Pensamento Judaico sobre Deuteronômio 5:19

It is in this context that we must understand the repeated references Moses made to the Jewish people at the burning bush, when he said to G-d that the Jewish people would not believe in him or his mission. Moses expected the same reaction from his own people that he had expected from Pharaoh. This is why he said "when they ask me for Your name, what shall I say?" (Exodus 3, 13) The miracle had been needed to demonstrate the existence of such a G-d. Whenever things went well, the people believed in G-d, Moses and his mission. Whenever difficulties arose, they saw in this proof that there was no free G-d, no Personal Providence, only superior showmanship by Moses, presently revealed as inadequate. Proof of all this lies in the fact that whenever they refer to the Exodus from Egypt, they ascribe it to Moses the man, not to G-d. (compare Exodus 14, 12; 16,3; Numbers 16, 12) Their admiration of Moses was based on Moses being an outstanding man rather than Moses as an instrument of G-d. (1) As soon as Moses was out of sight, not having announced when he would return, (possibly he had not known when he would return) the people wanted to see if they themselves could do what Moses had been doing all the time. Therefore, they had lots of time at their disposal to urge Aaron. The fortieth day was in fact only the last of many days that Aaron had been under pressure. (2) These people believed that the configuration of the ox might hold the secret of Moses’s power. Therefore they traded their own horoscope (that of the lamb) for that of the ox. This is the meaning of Psalms 106,20 "they themselves chose this trade, exchange." It was not Aaron's doing. No doubt, during those forty days the pressure on Aaron had been increasing steadily, the murder of Chur being part of that pressure. Had the Torah reported all this in detail, the impression that Aaron co-operated reluctantly would have been created, and the golden calf would have been viewed as the triumph of the belief in witchcraft over those who believed in G-d and His leadership. Now, that the text seems to suggest Aaron's enthusiastic co-operation, the whole episode can be seen as the creation of a symbol representing the ultimate that human art was capable of. (3+4) In this way, once the impotence of that symbol would become evident to one and all, the illusion that man could fashion a deity would be debunked once and for all. This was Aaron's reasoning when he decided to co-operate. He had no way of knowing that as soon as the calf would emerge, some Jewish lowbrows would commence dancing around it and proclaiming it as their new deity. When that happened, Aaron quickly built an altar for G-d, and tried to allow reason to prevail by postponing the celebration until the morrow, and by dedicating the altar to the Lord. He hoped all the time, of course, that in the interval remaining, G-d would tell Moses to return to the people in order to forestall tragic consequences. Even so, only three thousand people were enthusiastic enough to actually worship this idol before it had demonstrated powers equal or superior to those demonstrated by Moses. (This is why the rest of the nation was not punished by death) We see from all this, that far from precipitating or even participating in the sin, Aaron had used his best efforts to teach the people a lesson of faith in the Lord. This is why, at a later stage, G-d was able to say to Moses "You shall cause your brother Aaron to come close to Me, to be My priest" (Exodus 28, 1) (5) G-d indicated to Moses that if the latter were to pray, He would not then become angry, since the action of a fool acting out of foolishness does not warrant his master's anger. Nonetheless, even fools must repent and confess their errors. Psalms 25,8, and Hoseah 14,2 are some of the sources in scripture for the need to expiate. Sieverity of a sin is measured by three criteria. 1) The manner in which the Torah describes a sin, is a good indication of the view the Torah holds concerning such sin. Expressions such as "abomination, immorality" are used for acts which are especially serious. 2) Any kind of misdemeanour when committed by a person of high rank, becomes more serious, since the sinner's stature should have precluded such conduct on his part. 3) When the disobedience is directed against a supreme lawgiver, it is more serious than disobedience against a man made law. (10) Moses, admits in his confession, that "this nation" had come closer to G-d than any of its predecessors, and should therefore have known better. When he refers to "this great sin," he confesses that due to the people's elevated stature their sin had assumed an added degree of severity. He confesses the heinous nature of the sin when viewed objectively, when he refers to "the golden deity" that this nation had made. While confessing all this, Moses manages to inject powerful arguments about the extenuating circumstances surrounding this crime. Shemot Rabbah 28, clothes Moses’s arguments in the following words: (6) Moses to G-d "Your children have made an assistant for You, and You are angry? Did You not Yourself make the sun shine, and the latter bestows some of its light on the moon? (making it an assistant) Did You not make rain, which in turn promotes the growth of plants etc?" To this G-d replied: "You too are in error, since the golden calf is not capable of doing anything." To this, Moses replied: "in that case why do You get angry over a mere nothing?" Philosophically speaking, Moses presents the golden calf as incapable of offering competition to G-d, and therefore not deserving His concern. Concerning the second criterion for measuring the severity of a sin which we have mentioned, Moses refers to "this people." He refers to their having come out of Egypt. He implies that it is unreasonable to expect high standards of faith from a nation that had just left a country in which it had absorbed a totally wrong way of looking at the world for several hundred years. The Midrash describes it in this way. A father put his son in charge of a perfumery situated in a red light district. Naturally, both the location of the store and the type of customers he dealt with, combined with the son's personal character weakness to corrupt him. When the father finds out and is enraged and threatens to kill his son, the father's friend has to intervene. This friend berates the father, saying: "you have lost him because you have failed to teach him a trade that would bring him into contact with the upper classes of society. Not only that, but you have made him reside amongst harlots. How can you be surprised at the outcome?" Finally, since it was G-d’s declared purpose to use the Jewish people to aggrandize His name, and to make Egypt aware of this, (Exodus 9, 16) what would the Egyptians say when they hear that You have wiped out this nation?" We read in Joshua 7, 10 that G-d told Joshua that Israel's defeat at Ai was due to the nation having sinned, having transgressed the injunction not to appropriate any of the loot of Jericho etc. Actually, only one man, Achan ben Karmi, had committed those acts. (7) When G-d told Moses that the Jewish people had made themselves a cast calf, worshipped it etc, Moses may have thought that this could have been the act of a single individual, and that G-d had referred to the collective responsibility every Jew bears for the actions of another Jew. It had not occurred to Moses that the nation as a whole had been involved in this act.

"The entire Jewish nation saw the sounds." This shows that on the one hand the Jewish people had shed enough of the physical part to be able to gain a whole new perspective on sound. On the other hand, they were still frightened of the other physical phenomena such as the lightning and the smoke. "The people saw and trembled." The latter is what caused them to ask Moses to be their intermediary. Moses who said "do not be afraid,” meant to tell them "do not be afraid to listen to G-d directly." G-d’s purpose is to give you experience now, so that this will remain an undying memory of this supernatural experience. It will remind you that man can survive hearing the voice of the Living G-d. Moreover, the awe you experience as of now, will insulate you against any future desire to sin against Him. Only if you did that, would you really die. The fact that "and these are the laws" are described as presented to the people by Moses, indicates that all the ten commandments had been heard by the people directly from the shechinah. "The people stood at a distance while Moses approached the thick cloud," refers to receiving the remainder of the Torah. Again in Parshat Va-etchanan it states "these words G-d spoke to your whole assembly at the Mount," indicating that the entire ten commandments are what is referred to. The whole sequence in Va-etchanan dearly indicates that Moses became the intermediary only for the remainder of the Torah. To reconcile statements by our sages which appear to say that Israel heard only the first two commandments directly, can be done in the following manner. "You have seen that I spoke directly," therefore all the things prohibited in the first two commandments are clearly comprehensible, do not build fancy altars, gold or silver images etc, I do not relate to you through an intermediary." The emphasis on "you shall construct an altar made from earth etc.," shows that simple materials are to be used to form the basis of worship. G-d wishes to tell us that even when ostentation in architecture is employed, this should not lead to the fatal error of viewing the costly materials as intermediaries between Israel and its G-d.

Toroth. — Instruction or doctrines. — Manifold are the lessons which these important constituents of the Divine system teach us. They comprise the instructions derived from the historically-revealed manifestations of Divine truth and which it is our duty to elevate into principles of our life. They teach us to know God in his unity and as summoning us to comprehend our existence in all its many-sidedness and to unite all our powers, abilities, and conditions in subordination to the One. They teach the active service-duty of all beings, including man, who must learn to look upon himself as one of the host of ministering attendants of Deity and willingly join their ranks. His will in this respect is revealed as unchangeable for all ages. Our experience is to serve us as education; the fear of God is to be taught us by the recognition of His illimitable greatness, the love of God by consideration of His unending mercy and kindness, unshakeable trust in Him by appreciation of His eternal faithfulness.