Spoiled Rich: On Idolizing Wealth

By JOANNA SAMUELS

Parashat Ki Tissa (Exodus 30:11-34:33)

"When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, 'Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses, who brought us out of the land of Egypt—we do not know what happened to him.' Aaron said to them, 'Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me. And all the people took off the gold rings that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. This he took from them and cast in a mold, and made it into a molten calf. And they exclaimed, 'This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.'"

(Exodus 32:1-4)

The episode of the molten calf is profoundly upsetting. How is that a people who had experienced the miracle of God's splitting the Sea of Reeds could construct an idol out of gold and declare that this was the god that brought them out of slavery?

Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir (a 12th century French scholar) comments on this verse, asking quite directly, "Is it that the people were so stupid that they did not know that this calf which had been created on that very day did not bring them out of Egypt?"

However, in trying to understand what the Israelites were thinking when they proclaimed their molten calf "God," it is notable that a facet of this seemingly all-powerful statue is that it is made of gold. What is it about gold, the sages ask, that made this calf seem to powerful, and what it is about the gold that people had that made them so likely to try to take the power of God into their own hands?

"They taught in the school of Rabbi Yannai: Moses protested to the Holy One, saying 'It is the silver and gold that You showered upon Israel that led them to make the calf! Rabbi Oshaia taught, a man had a heifer...when he fed it tasty food, the heifer kicked the man by accident. So the man said, 'What led you to kick me, if not the tasty food that I fed you?' Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba taught in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: a man had a son whom he bathed, anointed, fed, and hung a purse around his neck. Then he set him down at the door of a brothel. How could the young man do other than sin?" (Berakhot 32a)

This midrash seems to be teaching that the gold which God allowed the people to take with them from Egypt led them to the sin of trying to "replace" God with gold. This stands as a powerful critique of wealth and its power over human reason. The Israelites were, according to the rabbis, so tempted by the riches in their midst and so blinded by the power they believed that they had in seeing all their gold melted together in a statue, that they actually believed—if only for a moment—that this gold had brought them out of slavery.

What are the ways that money claims such power over us that we lose our sense of reason or of truth? What are the idols that we build out of money and possessions, believing that they are our "gods"?