21st Century Golden Calf Commentary by Dr. Rabbi Moshe Dror - Art by Phillip Ratner

By Dr. Rabbi Moshe Dror 

It would seem that whenever you have some WOW high, then comes the letdown. No high is for long.

 Imagine
yourself standing at Mt. Sinai hearing the Word of God and while Moses
is still on Mt. Sinai, you get Aaron to build the Golden Calf for you.
To be in the presence of the Holy does not automatically make you holy.
The peak experience of Revelation at Sinai is simply unsustainable for
the Israelites. Faithlessness follows close on the heels of miracles.
In the Bible, the Golden Calf was a national disaster.

In
this image Ratner, shows us the High Priest in all of his sacred
vestments and just below is the modern version of the Golden Calf. This
is an idealized American version of the industrial Age fascination with
gadgets and especially the car. How many men spend more on their car
than on their wife? The images of material wealth – gems, dollars, and
the Mercedes Benz are all part of what we “worship”. Remember the song
of the 1970’s of Janis Joplin “Me and My Mercedes Benz”.

What are our Golden Calfs today and tomorrow?

 Power, control, and who knows what else are what we take to be our highest motivations in life.

There
is a remarkable Midrash (Rabbinic commentary) that captures the mood of
Moses when he first sees the Israelites and their Golden Calf. Moses is
not filled with rage or anger but rather with despair. He does not
smash the Tablets but they slip from his hands. What happened? It would
seem that he senses the deep chasm between the divine ideal for
humanity and the human reality. The Tablets just become too heavy to
hold. The letters fly off the Tablets and return to heaven and the
Tablets become just a hunk of rock and fall from the hand of Moses. It
would seem that Moses was sent on a fool’s errand.

But
the saga does not end there. The Bible goes on and gives details for
constructing the divine legitimate Tabernacle that is designed to
function as the vehicle for the renewal of the covenant that joins God
and Israel and God and all of humanity. Can we even envision a future
in which people have no idols? Would they be human?

Whatever
our own idols may be, what many people now are devoting their life to
is a powerful shift from separation to collaboration, forgiveness,
Interconnectedness and Yes, LOVE.