Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha … diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

This is Ari Levisohn. Parshat Ki Tisa has one of the all-time low points in the Torah. The Israelites just received the Torah back in Parshat Yitro. Thunder, lightning, God's presence right there at Mount Sinai. All they need to do now is wait for Moses to finish up a bit of paperwork with God. But when he doesn't come back right away, what happens? They panic! Maybe Moses is gone forever! So they go to Aaron and ask him to…make them a golden calf. 

And we all know what happens next: It's a disaster. A really shameful moment. God sends Moses back down the mountain and punishes the people for worshipping this idol. But there are some things that always bother me about this story. Such as: What’s going through their heads? I mean, for one thing, they just heard God's own voice giving them the Torah. God was speaking directly to them! So what do they want an idol for? But also: What would make anyone take a golden idol seriously in the first place? It seems so obvious that if you made it, then it's not a god. So how are we supposed to understand what's really happening in this story? And how can we know what message to take away for our own lives?

This week, Rabbi Fohrman and Imu Shalev tackle the tough questions about the chet ha’egel, the sin of the golden calf. Sure, it may not seem like idol-worship is a major problem in our times, but as it turns out, this story has a lot to say about our human struggles with responsibility, and about why it can be so hard to feel close to God. Here's their conversation.

Imu Shalev: Okay. So, Rabbi Fohrman, I really want to talk to you about the chet ha'egel, the sin of the golden calf. The reason I want to do that is because I'm a big fan of treating Torah like a guidebook, trying to find the moral and relevant lessons to my everyday life, and chet ha'egel is such a huge and epic story. The problem is, I just don't relate to it. I kind of treat it like, you know, when you watch horror films you want to scream at the screen, and you're like, "Don't go in there! Don't go in there! He's in there! He's going to murder you!" But then they do. And as much as you try and scream in vain, they go in and –

Rabbi David Fohrman: It's that chilling music and then it's like, "No!" and you avert your eyes.

Imu: Exactly. And imagine year after year you have to watch the same horror film.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's awful.

Imu: And then not only that, we're told that we're supposed to learn some lesson from that. Like, ostensibly, the lesson I would learn in kindergarten is –

Rabbi Fohrman: Don't go into the Bates Motel.

Imu: Don't go in there. Exactly. And you know what, it's not like I have a lot of friends who are – they didn't read parsha this week and they're going to worship some egels (calves). It's not a very relatable sin to avoid. So I have a hard time, and I kind of wanted to study with you this sin, the sin of the golden calf, together. What do you think?

Rabbi Fohrman: I'm game.

Imu: Are you into it?

Rabbi Fohrman: I'm into it. Go ahead.

Imu: Great. So let's start with chapter 32, verse 1. וַיַּרְא הָעָם כִּי בֹשֵׁשׁ מֹשֶׁה לָרֶדֶת מִן־הָהָר – The nation saw that Moses had delayed in coming down from the mountain for some reason, וַיִּקָּהֵל הָעָם עַל־אַהֲרֹן – and they gathered upon Aaron. So Moses is missing, so they gathered to Aaron, and… finish the verse for me. Don't read it, but what would you expect it would say next?

Rabbi Fohrman: It's time for the vice president to step up and take the mantle of leadership and invoke the 25th Amendment. Moses is gone.

Imu: Exactly. Aaron, put your hand on these two tablets and swear to faithfully execute the duties of president. But that's not what happens, right? The rest of the verse is: וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֵלָיו קוּם עֲשֵׂה לָנוּ אֱלֹהִים אֲשֶׁר יֵלְכוּ לְפָנֵינוּ – Aaron, please go up and make for us a god that is going to go before us. Why? כִּי זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ – Because Moses the man, אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם – who has brought us up out of Egypt, לֹא יָדַעְנוּ מֶה־הָיָה לוֹ – we don't know what happened to him. So, Rabbi Fohrman, what questions pop out at you after reading this verse?

Rabbi Fohrman: So for me, it's the contrast between two words, קוּם  עֲשֵׂה לָנוּ אֱלֹהִים – make us a god, כִּי זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ – because this Moses, the man. It's this contrast between the divine being that they hope the calf will be for them versus the mortality of this man Moses. And they seem to be suggesting that if Moses has failed, if he has died in this story, the reason for that failure is his mortality. We need something that can't die. We need some sort of divine being, and we're going to make one.

Building an Elohim

Imu: So to me as well, it doesn't seem like the people build the golden calf because they're denying God. They seem like they're building the golden calf as a replacement for Moses, and somehow they're going to do that by building an Elohim, which, back then, as polytheists, or perhaps as seeing a head-god with sub-gods, they're replacing Moses with a sub-god. And the question is why they do that? And I think, Rabbi Fohrman, you're reading כִּי זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ as an acknowledgment of Moses’s mortality. Maybe perhaps saying, Moses wasn't strong enough of a leader. We need a god instead of a mortal. I'm not sure I read the verse that way. I could be convinced.

I wonder if perhaps the fact that they chose to replace Moses with a god means that they thought that Moses was a god. If they lost one god, they need to replace him with another god. The reason I choose to read it that way is because it says כִּי זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם – they seem to imply that Moses is the one who took the people up out of Egypt, when we know that's something that God did. And so I wonder, to some extent, if they are denying that God is the one who took them out of Egypt and saying that it's Moses who did so, and they need another god to replace the deity in Moses.

Rabbi Fohrman: So under that reading, how would you read the qualification of Moses in the people's claims כִּי זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ? Why are they arguing that Moses was a man in this context?

Imu: It's a great question. I might argue that maybe Moses was a demigod. He was a man who had godliness to him, and I guess they are replacing him with a god.

Rabbi Fohrman: You know, just to throw some gasoline on that fire, to use probably a bad metaphor for the calf that came out of the fire –

Imu: Throwing things in the fire.

Rabbi Fohrman: Throwing things in the fire. If you actually go back to the first time that Aaron comes on the scene – because remember, this really is a Moses and Aaron story, right?  Think back to the very first time you have that interaction between Moses and Aaron, when Moses was the leader and Aaron comes in as vice president.

Imu: Oh, wow!

Rabbi Fohrman: You know what I'm talking about. Where does elohim show up there? 

Imu: I believe what happens is, when Moses is talking to God at the burning bush and Moses expresses the fact that he is hesitant to go and speak to Pharaoh, God tells Moses that he is going to be an elohim, and that Aaron will be his navi, that Aaron will be his prophet.

Rabbi Fohrman: Aaron is going to be his speaker, and you are going to be like an elohim. God Himself uses that language. And you have to keep in mind that the word elohim doesn't always mean what we think it means. We think of elohim as a synonym for God, based upon the first verse of the Bible: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹקים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ – In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). But if you look at the names of God, the word elohim actually has a meaning. It can mean either “judges” or it can mean “power.” When the people would worship these demigods or they would worship these other gods, they were really worshiping these other powers. 

And it's true, there are these powers in the world. The sun and the moon and the stars are powerful forces. They're much more powerful than human beings. The moon controls the tides. The sun controls all life on Earth. When the Bible, for example, says לֹא יִהְיֶ͏ה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים עַל פָּנָ͏ַי – you shall not worship other gods (Exodus 20:3), that's not this crazy oxymoron. that I thought you said there's only one God, so how could there be other gods to worship? It really means you shall not worship other powers. There are other powers in the world.

So this question of what Moses is when God Himself says that he's going to be like an elohim to Aaron, it's this sort of ambiguous thing. It doesn't really mean you'll be divine, but it means that you have some sort of ultimate power in the relationship. Somehow, the people maybe are taking that idea, that Moses is an elohim to Aaron, and kind of running with it a little bit close to the margins and getting themselves on the wrong side of something that ends up being an act of idolatry, sort of confusing a power with someone that may have, in a way, godlike status.

Who Took You Out of Egypt?

Imu: It seems like the people have an inappropriate relationship with Moses, or an inappropriate conception of Moses, and possibly even an inappropriate conception of God as well. If you read with me 32 verse 4, where Aaron is actually molding the calf, וַיִּקַּח מִיָּדָם – he takes the jewelry from them, וַיָּצַר אֹתוֹ בַּחֶרֶט וַיַּעֲשֵׂהוּ עֵגֶל מַסֵּכָה – he creates a molten calf. By the way, just a little tangent: מַסֵּכָה (maseichah) means molten, but it also means –

Rabbi Fohrman: It also means a mask.

Imu: Right. And maybe here there's a little bit of a hint as to this egel (calf) which is ostensibly being used as a connection device to God is really a mask. It's really something to shield them from God to some extent.

Rabbi Fohrman: I'm ostensibly seeking to connect to this divine being, but what I'm really doing is trying to shield myself from my fear of connecting to the divine. So the calf is both a connecting device – a calf wants to nurse, a calf wants to connect with some sort of father or mother in heaven – but there's also that maseichah, that masking or keeping me hidden or safely away, a blast shield from the divine at the same time. So the people are kind of conflicted about where they're coming from.

Imu: Let me just finish this verse. וַיֹּאמְרוּ – They say, once they make this molten mask-like calf, אֵלֶּה אֱלֹהֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלוּךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם – this is your god, Israel, that took you out of Egypt. On the one hand, "that took you out of Egypt," that phrase we had just a few verses above by Moses, which you could argue is technically true – Moses did lead them out of Egypt – here, this is patently false. This calf did not take them out of Egypt. It didn't aid, abet, wasn't involved, wasn't there, and yet they are –

Rabbi Fohrman: It's fake news.

Imu: It's fake news. They literally created some sort of demigod and argued that it took them out of Egypt, and I think they had an agenda. They had a reason why they needed someone else to take them out of Egypt other than to lay that completely at God's feet.

Fearing God

I think that you already alluded to it. You said that they're afraid. They're afraid somehow of that raw connection to God Himself. And when I read this pasuk (verse), it reminded me of some pesukim in Beshalach. Beshalach happened a few weeks back, and I think by the time we get to Ki Tisa we forget those earlier stories, but I think that reading Ki Tisa, this story of the golden calf, without the context of Beshalach makes you really a lot more puzzled as to what was going on with the golden calf than you might need to be. I think there's actually a very clear story to tell. I'm going to argue that people were terribly afraid of God and therefore they rushed into Moses' arms.

Rabbi Fohrman: So I'm going to push you for evidence here. What is it that you see in Beshalach that you think makes for a compelling antecedent to the story of the egel ? 

Imu: All throughout Beshalach, you have a bunch of times where the people are in crisis and they call out. They reveal a lot about how they perceive things based on who they call out to and what it is they say. So I want you to come with me to chapter 14 verse 11. As the Egyptians are about to reach the Israelites at the sea, and they have the sea in front of them and nowhere to go, and they don't know the end of the story – we often think of the Israelites at the sea perfectly faithful, ready for God to save them, but that's not exactly what happens. Instead, what do we get? They turn on Moses, and they say, “What, are there not enough graves in Egypt that you took us to the desert?” So the ultimate passive-aggressive line: מַה־זֹּאת עָשִׂיתָ לָּנוּ לְהוֹצִיאָנוּ מִמִּצְרָיִם – What did you do to us, to take us out of Egypt? This is exactly what we told you! We said, leave us alone, we're happy to work in Egypt, because it's better for us to work in Egypt than to die in the desert.

So to read these pesukim, you get here for a second that they're not exactly relating to God. They somehow think that this plot of taking them out of Egypt is a Moses plot.

Rabbi Fohrman: So I want to – I hear you, and I think you're right about this language, but I do want to challenge you just a little bit and push you, because in the verse right before this, you're going to have to contend with a trend that seems to go in the opposite direction. 

Imu: I knew you were going to do that. So what happens is, Pharaoh faces them and they get very scared. וַיִּצְעֲקוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל־יְקוָה – the people of Israel call out to God (Exodus 14:10). But –

Rabbi Fohrman: So just understand the issue here. In other words, it's not like they're ignoring God. They are calling out to God even as they're complaining to Moses about Moses taking them out of Egypt. It sounds like the people are obviously in a relationship with God. They don't believe that there was nothing divine about what happened, and nevertheless they're laying the blame squarely at Moses' feet, which seems odd.

Imu: Yes. On the one hand, the people can't deny God. They just saw ten plagues, fascinating miracles, so they have to relate to the fact that there is a divine being. But what do you do when you know there is a divine being, and you can't contend with Him because He's a god? Wouldn't it be great if you could have your cake and eat it, too? If you had a god who was powerful and helped you and protected you, when you didn't like where things were, there was a complaint department, right, that the god was sort of a man who you could fight with a little bit? 

Rabbi Fohrman: What you're saying is that the people do understand that there is some sort of partnership between God and Moses in taking them out. They get it that there's a divine being that supplies all the power and fireworks over here. But what is not completely on the level, in terms of what the people are doing, is that they realize they can't really challenge God, the Almighty, who's the maker of these miracles. But Moses is a person. His part of the partnership is the weak link. So what they do is sort of pull this shtick, as it were, of suggesting to Moses that he has a greater responsibility than you might otherwise attribute to him by saying, What the heck did you do? How did you take us out of Egypt? – conveniently overemphasizing the Moses elements in this partnership. 

Imu: Exactly. In order for them to complain – and they want to complain, as Jews love to complain – they need to ascribe more power to Moses than he deserves, and yet at the same time they can't completely deny God's role either. 

A Progression of Complaints

So come with me to chapter 15 verse 24, which is the next major complaint right after the splitting of the sea. And by the way, just to make sure that we all know that they're not in denial of God, at the end of –

Rabbi Fohrman: And then they sing this great song.

Imu: Right. They sing this great song, and it says וַיַּאֲמִינוּ בַּיקוָה וּבְמֹשֶׁה עַבְדּוֹ – they believe in God and they believe in Moses, His servant (Exodus 14:31).

Rabbi Fohrman: This, by the way, is the partnership right there. So they're acknowledging that partnership.

Imu: Right.

Rabbi Fohrman: There's a God and there's a Moses, His servant.

Imu: Right. So come with me to 15:24. They have no water, or the water they have is very, very bitter, and so, unlike last time, where they screamed out to God and then complained to Moses, here they just go directly to Moses. וַיִּלֹּנוּ הָעָם עַל מֹשֶׁה – The nation complains to Moses, saying, what are we going to drink?

Rabbi Fohrman: By the way, fascinating – if I could just interject, sorry about that, for one second – there's a direct parallel in contrast with the last time around. The last time around, what the people did, as you pointed out, is that they screamed to God and then complained to Moses. Here, the exact same words of “screamed to God" are being evoked once more, except it's not the people who do it. They do not scream to God. They just complain to Moses, leaving it up to Moses to scream to God, which is what the very next thing that happens: וַיִּצְעַק אֶל־יְקוָה – He screams to God.

So, again, it's almost as if Moses is sort of being forced to take the bait. It's like no, our only address, our complaint department, is you, Moses. We're not even doing any screaming to God. At which point it now becomes a division of labor for Moses to take on this new job of being the one to scream to God, because he's got these complaints from the people. Moses is sort of being forced into being the weak link in this partnership.

Imu: Exactly. I think there's even more to learn from this particular episode, which is, what happens is, right after this, after Moses, he throws in a stick or a tree into the water and it sweetens, what happens is Moses tells the people almost to comfort them – if you were to comfort the people, what would you say? Don't worry. If only you listen to God's voice and you follow all of His commands, then He'll take care of you. 

Except that's not what he says. He says: If you listen to all of God's commands and if you follow in His ways, then all of the sickness, כׇּל הַמַּחֲלָה אֲשֶׁר שַׂמְתִּי בְמִצְרַיִם לֹא אָשִׂים עָלֶיךָ כִּי אֲנִי יְקוָה רֹפְאֶךָ – all of the sicknesses which I, God, placed on Egypt, I'm not going to put on you, because I'm your doctor, I'm your healer (Exodus 15:26). Which is a very weird and kind of creepy thing to reassure the people, unless the people were actually afraid that God did not care about them. They saw God as a jealous, vengeful God who just destroyed Egypt and brought Egypt to its knees. So maybe what God is doing here is saying: I know you're afraid of Me, and I want you to know that if you're in this relationship with Me, I'm not going to do any of those things I did to Egypt. אֲנִי יְקוָה רֹפְאֶךָ – I'm your healer.

Rabbi Fohrman: Let me summarize what I hear you saying, and tell me if I got this right. What you're arguing is that at this point, finally, after two failed communications between the people, God, and Moses revolving around complaints – failure number 1, before the splitting of the sea; failure number 2, after the splitting of the sea – God is noticing a trend, which is: Things are getting worse. The first time around, the people at least scream to God and then complain to Moses. Now, they're not even talking to God at all. They're just complaining to Moses, leaving it up to Moses to scream to God. 

At that point, God says: Okay, folks, we've got to talk about this. You're ignoring Me. What's going on? Why are you ignoring Me? And God is implicitly getting to the reason why. What you're suggesting is a possible rationale for why the people have been ignoring God, and the rationale is fear. And the nature of that fear is that the people cannot deny the signs and miracles and wonders in the Exodus, but they question the motivation of the divine for doing them. Which is to say, what's in it for God?

One possibility is God loves us, He took us out, but there is another, darker possibility, which is: God has an agenda here. The agenda is to show the world that He is master. The people are worried that they are merely pawns in this battle between Egypt and God, leading them to some kind of fear, which is, look, do You just use us, and when it's no longer convenient, do You even really care? At which point, God sort of comes out of the clouds over here in Parshat Beshalach and says: Hey, I just want to tell you something. If you're fearful that you guys will become the next Mitzrayim (Egypt), that my anger will turn against you when you're not convenient, that's not the case. I'm actually looking to a long-term relationship with you, and I am not going to visit upon you all the terrible things that would happen in Egypt. I'm not that kind of God.

Imu: That's what I'm arguing. If you think it's speculative or you think that it's not enough evidence quite yet, then let me take you to one last destination, and that's in the very next perek (chapter) when the people run out of food. In 16:2, you have this pasuk: וַיִּלּוֹנוּ כׇּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל עַל מֹשֶׁה וְעַל אַהֲרֹן בַּמִּדְבָּר – Once more, they're facing a struggle and they complain against Moses and Aaron. וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֲלֵהֶם בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל – And b’nei Yisrael say to them, מִי יִתֵּן מוּתֵנוּ בְיַד יְקוָה בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם – Would that we had died at the hands of… not of Pharaoh, but the hands of God in Egypt, almost as if God was going to have killed them if they had stayed in Egypt. Better that we had died by the hands of God in Egypt, when we at least had food in our bellies. You guys – you, Moses and Aaron unilaterally, seemingly – took us out into this desert to kill us with starvation.

So here, again, it seems that they're suggesting that Moses and Aaron were the ones that took them out of Egypt. But again, they're suspecting that God would've killed them in the land of Egypt? It seems like they looked at what happened in Egypt not as God saving them but as God annihilating Egypt, and they would've died as collateral damage. Maybe Moses was wily and was able to spirit them away, but certainly, that whole episode had more to do with God settling the score with Egypt than it had anything to do with them.

And what happens is that Moses then says to them: וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה וְאַהֲרֹן אֶל כׇּל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל עֶרֶב וִידַעְתֶּם כִּי יְקוָה הוֹצִיא אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם – God is going to perform this miracle for you, and He's going to bring food down from the heavens, and you'll see that God is the one who took you out of Egypt, not us. וּבֹקֶר וּרְאִיתֶם אֶת כְּבוֹד יְקוָה בְּשׇׁמְעוֹ אֶת תְּלֻנֹּתֵיכֶם עַל יְקוָה וְנַחְנוּ מָה כִּי תַלִּינוּ עָלֵינוּ – In the morning, when that bread falls, you'll see the glory of God in His having heard your complaints upon Him. And us, who are we that you complain to us? (Exodus 16:6-7) So God is going to, He's basically overhearing your complaints about Him to us, and He's going to respond to you. And you guys, you really shouldn't be talking to us. We're not the complaint department. God is the one who you should be complaining to.

Rabbi Fohrman: It makes a lot of sense to me. It seems to me the progression is that this a third complaint. In complaint number 1, they acknowledge God and scream to Him and just talk to Moses. In complaint number 2, they don't even acknowledge God. They complain to Moses, and they leave it to Moses to scream to God. In complaint number 3, they're going even a little bit further by arguing that Moses may have been acting – here's another possibility – at cross-purposes with God, that God might have preferred them to stay in Egypt while there are all these signs and wonders as He was getting rid of all the Egyptians, and Moses, on his own, kind of decides to take them out. 

You know, “what are you doing, Moses? You're killing us. If we had just stayed back with God's plan, you know, God's plan might've had us hanging back and just watching the fireworks show from Egypt while we remained slaves,” is another possible reading. We would've at least been able to live out our lives and die like normal human beings, at least having bread in our stomachs, rather than die out here of starvation.

Imu: So, the things that have transpired in between Beshalach and Ki Tisa and the chet ha'egel (sin of the golden calf), is the giving of the Torah, where God reveals Himself to the people. He says in the very first line of His speech, אָנֹכִי יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם – No, it's Me, I am your God. I'm the one who took you out of Egypt (Exodus 20:2).

Rabbi Fohrman: So in other words, what you seem to be saying is that the reason why God needs to introduce Himself this way in the Ten Commandments is because it's like, here it is, God is speaking from the top of the mountain directly to the People of Israel, no Moses intermediary, no chance for miscommunication, and God says: Let me clear up this confusion once and for all. I am responsible. I am the one who took you out of Egypt. Which, Imu, makes it all the more ironic what's happening at the bottom of the mountain, as the people are dancing around a calf and essentially calling that very thing into question.

כִּי זֶה  מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם – Even as God is attempting to make it as clear as day in the Ten Commandments that I am the one who took you out of Egypt, the people are still sort of using this backchannel, that Moses is this man who took us out of Egypt, we need a god to perform that function. And they're backsliding.

What Went Wrong?

Imu: So having said all of this, what do you think their motivation was for building a calf? Like, what would you say is the takeaway? Where do you see yourself, or where do we see ourselves, in where b’nei Yisrael went wrong?

Rabbi Fohrman: If their underlying motivation, as you are reading this, is that the people are looking to overemphasize the Moses part of the partnership – because it's convenient for them, because it allows them a mortal human being to whom they can complain – the way the people may have been viewing Moses is, on the one hand, a demigod, but on the other hand, a human, sort of this cross between the two. As a human, he is a human being representing the people in relationship with God. As a demigod, he is sort of a godlike figure representing God to the people. He has both of those qualities.

So now, the people are trying to replace that Moses with this kind of demigod, with this thing that they create. But the advantage they have is that they've created it, they've created this thing and, therefore it's a representative of them too. And so there's something sneaky going on here in this idolatry, which is, when you make your own idol, when you make your own god, who's in charge of who? So you can pretend that this thing, this divine god, is higher up on the totem pole of power than you, but the reality is it's just a product of your own hands, and you are the one pulling the strings and you are the puppeteer. In that sense, you have the ultimate being that you can control.

So if the people, on the one hand, are – if the nature of their sin, so to speak, throughout Parshat Beshalach is as you suggest, that they are seeking to lean on a Moses that they think they can control by complaining to him, they have that in spades with the calf that is nothing but the products of their own hands. 

Imu: Yeah. It makes me wonder whether there's an issue we have in Judaism with intermediaries. The Torah ends with a really great statement about Moses, how there never again arose a navi (prophet) as amazing as Moses, who saw God face to face or spoke to God face to face. I wonder if that's both a praise of Moses, but also, there's a reason why we don't get another Moses. Maybe to some extent we are called into a more direct relationship with God, and it’s something we're afraid of, something we tend to avoid.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's an interesting possibility. I think back to my rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, who once told us, his talmidim (students), something kind of strange about the role of a rebbe (teacher). You know, if you're in yeshiva, you think you've got your rebbe – in sort of an immature view of the rebbe role, at least as a ninth-grader or tenth-grader, you're looking up to Mr. Intermediary between you and God, and he's just going to fix all the problems. I can complain to him, and somehow he's going to make it all better.

Rabbi Weinberg's perspective was that the rebbe doesn't really have that intermediary role. The rebbe's role is actually to help you stand up as an independent human being in your relationship with God. His role, according to Rabbi Weinberg, is to test your objectivity. If you can talk things out with a mentor, with a rebbe, and that rebbe can stand in front of you and say, what you're saying makes sense, or I hear a certain bias in your words, or I don't think you're being honest with yourself – if there is an honest, wise human being who can vet your issues and give you the confidence, really, of your own convictions, or call you out if you're lying to yourself – the rebbe, in his view, was actually someone that helps us become more independent in our relationship with God than helps us shirk our responsibilities in that relationship. At least, that was his take on it, and it's certainly something which has resonated with me over time.

Imu: That's a really incredible take, a leader that fosters more independence and more responsibility for their flock. Well, Rabbi Fohrman, this is as good a time as any to be grateful for your mentorship, and to say it's fun learning these parshiyot (Torah portions) with you.  

Ari: You know, I kind of get why the Israelites had such a hard time complaining directly to God. It’s a really vulnerable thing, to take our fears and resentments directly to the one we feel is responsible. And when that One is the Being who controls your whole world, who punished the Egyptians with plagues that were miraculous beyond nature… it could seem downright terrifying! But when we take our complaints elsewhere, it drives this massive wedge between us and God. If only we could take these complaints to God Himself, as hard as that is to do, it would actually strengthen our relationship with Him.

You know, if you think about it, once the Israelites worshiped the Golden Calf, God decreed their death. It seems as if their mistakes are no longer forgivable. God wants to wipe them out and start over. But what happens? Moses gets up and does the very thing the people were too afraid to do. He argues directly with God and protests the heavenly decree. How brazen! How disrespectful! But that seems to be exactly what God wants. He wants a full, healthy relationship with us, arguments and all. Sure enough, Moses’ intervention works and the people are saved.

If you want to learn more about Moses’ chutzpah when he argued with God, we have a great video about that on our website. There is a link in the description, go check it out.

Credits

This episode was recorded by our lead scholar, Rabbi David Fohrman, together with Imu Shalev. 

When this episode originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was edited by Rivky Stern. 

Into the Verse editing was done by Sarah Penso.

Our audio editing for this episode was done by Shifra Jacobs.

Additional audio editing was done by Hillary Guttman.

Our senior editor is me, Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.