KiThisa: the mob

KiThisa: the mob

And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him: ‘Up, make us a god who shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him.’

Who were these people?  What does "the people" mean? What percentage of the people approached?  Who were their representatives?  We know from the subsequent text that Yehoshua was not there, he was separated from the camp, wailing for Moshe.  But what about Bezlalel? Chur? Kalev? Korach? Dathan?

When does the assemblage become unified and irresistible?  When does the individual disappear into the mass? 

The parsha begins with the half shekel, the expiational ,token that both counts the  military aged males of Israel and masks the transgression inherent in  the counting.   Perhaps the parsha gives us an insight into the transgression.  The counting turns the person into a fungible element of the set.  The counting create the concept of the group, a larger entity that can have a unified will.  Like the triangular  flock of bird that changes direction in fight.

Moshe's absence was an opportunity for novelty, for trying new things. It was time for a political outsider, a new direction .  The golden calf was not so much a new direction as a rejection of the old.  The tradition has it that , before Moshe's ascent, "the people" had heard two commandments: I am the Lrd  and have no other Lrd.  It was just these two commandments that calf violated.  In our time, we can see how rebellion against the establishment can

trump any coherence of reason and how attractive it can be, how it can redirect "the people."

The midrash says that the Satan projected a picture of the dead Moshe to the people, motivating  the golden calf.  That message was not lost  on Moshe.  When he descended the mountain, he saw what would have happened had he died, presumably, what will happen when he dies. Delivering the tablets, a helicopter rescue, would not work.  The process required a redo. 

Where would I have been  when the calf was formed?  Probably passive.  Let people believe what they will. The story tells me that is wrong.  The story implies that  even a threat to ritual should be resisted.  I am trying to deal with that in 2016 Seattle.