How much gold went into the Golden Calf? What were its dimensions? Who assisted Aaron in creating it and what skills did they bring to the project? These are questions that cannot be answered, at least not from any Biblical account. We are told simply that the people brought their own rings and bangles to Aaron and he molded them into the image of a calf, which he then declared to be the god who brought them liberation from Egypt. When Aaron tells this story to his brother Moses, having just returned from Mount Sinai, the account is even vaguer. Aaron threw in the gold jewelry and “out came the calf.” (See Exodus 32 for the full text.)
In contrast, the Torah outlines the building of the Mishkan, the mobile sanctuary, describing the endeavor in great detail not once but twice. The first time comes as a set of commands. The second time we read in this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Vayakhel, the account of the actual work and the description of the project’s master builder, apprentice, and skilled team of craftspeople who bring the plan into reality. Dimensions, materials, process, and those responsible for its construction are all attested to in these accounts.
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The vague bombastic language of the Golden Calf and the details in which the Mishkan is presented are fitting for the two projects, of which the latter is the repair work for the damage done by the former. Repair takes intention and responsibility, while destruction requires nothing but the will to destroy and the means to do it.
There are plenty of contemporary images of reckless destruction. A chainsaw literally being wielded with zeal by someone tasked to slash budgets and terminate government employees. A disastrous Oval Office press conference in which longstanding global commitments are tossed aside for ego-driven demands. Sweeping executive orders attempting to eliminate any trace of the existence of transgender people and sexual diversity. The Department of Defense even flagged for removal pictures of the bomber used against Hiroshima because the airplane was called Enola Gay.
These attention-getting broadsides, however, are only the symptoms of a deeper malady shared with the builders of the Golden Calf — idolatry. More specifically, the Kotzker Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Morgenstern, gives us this definition: “Idolatry is when a face reveres a face that is not a face.” (See Tales of the Hasidim Vol 2: The Later Masters by Martin Buber.) In other words, rather than encountering God through the face of each other person, we revere something faceless and without holy purpose. The face of God is an invitation to engage in an ongoing encounter, a path toward justice and compassion. Whereas idolatry, in the words of Pope Francis (who saw fit to quote the Kotzker) in his first encyclical, “does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere.” (Encyclical Letter Lumen Fidei)
The Golden Calf is a dead end just as our contemporary idolatries are. The Mishkan is the remedy. In addition to the meticulous intentionality of the work, the Mishkan has a face. Two actually, in the form of the two cherubim, the images of angelic countenances formed above the ark cover and woven into the curtains. What makes these faces something other than a target of idolatry is that the focus is not on them but on the space in between. God’s presence calls from between the faces reminding us that to revere God is to attend to others.
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What is our Mishkan today? Where is a remedy for the faceless chainsaw and the malicious executive orders? Here, too, the remedy is attending to the holiness between the faces. The elevation of those who are least visible and most targeted. Contributing time, presence, and resources to protecting immigrants, showing up for members of LGBTQ+ communities, telling the stories that are vulnerable to erasure. And, like the Mishkan, this work of repair takes more intentionality, responsibility, and awareness of the real dimensions of both the challenges and the proposed redress.
The work is always ahead of us and while the journey is never-ending, it is not aimless. When we respond to the real needs of the people around us we build a world in which God’s presence is found in the faces of each other.
Rabbi Michael Bernstein serves as spiritual leader of Congregation Gesher L’Torah, a vibrant and dynamic synagogue community in North Atlanta where each person’s story is embraced and Judaism is personal. He was ordained as a conservative Rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary and was inducted into the Martin Luther King Board of Preachers at Morehouse College. Michael and his wife Tracie have three children, Ayelet, Yaron, and Liana.