulses?
Iyunei Shabbat is published weekly by the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, The Masorti Movement and The Rabbinical Assembly of Israel in conjunction with the Masorti Movement in Israel and Masorti Olami-World Council of Conservative Synagogues.
Chief Editor: Rabbi Avinoam Sharon
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