THE GOLDEN CALF

The Challenge of Success
By Simon Jacobson

Much has been said how pain and loss often serve as wake up calls, making us aware of deeper truths. How about joy and success – what do they tell us about the human condition? When you are riding high and celebrating success, do you feel arrogant and self-important? Posturing as if you deserve all your blessings and taking them for granted? Or do they make you humble and gracious?

One of the ultimate barometers of life’s destiny is measured gauged by the way we behave in times of plenty. But the challenge is great: The complacency and false sense of confidence bred by success can be our worst enemy.

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One of the saddest and most dramatic episodes in history is recounted in this week’s Torah portion: The building of the Golden Calf.

While Moses was communing with G-d on Mt. Sinai, the people below became restless and demanded “make us a god to lead us.” They brought their gold and it was molded into the cast of a golden calf – an idol – which they in turn began to worship.

A tragic moment indeed. At the most momentous event in history, when the greatest mandate of civilization was given to the human race, under the very shadow of Sinai, a nation of priests were indulging themselves, eating, drinking, prostrating themselves and taking pleasure before a… god made of gold.

Volumes have been written about this travesty. How was it possible that a highly evolved nation – a “knowledgeable generation” who personally witnessed and experienced the greatest revelations ever to take place, a people who had but 39 days earlier heard the Divine commandment “thou shalt not have other gods” – should so blatantly betray G-d?!

This paradox of extremes contains a profound personal and psychological message, as relevant today as it was then.

The Talmud offers us a truism (Sukkah 52a): The greater the person the greater his Yetzer Hara (evil inclination). The more powerful the experience, the more powerful the challenge. The same is true collectively: When a great nation experienced the unprecedented Sinai revelation, the forces of resistance arose in direct proportion to the magnitude of the moment.

The stakes were high: Sinai transformed existence. Until that point in time matter and spirit were two distinct entities, with an impenetrable schism dividing them. At Sinai heaven wedded earth for, and it enabled us to fuse matter and energy forever after.

Indeed, the Talmud explains that Sinai “ceased the toxicity” which entered human consciousness after the eating of the Tree of Knowledge (Shabbos 146a). Before Adam and Eve ate from the tree, their beings and psyches seamlessly flowed from their spirits. No dichotomy existed between who they were and what they did. Like an innocent child, they were not self-conscious, because their self was not divorced from their souls. When they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, consciousness and self-consciousness was born. And with it entered the serpent’s “venom” – human reality became polluted with toxic self interest, which would devolve into the narcissistic source of all injustice and corruption. At Sinai, however, the spiritual smog lifted as the air was cleared.

But with every powerful experience comes an equally powerful resistance. Instead of humbly appreciating the moment, the people became self-satisfied and overconfident and proceeded to worship the Golden Calf, which allowed the toxicity to return (Zohar I 52b), replaying the first sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge.

Each of us in our lives will be faced with similar challenges:

Sinai characterizes the special moments in our lives. The Golden Calf epitomizes self-worship – and the worship of man-made objects – instead of the awe and humility in face of the Divine. If Sinai represents our purity and innocence, the golden idol is the moment when we lose our innocence.

At times we will experience a “Sinai” moment of truth. Simultaneously, we must be wary that the dark forces within our psyches will come beckoning. Sometimes they will manifest in a voice of cynicism or skepticism, sometimes in a voice of arrogance or self-indulgence, at other times in a voice of cockiness and smugness.

All great moments bring great challenges. When we experience an epiphany, a moment of inspiration, a magical moment, always know that with it will come an equally powerful potent counter voice that will challenge you. Often when we are blessed with a special blessing, we take for granted our gift and let our guard down.

And that moment will be your ultimate moment of truth; it will demonstrate the type of person you truly are. The noblest moments in a person’s life can be seen either in times of great loss or in times of great joy.

When the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, was miraculously released from Czarist prison, after his enemies had turned him in, you would think that he had every right to feel proud and self-righteous. Yet, not only did he not gloat – which obviously was to be expected – he went on to write his classic letter, citing Jacob: “I have been humbled by all the goodness you have done for me.” After Jacob returned to meet his brother Esau, with all the great blessings that he had experienced with building a beautiful family despite all the challenges of living in a hostile environment, Jacob declared his humility: “I have been humbled by all the goodness you have done for me.”

This is the majesty of great people. It is never about them personally. Even when their Divine cause emerges victorious, they experience profound humility.

Witness a person at his high point – at the epitome of joy – and you will see what he or she is made of. Does your success bring arrogance or humility?

Each of us will have Sinai revelations in our lives, a pollution-free beautiful moment. It may be falling in love, the birth of a child, a child’s wedding, a major breakthrough. At that moment you will have respite from the toxins of self-interest. But it will not be easy. For every positive voice there will be an equal cool voice tempering any enthusiasm. At that point the voice of the Golden Calf will come calling, knocking at your door. Every sin, every transgression, every human mistake has an element of the Golden Calf within it (Rashi this week’s portion 32:34).

And then you will have a choice: Will your grand experience cause you to worship yourself or will it humble you?

Will you use your power to abort the toxins of self-worship and self-interest that feed the fragmentation of our lives and of the universe? Or will you introduce the power of unity and integration?

What you do at that moment will define your life.
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Am I Worth Anything?

B"H. Dedicated to Luba Alta Toyba for a complete and speedy recovery.


Am I Worth Anything?

By Yosef Y. Jacobson

The opening verses of this week’s Torah portion convey G-d’s instruction to Moses on how to count the Jewish people. When it is necessary to conduct a census, they are to be counted not in an ordinary manner, person by person. Rather, every member of the community should contribute a coin for charity, and then the coins should be counted.

What is the rational behind this instruction? Why the need to count the community in such a round-about fashion, rather than simply counting the people directly?

Two messages, we may suggest, are being conveyed here.

What Are You Worth?

First, the Torah is suggesting that you are counted not based on who you are but on what you give. Your genuine value and worth spring forth from the love and kindness you impart to an aching heart.

Sir Moses Montefiore, a 19th century Jewish international diplomat and philanthropist, was once asked how much he was worth. The wealthy man thought for a while and named a figure. The other replied, “That can’t be right. By my calculation you must be worth many times that amount.”

Moses Montefiore’s reply was this: “You didn’t ask me how much I own. You asked me how much I’m worth. So I calculated the amount I have given to charity this year and that is the figure I gave you. You see,” he said, “we are worth what we are willing to share with others.”

Evaluating a people

There seems to be a one more vital message presented here, one that would reverberate throughout our long and painful history.

To appreciate the value and greatness of a people, the Torah is suggesting, you must study not the number of its bodies, but the depth of its contributions. Numbers can be deceiving. Large groups of people have often barely left a trace. On the other hand, there were times when small groups, when committed heart and soul to their goals and missions, have left an enormous impact (positive or negative), totally disproportionate to their numbers.

To appreciate the significance of Jewish existence, the Bible is telling us, you must study not its numbers: Jews never constituted more than one percent of society. Rather, you must examine the impact this little monotheistic group has had on the world. Other nations, cultures and civilizations enjoyed far greater numbers, larger territories and mightier armies. But nobody has left an impression on the very fabric of civilization as the relatively few and hunted down descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

As Thomas Cahill wrote in his national bestseller The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels:

“Most of our best words in fact – new, adventure, surprise; unique individual, person, vocation; time, history, future; freedom, progress, spirit; faith, hope and justice -- are the gifts of the Jews... We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes.”

We have quoted in the past the words written by nineteenth-century American president, John Adams:

"I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that chance had ordered the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist to the other sect, who believed or pretended to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance has ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization."

And here are the words of the great Russian novelist, Leo Nikolaivitch Tolstoy:

"The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illuminated with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions. The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He, who neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy. He, who neither fire, nor sword, nor inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. He, who was the first to produce the Oracles of G-d. He, who has been for so long the Guardian of Prophecy and has transmitted it to the rest of the world. Such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as Eternity itself."

And, lastly, a passage by contemporary historian Paul Johnson in his bestseller “History of the Jews:”

"All the great conceptual discoveries of the intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they have been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jew has this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without the Jews, it might have been a much emptier place."

So when G-d tells Moses to count the Jews, Moses might have said: "The numbers are really unimpressive." To which G-d responds: "Zeh Yetnu." Count not the bodies; count what they will give, what this people will contribute. Be proud of a people that will give the world the gift of hope, morality and redemption.

The Power to Love

Just as this is true concerning our national identity, it is true concerning every individual person. At times you may think to yourself, “I am worthless; I amount to nothing.”

Comes the Torah and says, that you on your own, cloistered in your vanity and egotism, may indeed amount to a small, futile creature, unworthy of counting (“If I am only for myself, what am I,” Hillel says in the Ethics of the Fathers). However, each of us has the power to contribute something to the world, to reach out to an individual in need. Each of us has the ability to touch a heart, to lift a spirit, to kindle a soul, to look a fellow human being in the eyes and say “I will be here for you.” You may be small indeed, but the love and light you can bring to another life through a simple gesture, a sincere “good morning,” or an act of goodness and kindness, cannot be counted enough. It can change the world, literally.

When you begin to give, new pathways are opened in your soul. You are freed from the psychological quagmire that often clots your self-perception. You begin to discover your inner value and dignity in ways unimaginable before.

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