A fascinating yet perplexing aggada in Berachot depicts Moshe arguing with God in the aftermath of the Golden Calf. Moshe appears to be blaming God for the Jewish people's sinful behaviour, claiming that the strong temptation to stray left no realistic expectation that the Jews could have behaved otherwise. Our surprise at Moshe's apparently outrageous accusation is compounded when the Gemara concludes by stating that God concedes the point and agrees with Moshe's assessment. This aggadah is puzzling for several reasons: why would God have wanted to create such an insurmountable temptation? And on what basis might God subsequently retreat from His initial position?
The chapter of Judaism Reclaimed that relates to Ki Tisa addresses these points as well as the broader question of when and how a prophet can argue with God.
While Ramban's formula can be understood with tests for individuals, it is extremely complex to apply to an entire nation, whose members possess a wide range of spiritual capabilities. Should a national challenge of faith and spiritual growth be so easy to pass that the entire nation should be capable of passing it, potentially sacrificing the growth of its more advanced members? Alternatively, should the test be so hard that only the nation’s most capable members could pass it, thus identifying those who possess the best potential for leadership? Or should the test be set at whichever level would be likely to benefit the majority?
Another conversation between God and Moshe, this time recorded explicitly in the Torah's text, further indicates their sharply contrasting approaches to the difficult trade-off between refining the nation's upper echelons on the one hand, and catering for its weaker members on the other. After Moshe is dispatched from the summit of Mount Sinai to witness the Golden Calf debacle, God proposes to annihilate the unworthy nation and develop a new chosen people from Moshe's descendants. Moshe emphatically rejects this suggestion, and once again we see God acceding to Moshe's position. Rather than eliminating the sinful nation, God instead replaces His direct hashgachahwith that of an angel, thereby diminishing the level of shechinah and hashgachahto a level that the entire nation could endure.
While the nation as a whole failed and was punished as a result of the test of the Golden Calf, a midrash in Bemidbar Rabbah notes how the tribe of Levi was greatly elevated as a result of passing this test, thereby meriting to become the 'tribe of God' and serve in the Mikdash:
"When Israel worshipped the golden calf, the Levites refused to participate … And when Moshe told them to gird themselves with swords, what did they do? They took their swords and showed no favouritism…God tested them and they stood up to His test … As a result Hashem chose them (to serve in the Beit Hamikdash) as it says, "God tests the righteous one …"
It would appear from this text that, from God's perspective, the rigorous examination that the entire nation was subjected to in the episode of the Golden Calf was justified by the significant spiritual growth gained by the Levites.
Returning to God's reconsideration in light of Moshe's request to spare the nation, neither position taken by God during this conversation should be viewed as incorrect. God's initial proposition to replace the Jewish people with a new nation of Moshe's descendants would appear to derive from middat hadin — the attribute of strict justice which generates difficult challenges and demands perfect responses. While the tribe of Levi thrived on this challenge, Moshe pleaded for the Jews to be treated instead with the attribute of mercy (the '13 attributes' of which God subsequently revealed to him). Through this attribute of mercy, it would be easier to accommodate human imperfection by diminishing the intensity of the providential relationship between God and the people – albeit at the expense of the opportunities for spiritual growth for its more advanced members.
In modern times, a similar debate has emerged over the primary objective of Jewish education. Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler contrasted the approach adopted by the Torah im derech eretz system of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch in Germany with that of the Lithuanian yeshivas. Rav Dessler comments that the choice of the 'Frankfurt school system' to teach secular subjects and approve of university education made its Judaism far more palatable to its devotees, with the result that the vast majority of them opted for a life of dedicated Torah observance.
In contrast to this, the Lithuanian yeshivas concentrated their students' energies and desires exclusively on studying Torah. These great Torah academies, writes Rav Dessler, produced outstanding Torah leaders and a yeshiva system which flourishes to this very day, but at significant detriment to the lives (and religious observance) of those who were unable to deal with the extreme lifestyle it demanded. The yekkish communities designed by Rav Hirsch, by contrast, largely failed to build great yeshivot or Torah leaders, leading to a situation which has seen their stable and observant youngsters being subsumed into the Lithuanian yeshiva world and adopted its values.
First posted to Facebook 13 February 2022, here.
