This week we read about the Golden Calf and then Moses going back up the mountain to receive the second copy of the Ten Commandments, carved into stone. This is the third quite separate narrative in the Torah that describes the process of the revelation of Torah. Uniquely here, after the second period of forty days and nights that Moses…
Author: Jeremy Rosen
Drinking the idol
When Moses returned to the camp and saw the golden calf, he was furious that they had so misunderstood the nature of an unseen God. That was supposed to be their great contribution to civilization, that the energy of the universe, the power of God did not need physical symbols or images for representation. The ideas should have been enough.…
Seeing God
Moses now must re-establish a relationship with God that he feels had been broken. We can understand God’s anger with the Israelites but why with Moses? Yet Moses clearly needs personal reassurance as well as for the people in general. So he asked God to “show me your glory.” God replied, “no human can actually see God.” But he put…
Divine Qualities
After the debacle of the Golden Calf Moses fears that God will reject the Israelites altogether. Indeed that is precisely what God says to him “I have seen this people to be stiff necked. Leave me to my anger with them. I will destroy them and make you a great nation” (32.9). Moses then appeals to God with the argument…
The Western Flame
Before describing the ceremonial clothes of the priests, the Torah talks about keeping a flame alight in the Tabernacle (the eternal flame). The symbolism is a powerful one, that the spirit of God and of the people, burns constantly. The flame symbolizes the human spirit, that can burn or be extinguished. It symbolizes God. Something that combines the spiritualism, the…
Serving the Community
But what of the priests? Apart from the symbolism of calling up a Cohen and a Levi first whenever we read the Torah and the custom of redeeming first born boys from the priesthood, the whole paraphernalia of the priesthood has not been part of Judaism for two thousand years. Rabbis are not priests. Ironically the idea of priests has…