Ki Tisa part 2 - Golden Calf

Exodus 32:1 When the people saw that Moses was late in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron, and they said to him: "Come on! Make us gods that will go before us, because this man Moses, who brought us up from the land of Egypt we don't know what has become of him."

34:29-30 And it came to pass when Moses descended from Mount Sinai, and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses' hand when he descended from the mountain and Moses did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant while He had spoken with him, that Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses and behold! the skin of his face had become radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.

It never stops to fascinate me how after a great spiritual experience people fall so low and so deeply: golden calf worship after the great revelation on Mount Sinai, Noah getting drunk after the renewed covenant and seeing the rainbow; David falling for Bat Sheva after G-d promised him the everlasting kingdom (II Shmuel, ch.  7, 11). Solomon building the Temple and achieving the heights of wisdom, only to squander it all on a thousand foreign women, 700 wives and 300 concubines, roughly two new women every month, most of them probably younger than Woody Allen’s stepdaughter.  The fusion of spirituality and lust, genius and depravity, are questions that often keep me up at night, and will take the rest of my life to understand. 

Many years ago, as a young aspiring physicist in post grad, I was disappointed with my teacher on some rumored accounts of immorality, to such extent that I quit science and left the country, along with other life defining decisions.  I can continue screaming hypocrisy for the rest of my life, but it is too simple.  People are complex and growing up means forgiving and accepting the complexity, accept that the same people who danced around the golden calf and complained about manna were the ones who followed Moshe through the desert and unquestionably accepted commandments maase v’nishma - “we’ll do and then we’ll understand”, accept that every word written by king Shlomo is holy, despite his flawed personality, accept holiness of the psalms despite the story around Bat Sheva, accept the rainbow over the rain in all its glorious beauty. 

It’s like the higher one climbs, the harder the fall.  I used to think that it is the same life force that pushes the person both up and down, that genius cannot exist without depravity, that uncontrollable passions are side effects of inspiration.  The greater the person, the stronger his inclination, scholars are more vulnerable to yetzer hara, etc…  The voice of G-d comes from amidst the fire, and golden calf had emerged out of fire – the fire, the intensity of passions within an individual makes one obsessed with learning, as well as hard on partying. 

But reading the book of Shemot, the revelation on har Sinai, when people stepped back, afraid, confounded by the thunder and lightning, and the voice and the vision of G-d, brings another explanation.  A man is afraid of closeness to G-d, and he falls back to the familiar.  Overwhelmed with emotion, with intense all-consuming energy, he is looking for an object to pinpoint as a source of that energy.  It is overwhelming to think of the voice of G-d coming amidst the thunder and lightning, or the voice of G-d speaking to a man in any setting for that matter. Any crazy, outrageous thing that a man may ever come up with is less crazy than that. Awed and overwhelmed with Divine, man falls to the familiar, seeks to pinpoint his passion on a familiar, safer object, a handsome man or a beautiful woman, food and drink, work, other gods, anything to escape the real, all-consuming fire. 

There is a hint of explanation to the mystery of Golden Calf in the ending of the parsha, when Moshe comes down from har Sinai and his face is shining with glory, radiant, and people step back, afraid.  The brave among them, Aaron and the elders, come back, but then Moshe has to wear a mask to talk to bnei Yisrael, to coexist.  Moshe was the pure one who was not afraid to stand in the presence of G-d, who did not fall back to familiar, who stood his ground amidst thunder and lightning, who let the voice of G-d enter his ears, who loved G-d with all his heart, soul and might, who remained consciously aware of immediate Divine presence at every moment, who had let the wind and the earthquake rage around him and did not run for cover.  When a prophet shows his true face people are afraid – they laugh at him, they hate him, they lust after him, they despise him – they deny his presence with every rational fiber of their mind.  A person is afraid of the prophet within himself, and tries to mask his true self with cynicism, irony, and self-deprecating sarcasm.  As long as there is a breath of life in a man, there is a prophet within each individual, but it takes enormous courage to accept, to stand one’s ground and let the winds rage through. 

Bezalel did not worship idols, but poured his heart out to G-d through the labor of his hands.  Single minded, obsessed, fanatical, stopping his work only for Shabbat and hagim, not wasting a minute on pleasure pursuits.  Yehoshua, servant of Moshe, did not leave the tent of the meeting, did not waver left or right.  Multitudes fell into idol worship, but there remained a few, very few, who remained true to their life purpose, who did not give up, who accepted complexity of people around them but were unaffected by corruption.  The life of a tzaddik in the corrupt world is not easy, many people reject him, even hate him, but if one remains true to himself, the right people will appear in his life, eventually.  On the other hand, when a person pretends to please the crowd he draws the wrong people and ends up bound in the life of captivity. 
When the people saw that Moses was late in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron, and they said to him: "Come on! Make us gods that will go before us, because this man Moses, who brought us up from the land of Egypt we don't know what has become of him."When the people saw that Moses was late in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron, and they said to him: "Come on! Make us gods that will go before us, because this man Moses, who brought us up from the land of Egypt we don't know what has become of him."When the people saw that Moses was late in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron, and they said to him: "Come on! Make us gods that will go before us, because this man Moses, who brought us up from the land of Egypt we don't know what has become of him."When the people saw that Moses was late in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron, and they said to him: "Come on! Make us gods that will go before us, because this man Moses, who brought us up from the land of Egypt we don't know what has become of him."When the people saw that Moses was late in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron, and they said to him: "Come on! Make us gods that will go before us, because this man Moses, who brought us up from the land of Egypt we don't know what has become of him