Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Kate Zeligson Bat Mitzvah
March 1, 2002
An Excuse for Excuses
I am not really getting older; I am merely becoming more mellow. I am not sure I would have given this sermon a number of years ago. Perhaps I am wiser now, but you will have to be the judge of that.
I suspect that nearly all of us who are parents have had the following experience. We come home from work or from a trip, and our spouse rather firmly informs us that one or more of the kids have done something that is either infuriating, outrageous, embarrassing, or any combination of these qualities. The news will be delivered as follows: Do you know what YOUR son or daughter did while you were away?
I was usually amused and amazed by that kind of statement. Obviously, I did not know what my son or daughter did, because I was not there at the time. And, secondly, when did this child become MY solo work of art? I was under the impression that both of us had been involved in this project from - how shall I put it - conception.
Now, lest we think that it only happens in our family, the Torah suggests that the instinct to claim credit for all that is good and to off-load responsibility for all that fails is built into our DNA system. It goes back to Adam and Eve. We all know the story about how the wily serpent cons Eve into eating the fruit of the off-limits tree. She then bounds over to Adam and says: "I have such a yummy snack for you!" And the poor guy doesn't check to see if it is kosher; he just downs a healthy portion of the luscious fruit.
About that time, God comes, calling: "Adam, Adam, Ayecha - where are you?"
"Er, um, I'm here in the garden, behind the bush."
"I know where you are, Adam. But why are you there behind the bush?"
"Well, you are God and I am ummmmm"
"You are what?"
"I am ummmmm naked." A moment of pregnant silence.
"And how would you know you were naked unless you had been eating the fruit of the no-no tree?"
Caught in this compromising position, Adam defends himself as follows. "The woman whom You put with me, she gave it to me. It is not my fault, God. She is Your creation."
And when God turns to the woman, what is her response? "The serpent - he seduced me."
God throws up the Divine hands in despair and says: "Everyone out! The Garden is off limits from now on."
We have a similar situation in the Torah portion Kate chanted so beautifully for us this evening. Moses is up on the mountain top, taking dictation from God. The people waiting below grow restless, concerned and finally, frantic. "Where is Moses? Did he run away? Did he fall off the mountain? Did he say something wrong and get incinerated by God?" Who knows? So they approach Aaron and say: "Make us a god to lead us. For Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, who knows where he is by now? "
Incredibly, Aaron accedes to their demand and collects golden earrings worn by the people. (Parents of teens, please note that even in those heroic days of yesteryear, boys wore earrings - but then, so did their fathers.) Aaron melts them down and uses the gold thus obtained to make a golden calf. Aaron shows it to the people who gleefully shout, "This is your god, O Israel, who took you up out of the land of Egypt." And then Aaron proclaims, "A religious festival will take place tomorrow," and it did in such a way as to make people like Cecile B. DeMille joyful for generations.
Aware of what is going on down below, God despatches Moses. "Lech reyd - you had better get down there quick. Those people you brought out of Egypt have really messed things up." And how did Moses, our teacher, respond? The Torah says nothing, implying he ignored the insinuation. But I wonder if something like this didn't go through Moses' mind.
The people I brought out of Egypt? It was not I. I was very happy tending the sheep of my father-in-law Jethro, living in that nice, big house with his daughter Tziporah. I did not go looking for You, God. As I recollect, it was You who set up that sound and light show with the ever-burning, never-consumed bush. It was You who sent me back to Egypt. As a matter of fact, didn't You say to me "I have seen the suffering of My people," that is, Your people, in Egypt. But now, suddenly, they are mine? I brought them out of Egypt, like I could do all those wonderful plaques and stuff?
If Moses had such thoughts, he obviously thought better about voicing them. He could and would interfere with God on behalf of the people, but he was not about to challenge God's foul mood and the disappointment which had prompted God's comment.
Yes, God was really teed off. "Tell you what! I will wipe them off the face of the earth and start all over again with you! How would you, Moses, like to be father of your people - the new Abraham?"
After some months of working with God, Moses knows how to respond. "Bad move, God. Horrible public relations implications. You finally got the Egyptians to realize that you are all-powerful and that we are on the side of the winning God. Now if You kill all of our people, what will the Egyptians think? That you brought your own people out of Egypt just to kill us in the desert."
Notice how subtly Moses responds to God's comment about "your" people? "God," he says, "didn't You make certain promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob about bringing their descendants into the Promised Land? Was there a statute of limitations on that promise?"
God smiles and says, "OK, Moses. You convinced me. No destruction, but you still have to go down and straighten those people out."
So, Moses comes down the mountain, carrying the stone tablets, fully intending to talk sense into those impetuous and impulsive Israelites. But he takes one look at the wild party, so beloved by Cecile B. DeMille, and totally loses it. In a rage, Moses hurls the holy stones carrying the words written by no less than God, to the ground, smashing them. He wades into the midst of the revelers, grabs the golden calf off its pedestal, hurls it into the bonfire, pounds it into powder, scatters it over the nearby lake, and drives the agitated and confused people into the water, shouting "Drink it! Drink!".
By now, everything has broken down into sheer pandemonium, and the initial shock and fear and confusion is turning to rage. The mob is growing dangerous. So Moses calls to his cousins, the Levites, deputizes them as riot police and sends them into the camp to disperse the crowds and restore order. By the time they get done, 3,000 people are dead.
It may not have been a textbook case in riot control, but then, this is the same Moses who had to flee the Egyptian police after he had killed that Egyptian slave-driver so long ago. So, God had to know that Moses has a short fuse, yet God picked him for the job in spite of it.
So we start off this story with God off-loading responsibility on Moses. "Look at what YOUR people are up to now." Then what happens when Moses turns to his brother Aaron for an explanation. "What's goin' on here?", he asks. "I go away for a few days and leave you in charge and you let this happen? Where did you ever get the lame-brain idea to make that stupid calf?"
"Calf? What calf? Oh, that calf? Well, Moses, you won't believe what happened."
"I won't, ay? Try me!"
"Well, these people - you see what a wild and dangerous bunch they are - they came to me and said 'Make us a god.' So I asked them to give me their gold. When they gave it to me, I threw it into the fire. When the fire died down, lo and behold, there was the calf."
Silence. "Are you sticking by that story brother?"
"It is the best I can do. Besides, how are you going to explain the broken tablets to God?"
"Them? Well I was so upset by the sight of the golden calf that they kind of just slipped out of my hands."
Aaron looks at him with a smile. "Yeah, and they just happened to land on a rock about ten feet away from you with enough force to break into smithereens. I hope they come with a warranty."
They did. I guess God understood. God never mentioned the broken tablets. But God did bring Moses back up the mountain and provided him a replacement set.
In the long run, of course, constructive change requires that we 'fess up, admit our sins and failures and take concrete steps to ameliorate the pain and repair the loss caused by those failures and try to avoid behaving that way in the future. That is what teshuvah is and what our High Holydays are all about. But everything must be in its time. Sometimes we just have to let people retreat with some shred of dignity left so that we can confront them later, when they may be better able to face the reality of what has happened and their role in it.
This semester in Midrasha I am teaching juniors and seniors Pirke Avot, that marvelous compendium of ancient rabbinic sound bites. Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar says in Chapter 4: "Do no try to pacify your friend when his anger is raging. Do not comfort him while his dead relative lies unburied before him. Do not challenge him at the time he is making his rash vow. And stay away from him at the time of his disgrace."
Rabbi Shimon was just trying to tell us that we need to give each other space in moments of crisis. Sometimes denial of responsibility and lame excuses are part of that process. According to our Torah, even God has the need occasionally to say to kings, prophets and prime ministers, "See what your people are up to now?" And even high priests do foolish things and come up with "the dog ate my homework" excuse.
Later on, of course, when we calm down, when we gain some perspective, we shall have the time and the obligation to face up to our actions, to 'fess up to our failures and try to clean up the mess we have created, repair the damage we have caused and get on with our lives. Hopefully, we will be a little humbler, a little smarter, a little more understanding of ourselves and our fellow human beings. Amen.
This message is based on the work of Rabbi Gilbert Kollin.
It just happened to be in my file, and I couldn't help using it.
