[Avodah] basis of AZ

[Michael Makovi]

>  If one accepts the derasha that connects the Golden calf with the
>  feared death of Moshe
>  then the medrash is saying that in this particular case the AZ was
>  more intellectual
>  of losing the connection to G-d and needing to somehow replace. In this case it
>  was not based on immorality. However, that does not exclude that in mnay other
>  cases AZ is connected with immorality

>  Eli Turkel

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's "If You Were G-d" (in the Anthology) has a
fascinating take on this. I'll summarize the entire work:

Imagine you are G-d, and have a little island of immorality. You want
to make them righteous, but you can't show yourself and boom out "BE
GOOD PEOPLE", because then they'll be terrorized and have no free
will. So what do you do? You choose a small sect of islanders, educate
them, and set them loose to educate the rest of the islanders. But you
can't help your little ambassadors too much, or else once again it'll
be too obvious and you'll destroy free will. So to a large extent,
your ambassadors are on their own, without your help.

Now, we said that revealing yourself to the whole island would be
disastrous, so why isn't it harmful to reveal yourself to your
ambassadors? Answer: BINGO, it is harmful! In primitive civilizations
encountered by an overwhelmingly superior (by Western standards)
civilization,  one of two things happens:
1) The primitives lose all self-identity and totally assimilate. In
our revelation case, they become free-will-less super-crazy-loonie
lose-all-humanity Orthodox.
2) They violently rebel, reject EVERYTHING brought by the superior
civilization, throw out the baby with the bathwater, become
isolationist. = Golden Calf.

Perhaps by choosing a stubborn stiff-necked nation, G-d ensured that
the effects, whether 1 or 2, would be minimal.

Mikha'el Makovi