When we walk down the street or in a central station, and we see a beggar playing the violin, if we think that he is playing out of joy – we do not understand anything about what is happening here. In this case, the sound of the violin itself “makes” a completely different sound – a sound of distress. The beggar plays because he feels bad, he demands attention, he wants to be helped, and playing is his expression.
After the sin of the calf, the Torah writes about Joshua: “And Joshua listened to the voice of the people Barah” (Exodus 32:17). What does “rejoicing” mean? According to the phrase, the word “rejoicing” is from the word “terua”, and the meaning of the verse is that Joshua heard the people rejoicing and rejoicing, and as Rashi explains – “rejoicing” – cheering him, who were cheering and happy and laughing.”
On the other hand, the Onkelos translation translates the word “bara” as crying and crying – “And hear Joshua Mibbin“. What kind of wailing was there in the sin of the calf, after all there were dances and dances there?
The answer, as the same beggar, is the same here. Joshua teaches a right over the people of Israel, and he gives his own explanation for what happened here. It is true that there are dances, but the external dances do not always express joy and happiness. It is clear to Joshua that it cannot be that the people of Israel, who only a few weeks ago stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, dancing and rejoicing around a golden calf, say “These are your Gods, Israel” – and that’s as simple as that. It can not be. Those who hear well, hear behind the dances and dances crying and wailing. I hear here – says Yehoshua – a voice that emanates from frustration and distress. A voice of a people saying – I feel bad.
Yehoshua actually teaches a right about the people of Israel, and says to Moshe, our rabbi – I was there when you were on the mountain, and I tell you that the dances and dances are not real, and they are not really what they broadcast on the outside. The people of Israel are not really happy about the calf, but there is a great whine inside. The distress speaks from their throats. The making of the calf is an external expression of the people’s helplessness for not arriving (delay according to the calculation of the people of Israel).
Even when the people of Israel reach the point where they say about the calf, “These are your Gods, Israel”, after all it is “bad”. It’s out of frustration. Deep down they know they don’t belong in the calf. It’s not them, it doesn’t really reflect them.
There is a great moral here. We need to recognize well what is hidden behind “dances and dances”. Not every dance stems from joy and true connection, sometimes it stems from a great emptiness and growing frustration.
Each generation has its “golden calf”. In every generation we can see people dancing around a certain value that seems sparkling at the moment, but in the end it turns into blooming dust, just like the calf that is finely ground and scattered on the surface of the water. Joshua teaches us that everything is external. Deep down – the dance around the modern golden calf stems from a feeling of emptiness. As much as a person is full of real content, he will stop dancing around values that seem shiny on the outside.
Sages liken a person to broken clay (“like a broken clay” – the prayer “and gave strength”). Why pottery? I heard in the name of the “True Language”, that what makes pottery unique is that according to Halacha, pottery only receives impurity if the impurity enters the pottery. Pottery does not get impurity by external contact. The external cannot penetrate the internal. Every one of the people of Israel, no matter what their situation is, is like clay. The only thing that can defile a Jew is only if there is something that penetrated inside him, but most of the times the “impurity” only affects the exterior, and it does not penetrate the soul inside.
“Do not see me that I am tanned, that the sun has tanned me” (Song of Songs 1, 6). The Naziv of Volozhin, in his commentary to the Song of Songs, explains the verse, that the Knesset of Israel says to the Holy One, blessed be He, that my blackness, that is, my iniquities, is not real and essential, but is caused by all kinds of external factors. I essentially remain white, righteous and pure, only I got a bit tanned and blackened by the sun.
This is how Joshua, the successor of Moses, advocates for the people of Israel.
We need to see in everything the essence, the interiority.
Moshe received into his hands tablets carved by the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He. “And the tablets of the work of God are, and the letter from the book of God is free on the tablets” (Exodus 32:16).
When Moses came down from the mountain, he noticed the golden calf, and he smashed the tablets. The Torah explicitly writes that Moses knew about the calf even before it came down from the mountain. Why didn’t Moses break the tablets up on the mountain, but only when he went down?
Habarbanal answers: “He didn’t break them up on the mountain when he learned of the calf’s iniquity, but he broke them in the camp, according to the fact that if they hadn’t seen the tablets and the act of God because they were terrible, they wouldn’t have had grief and sigh for breaking them, Because the soul will be more amazed by what it sees with its eyes, than what it hears from the mouths of the preachers. And that’s why they showed them and broke them in their eyes.”
Moshe understands that sometimes it is necessary to do an external act that shocks the beholder’s soul, in order to awaken the heart and in any case to shake off all the outer shells that stuck to it.
Moshe knows that the interior of the people of Israel is pure, so he chose to do something dramatic to reveal the interior and awaken the heart.
Every person feels the power they have inside them, and no one really wants to convert it into a golden calf.