Torah Readings: Regular reading Exodus 30:11 to end of chapter 34.
Second special Torah reading: Numbers 19: 1-22 (purification for Passover in Temple days)
Special Haftarah: Ezekiel 36: 16-38
This week's first reading covers a lot of ground, including instructions regarding the Tabernacle, Sabbath laws, the Golden Calf, Moses' subsequent pleading with God and the new stone tablets. I've decided to focus on the Golden Calf (Exodus 32).
(Please follow me below the melting tangle of gold jewelry.)
First, a personal story.
I've described in the comments to a previous D'var Torah how, as a five-year old child (from a Christian background), I was mystified as to why the ancient Israelites kept "worshiping foreign gods" despite all of God's punishments. I concluded that idol worship must be such a thrilling, tantalizing sin, that they simply couldn't help themselves.
So I decided to do an experiment: I would try worshiping an "idol" for a week and see if it was really as thrilling as the Bible made it out to be. I took my life-sized plastic doll, set it up on top of a chair, and proceeded to bow down and pray to it three times a day. I gave up after only two days in disgust: it was the most boring thing I'd ever tried in my life.
When I posted this, other commenters pointed out that five-year old could hardly comprehend some of the more enticing parts of idol worship (for example, sacred prostitution.) However, I do think that -- even as a five-year old -- I had hit upon quite an important point:
It was boring.
(Not a bug, a feature.)
...Or, put another way, it was predictable.
Many human beings are resistant to sudden change, and the Israelites of the Exodus (repeatedly characterized as "stiff-necked") seem particularly bad this way. They spend most of the journey to Canaan whining that they want to return to Egypt for various reasons (mostly having to do with food), none of which seem all that plausible. What is it that they missed about Egypt? Surely not slavery and oppression. Could it be stability?
This new God, who spoke out of a burning bush or a pillar of smoke, who struck the Egyptians with flies and boils and darkness, who parted the oceans and shook the mountains -- who knew what this new God would do? Could such a volatile God possibly be trusted? Why couldn't they just go back to the familiar life of slavery in Egypt, with its quiet, limited, predictable gods? Away from this frighteningly powerful God?
In the Christian New Testament Paul, familiar with the Jewish scriptures and shaken by his own recent encounter with the supernatural, references the Mount Sinai scene:
"[A mountain] that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded." (Heb 18:20)
A terrifying image, indeed. To borrow an image from the Christian theologian C.S. Lewis, this God is "not a tame lion".
Stepping into the larger context for a moment, I'm also reminded of a picture that a fellow musician of mine posted on social media:
http://www.bordengymnastics.ca/...
As a musician myself, I immediately "got" this. I think anyone else who has experienced creative flow -- whether in the arts, or science, or spirituality, or even falling in love -- will "get" this as well. To open oneself to the transcendent, the brilliantly and truly Real, is never comfortable or easy. As T.S. Eliot wrote in Burnt Norton,
"Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality."
It is far easier to take refuge in the artificial and trivial. And this is what millions of people do. The opportunities are numerous: incessant bombardment with media, compulsive shopping, the contrived plots of TV shows and blockbuster movies, drugs and alcohol and so on. Perhaps none of these things are inherently "bad", but if they used as distractions from the wonder of reality and our own relationship with the Divine, they are idols, like the Golden Calf.
Throughout the Scriptures God bemoans the fact that his people, the Israelites, persist in turning away from him -- that which is ultimate Reality -- to worship idols which are obviously fake: blind, deaf and dumb and made by human hands! But surely this very "fake-ness" was part of their attraction. An idol carved from stone will, if nothing else, be a good listener -- and reassuringly predictable in the extreme.
Are we truly ready for the wild, unpredictable God of the Exodus? Do we, instead, want a safe God? A quiet, powerless God? A security blanket of a God that we clutch for emotional comfort in a chaotic world? A God that easily falls into our categories and preconceived pigeonholes (from whatever religious/spiritual tradition we come?)
Or are we ready for the God who asks us to "step outside our comfort zone?"
Shabbat Shalom!