Calf vs. cherubs: What we want is who we really are

This week’s portion, Ki Tissah, contains one of the most challenging episodes in the entire Torah. Just six weeks after hearing G-d’s words directly at Sinai, the Jews construct for themselves a golden calf calling out, “These are your gods oh Israel!”

How could a nation that witnessed the splitting of the sea, the great miracles of the Exodus, and that stood at Sinai, make such a horrendous mistake?

Even more confusing, is that this story appears in the context of the fulfillment of G-d’s command to build a Tabernacle (the forerunner of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem) in whose holy of holies we were commanded to fashion and place no less than holy cherubs, made of gold! Why was the fashioning of a golden calf considered such a tragic mistake, while the golden cherubs were considered the holiest of holies?

Clearly the gold was not the issue; the Temple itself was full of gold. So what is the difference between golden cherubs, and a golden calf?

To understand this, we need to take a closer look at the mistake that has come to be known as “The sin of the golden calf.” What really happened at the foot of Sinai?

“Vayar ha’am ki boshesh Moshe” (“And the people saw that Moshe tarried”).

Rashi here explains that Moshe went up on the mountain for forty days, and the people miscounted. When the 40th day arrived and Moshe did not materialize, they assumed he was gone, and the resulting events were born of their despair and need for something to fill the vacuum that resulted. But why a golden calf?

The calf elsewhere in the Torah is the animal chosen very specifically for certain sacrifices. The Ramban suggests that the essence of the sacrifices was to somehow bring us closer to G-d; indeed the Hebrew word for sacrifice — Korban — comes from the same root as the word Karov, meaning to be close. Many commentaries suggest that when offering a sacrifice one is meant to feel “there but for the grace of G-d go I,” that the animal represents oneself in its primal form. When we succumb to our most base desires and needs allowing our lives to take the wrong direction, the sacrifice reminds us that our life needs to be re-directed. The calf then represents the animal in its youthful, raw form, where all that matters is what we want and desire.