Our Rabbi's Message
March 5th 2010
By Rabbi Aaron KriegelIn the Parasha we read this week Moses ascends Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. He remains on Sinai for forty days and forty nights. The people look toward the mountain and all they see is smoke and flame. All they hear is thunder. They are afraid. Their leader has left them and they cannot recognize the presence of their God. They seek out Aaron, Moses' brother, who is the high priest and ask him to build them an idol. They need to know that they have a god whom they can see. They need to know that they have a leader who they can trust.
Trust for them means trust in a leader, or the vestments of a leader, that could be recognized by all. In medieval times that meant that people wanted a king, or at least a castle where they supposed the king lived. In our present day that means the people want a president or at least a White House where they know the president resides.
Anarchy is not the natural condition of man. People seek leadership. People want to know that in all they do in this world they are not alone. It is for that reason people choose marriage and community. People choose to serve in the military or to send their sons to serve in the military. We do not want to live separate individual lives. We do not want to be hermits or monks. Living without leadership is unnatural for the human species.
And so when Moses and God were absent from the lives of our ancestors when they were in the desert, they were afraid. They wanted to make certain that they had leadership, or at least the vestments of leadership. For them an idol, which carried but an empty hope of power over the people, was enough.
You see people are very material beings. We do not have abstract aspirations. We live in a world of sense experience and we crave that those senses affirm where we believe power rests. Even today we can live without the abstract affirmation of that power.
For our forefathers an idol was better than God. For us what a president eats for breakfast is more important than what he thinks.
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