[Avodah] Some Comments BY RSRH on Shemos 32:1

[Prof. Levine]

Shemos 32:1

When the people saw that Moshe did not fulfill 
their expectation that he would come down from 
the mountain, the people gathered
against Aharon, and they said to him: Arise, make 
us gods who shall go before us; for this man 
Moshe, who brought us up from the land of
Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.

No one should ever imagine that the Torah should be adapted to
changing times; on the contrary, each generation is entitled to a present
and a future only inasmuch as it accommodates itself to the Torah.
The Torah is the absolute ultimate goal of the Jewish nation, and the
generation of the Lawgiving was still infinitely remote from that goal.
If, nevertheless, the Torah, with its unalterable ideal requirements,
came down to that generation, the implication is clearly this: The
Torah was not given to Israel so that the people should adapt it to
the changing times or to suit the people’s convenience. Rather, the
Torah was given to Israel so that this nation should shape and adapt
itself until it has elevated itself to the moral and spiritual heights of
this Torah.

In short, as soon as the Torah came down to Israel, over whom it
was meant to reign supreme, the golden calf incident presented it with
its first challenge: The Torah is to demonstrate its Divine power by
training this people to accept it out of complete submission, and the
Sanctuary of the Torah is to be first and foremost a place of kaparah, a
place of unceasing education toward a better and purer future.

It is a delusion to think that man needs to make for himself a god
— i.e., that, to ensure his future, he should set before himself things
of his own choosing and of his own making as the embodiment of his
own highest ideal, in respect to the Highest Power Who rules the world,
of Whom he has a vague perception. The heathen imagines that through
these things he shows his homage to this Highest Power, wins His grace,
and fulfills his duty by acknowledging his dependence on Him. It is
nonsense and a delusion to think of man’s basic dependence on God
— or on the power that he regards as his god — in terms of fate and
in the passive terms of human relationships.

All these are delusions which from time immemorial have dominated
the highest aspirations of the members of the non-Jewish world,
and which have produced both crude and spiritual fetishism.
In opposition to these delusions stands the truth of Judaism, which
is meant to put an end to all the delusions of subjective idolatry, no
matter what form it takes.

Man cannot make for himself a god; he need not do so and he may
not do so. Man cannot draw God near to himself by representing the
godly in a corporeal form; rather, man should draw himself near to God
in every aspect of his life by filling his whole being with spiritual and
moral content and by subordinating all his activities to God’s commandments.

In order to attain closeness to God and to secure for himself God’s
protection and guidance, it is not God that man must influence, but
himself. He should be preoccupied not with shaping his fate, but with
shaping his deeds; the only way in which he can also influence his fate
is by suiting his way of life to God’s Will.

First of all, however, man must recognize that God has no physical
quality on which a coercive influence could be exerted through some
subjective action, in order to harness that quality to man’s own subjective
will. Rather, He Baruch Hu is a personal Being possessed of absolute
freedom, free will, and unlimited power, a Being Who rules the world
in freedom and Who has revealed to man His Will as the absolute
measure of all things and as the absolute norm for the free will of man.
To God’s Will man must surrender his whole being — joyfully,
freely, and with all the strength of his personality. Only then will the
blessings of Providence shower down upon him and bring success to
the work of his hands. Obedience to God out of free will is always and
everywhere all that is necessary to bring blessing to man — to the
community and to the individual; and there is absolutely nothing that
can take its place.

All subjective caprice is like heathenism and idolatry, for it is based
on the delusion that man can arbitrarily exert a controlling influence
on the shaping of his future, which is equivalent to the belief that man
can bend the Will of the Divine.

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