MARCH 9 • 2023 | 43

T

he poet Yehuda Amichai writes:
“I don’t want an invisible god. I want 
a god who is seen
but doesn’t see, so I can lead him 
around
and tell him what he doesn’t see…
”
(“God Changes, Prayers are Here 
to Stay” in The Poetry of Yehuda 
Amichai, ed. Robert Alter, pp. 409-
10)
Back in Parashat Mishpatim, the Torah 
tells us that Moses was 
called up to the mountain 
to work on the stone tablets 
and remained there for 40 
days (Exodus 24:12-18). In 
this week’s portion, Ki Tisa, 
we reconnect with this unfin-
ished storyline at the begin-
ning of Exodus 32. While 
Moses tarries atop Mount Sinai, the people 
down below are losing their patience:
“When the people saw that Moses was so 
long in coming down from the mountain, 
the people gathered against Aaron and said 
to him, ‘Come, make us a god who shall go 
before us, for that man Moses, who brought 
us from the land of Egypt — we do not 
know what happened to him.
’”( Exodus 32:1)

What happens next is one of the most 
well-known biblical stories. Aaron, Moses’ 
brother and the priest, produces a golden 
calf for the scared and frustrated Israelites 
(Exodus, 32:4), proclaims for them a festival 
to the Eternal (Exodus 32:5) and offers the 
appropriate sacrifices for a festival (Exodus 
32:6). From his ground-level view, Aaron 
communicates in word and action that he 
thinks he is doing right by the people.
From God’s point of view, however, this 
behavior has crossed an irrevocable cove-
nantal line, deserving of the ultimate capital 
punishment (Exodus 32:7-11). The people 
are saved due to Moses’ pleading (Exodus 
11-14): God refrains from wiping out this 
“stiff-necked people” (Exodus 32:9). From a 
lofty distance, Moses is compassionate. But 
when he rejoins the people below and actu-
ally sees what is going on, he is overcome 
with anger — he smashes the tablets and 
burns the calf to the ground (Exodus 32:19-
20).

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
Close and nuanced readings of the Golden 
Calf episode reveal seam lines of multiple 
perspectives about its meaning. From a 
source-critical perspective, Exodus 32 seems 

to be a story written as a polemic against 
later historical events — the post-Solomon 
splitting off of the Northern tribes into 
their own kingdom, and how its first king, 
Jeroboam, set up new centers of cultic wor-
ship with calves (or bulls) as their symbol (I 
Kings 12:25-33; see Israel Knohl, The Divine 
Symphony: The Bible’s Many Voices, p. 80). 
In this political-theological dispute, we 
have a clash of symbols. Our Bible presents 
the viewpoint of the Davidic line in the 
southern kingdom of Judah with Jerusalem 
as its capital, where winged lions (cherubim) 
were the symbols adorning the sacred altar 
(Exodus 25:18-20; I Kings 6).
Another lesson in perspective-taking 
comes from a literary analysis of the unfold-
ing of the Exodus 32 story. In between 
Moses’ compassionate pleading on behalf 
of the people from above and his enraged 
response down below, a curious exchange 
of perspective happens at mid-level. On his 
way back down the mountain, Moses meets 
up with Joshua, his second-in-command 
and military leader, who was halfway down 
the mountainside (see Exodus 24:13). 
Unlike Moses, who had been stationed at 
the mountaintop, Joshua was positioned in a 
place where he could hear something of the 

A Matter of Perspective

continued on page 44

Rabbi 
Reuven 
Greenvald

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

