Filippiino Lippi, “Worship of the Golden Calf”
Spiritual Sunday
I stumbled across an interesting interpretation of the story of the golden calf, which is one of today’s Episcopalian lectionary readings. The story itself is open to multiple readings, but in the midrash or interpretation of Reconstructionist Rabbi Jacob J. Staub, it represents a rebellion by the people of Israel against an overly doctrinaire and grim version of Judaism.
In this reading, Moses is a psychologically wounded man who wants to impose his narrow vision of Jahweh on the Israelites, which he does by licensing the priestly class to slaughter all those who disagree. (The book of Exodus says that 3000 people were killed.) Straub’s Moses sounds a bit like Freud’s repressive patriarch in Moses and Monotheism.
I don’t recognize all the names in the third stanza but they seem to refer to a historical time when the Israelites worshipped multiple gods, some of which were later explained away as different names for the One God (for instance, Adonai). “Ashira” may be Asherah, once believed to be the female consort of Jahweh. Apparently Judaism was not a strictly monotheistic religion until some time after the Babylonian exile, which was when the Book of Exodus was written. While historians don’t have a solid date for the historical Moses, some place him around 700 years earlier.
In any event, Straub imagines a free-flowing spirit that is chillingly repressed by priests. Moses himself, meanwhile, ignores his wife Tzipporah and his sons. Straub wants Judaism to return to what he imagines are its more celebratory and less patriarchal roots. Our problem is not that we worship the golden calf, he says. It’s that we worship orthodoxy.
The Golden Calf
By Jacob J. Staub
From the valley below, the ebullient notes of celebrants,
the beat of tambourines liberated after four hundred years of abuse.
Sing unto the One,
Who smites the tyrant,
Who hears the cries of the oppressed,
Who parts the Sea and plants the seeds for generations yet unborn.
Ana, pool your gold. Adonai, give it to God.
Hoshi’a, smelt it down. Na, cast the throne.
Ashira, link your arms. Ladonai, circle the fire.
Ki, spin into oblivion.
Ga’oh, let go, let go, let go.
Ga’ah, God is One, we are one.
With broken bodies of former slaves, we undulate,
following the Source enthroned into the wilderness of promise.
And up over the ridge, the Levites wait, in formation,
swords on thighs, servants of the Lord, privileged
to follow orders, to do as they are told.
A martial clan descended from the heroes of the Battle of Shechem,
they wear their forebears’ medals proudly.
They have been instructed in the proper use of herbs and oils,
in the dire consequences of disobedience, of initiative, of openheartedness.
In formation, they await the signal from Moses, down from the mountain,
to charge, to slay three thousand defenseless, spent from a night of celebration.
Moses claims that You love only him,
that we were spared because he intervened,
that You do not like our offering.
Moses, who has never seen Your face—
not in the silent, steamy eyes of Tzipporah,
from whom he stays cloistered,
not in the bloody foreskins of his sons,
whom he ignores in the name of his holy work.
Moses, who doesn’t touch.
Moses, who doesn’t dance.
Moses, the bridegroom of blood.
Guide him please, Holy One of Compassion.
We don’t need another Pharaoh to lead us into freedom.
Love him doubly, forgive him his wrath.
He was taken as an infant from his mother.
Only You know what befell the lad in the palace,
but below, all we see is his sweltering rage.
Otherwise, as You surely can foresee,
generations will mistake
fervent worship for idolatry.
