J ust weeks before the Jewish People had witnessed with their own eyes and ears the Divine Revelation and Har Sinai. What then could have prompted their rash desperate creation of a calf of molten metal and why did G-d endorse Moshe’s breaking the Tablets when he saw their frenzied state?
Parshas Ki Sisa recounts one of the most disturbing events in Jewish history an incident that turned into an indelible trauma that is synonymous with every act of rebellion since. It was such a shocking sin that it almost brought destruction on the Jewish People as Hashem said to Moshe: “My anger will be kindled against them and I will annihilate them” (Shemos 32:10). It was a transgression that damaged the most delicate fibers of the soul and we are feeling its repercussions to this day; so devastating were its effects that the suffering of galus is traced back to this one terrible mistake. We’re speaking of course about Cheit Ha’eigel the Sin of the Golden Calf.
From a distance of several millennia and an entirely different mindset it’s hard to understand or to judge what happened there. How could a people that stood at Har Sinai just a few weeks previously a people that heard and accepted from the mouth of G-d Himself the commandment “There shall be no other gods before Me. Do not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness ” make a calf of molten metal? How could it be that intelligent people of sound mind said to Aharon “For this man Moshe who took us out of Egypt we do not know what has become of him ” and set their gaze on an image of a calf of their own making and proclaimed “These are your gods Israel that brought you up from the land of Egypt”?
It’s particularly difficult to contemplate their tremendous excitement. Chazal themselves were shocked by it: “Rabi Yehuda bar Pazi said in the name of Rebbi ‘How can we read this and not be frightened? For a good cause [i.e. when the Jewish People contributed raw materials for the Mishkan] the Torah says ‘every generous-hearted soul ’ but for evil it says ‘The entire nation took off [their jewelry].’ ” (Yerushalmi Shekalim 1:1)
