Parshas Ki Sisa

No Intermediaries

This week's parsha, Ki Sisa, contains the story of "The Golden Calf," in which the Jewish people sinned against G-d by building a molten image of a cow and "prostrated themselves to it and sacrificed to it..."¹

Yet, the Jewish people were spared of the penalty for idol worship (death), and the very person who built the idol, Aaron,² was later elevated to the position of "Kohen Gadol" (High Priest), ministering over the activities of the Tabernacle.

Why were the Jewish people afforded such lax punishment? The answer lies a few verses later in the Torah when the Jews are commanded to kill their fellow Jews who worshipped the Golden Calf and, after they do so, the Torah tells us the number of guilty parties:

"The Levites did as Moses said, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day."³ Since the adult male population of the Jewish people numbered six hundred thousand at that time, the number which worshipped the idol actually was less than one percent. This explanation, however, prompts the opposite question, i.e., if only a small minority of Jews committed idol worship, why is the Golden Calf considered such a grave sin as to warrant G-d's declaration that He plans to kill all Jews other than Moses?

"Let my anger flare up against them and I shall annihilate them: and I shall make you [Moses] a great nation."⁴

The answer is that G-d despises even the notion of an intermediary, i.e., the idea that there is no way to approach G-d other than through a third party. And this is the mistake that the vast majority of Jews made at the time. They mistakenly thought that since Moses often relayed messages between G-d and the Jewish people, they could ONLY send messages through an intermediary. When the Jewish people lost faith in Moses' returning from Mount Sinai,⁵ they therefore felt separated from G-d with no direct way to beseech Him.

The Torah's message, on the contrary, is that while Holy people like Moses may have especially powerful prayers, all people can, and should, beseech G-d directly. Doing so strengthens a person's commitment to G-d and His Law, while operating through intermediaries weakens people to the point that some percentage, as mentioned above, actually begin worshipping those intermediaries.

Thus a person's ability to follow G-d's Law is severely limited by belief in "that Nazarite" as either a man-G-d or as an intermediary. In fact, the applicability of the story of The Golden Calf to gentiles is underscored by the story itself:

"Moses pleaded before Hash-m, his G-d, and said, 'Why, Hash-m, should Your anger flare up against Your people, whom You have taken out of the land of Egypt, with great power and a strong hand? Why should Egypt say the following: 'with evil intent did He take them out, to kill them in the mountains and to annihilate them from the face of the earth?'"⁶

Thus, when Moses had to find the most powerful argument available to support his argument that the Jews should not be annihilated for their sins, he did not point out their merits or minimize their sins. Instead, he mentioned the effect that the punishment would have on the gentiles, causing those gentiles to have less reverence for G-d and His Torah. Since the ultimate purpose of Torah is that it transform the all gentiles to a G-dly way of life, Moses' argument was an extremely powerful one, one which was ultimately accepted by G-d.

Today, gentiles have the ability to go beyond mere "reverence" for G-d and beyond merely adopting part of the message of the Torah. They now are refined to the point of being able to accept the entire Torah without a "clarifying" New Testament and without a "clarifying" new prophet like Mohammed. This, in fact is an explicit observation of the Lubavitcher Rebbe:

"The beirur [clarification or refinement] of 'Aisav, he is Edom' [a Torah phrase (Bereishis 36:1) referring to the gentiles] is already totally done...."⁷

It's simply a matter of, as the Rebbe puts it, the Jews "opening their eyes" and seeing it--seeing that gentiles are ready to abandon false religions completely and practice Torah as ordained for gentiles.

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¹Shemos 32:8
²Id. 32:1-5
³Id. 32:28
⁴Id. 32:10
⁵Id. 32:1; Rashi there
⁶Id. 32:11-12
⁷Public address of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Shabbos Parshas Vayeitze, 10 Kislev, 5752