Rabbi's Derasha

Devarim includes the retelling of many stories.  They often appear with an extra detail.  This is not because Mpshe has embellished.  It is because there are details which were not as relevant in the first telling but are salient for the message Moshe is trying to get across now.  This is true in the retelling of the story of the Golden Calf.

To begin, it’s important to establish that it is in fact the same story.  What takes place here is a confirmation of what we saw in Shemot.  If one is looking closely, the worry about Moshe Rabenu being late is not about him but about what he is bringing.  When the mailman is late, one is not worried about him but about the letters he is bringing.  The Golden Calf is not just a substitute for Moshe but for his message, which is contained in the Luchot.

One can see this in the original story because it opens not with the verse about Moshe being late but about the reception of the tablets.  It is confirmed because as Moshe is telling the story today, he brings up the tablets seemingly out of the blue. The story is about the fact that the people were agitated and then built a strange substitute for Moshe.  The Luchot are not central to that except as a casualty of the celebration around the Calf.     

This becomes even more important because of the telling detail in this week’s version of the story.  In Shemot, it just says that Moshe saw the golden calf and was angered.  He then threw the tablets down and they broke at the foot of the mountain.

In Devarim, the description is similar but there is a big change. Before it says that Moshe flung the tablets down, it says that Moshe “took hold” of the tablets.  Vaetfos, and I grabbed, Moshe says.  Where were they that he needed to grab them?  Another new detail: In the posuk before, which suddenly inserts the tablets into the story, they are described as being “above my hands.”  Not “in my hands,” but “Al Shtei Yadai,” above my two hands.

What does that mean?  The Or Hachaim says that the Luchot hovered, floated if you will, above Moshe’s hands. This is why the proper reaction to the sin of the Golden calf was to describe them as suddenly falling under the power of gravity.  Flinging them down simply underscores this.  

This is why the tablets are central to the reaction to the Golden Calf.  The Jewish people introduced the possibility of bringing the leadership or even worship -- whichever way you want to understand the calf -- under their control.  So the proper sense of Torah -- as something toward which they should ascend -- is lost.

A few months ago, R’ Fohrman asked what made the Torah a “great book.”  The classic understanding of that designation for any book is that one’s reaction to these books is usually not a measure of the book but of oneself.  It could be that one doesn’t like one or two of the books in the Western canon.  Understood.  But if one keeps rejecting book after book in the canon, the judgement is not about the books anymore.  It’s about us.

This comment from the Or HaChaim adds another layer to this sense of judgement.  The Torah was and remains a unique “book” not just because our reactions are on trial but because it explicitly introduces judgement.  This is its defining characteristic, and of course has made it controversial until today.  The Torah calls on us to ascend to it.  It is not inaccessible.  This we know from the description late in Devarim -- that the Torah is not beyond us, not in heaven and not across the sea.  But we cannot manipulate it the way we manipulate everything else.  It is beyond us, and asks that we step up to it and not that we demand that it come down to us.