Ask The Rabbi

Ask The Rabbi

category:  Chassidut

Golden calf and other stories

The Rav Name: Rabbi Yitzchak Arad

The Quran has a fanciful tale about how the Golden Calf came to life. Turns out the Talmud antedated that with four, totally different, stories of magic that explain way beyond what may be inferred from Torah, about charmed angel horse dust or an Egyptian magic splinter of wood that brought the calf to life. They sound like children’s stories. If not, then they are in defiance of Devarim 4.2, “You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it.”
Were these fantastic stories meant to be believed, or were they just used in sermons to perk up the imaginations of children and bored adults?


Shalom and thank you for your question! You would like to check the veracity of some of the stories told regarding incidents in the Torah.

As far as the Quran (or Koran) is concerned, I have no information about that, and as far as the Torah is concerned, I am not sure which stories re the Golden Calf you are referring to, so I will go over the basic thread of the story, according to the Torah text and some of the classic commentaries.

When the ‘Hebrews’ (who were to officially become the Jewish nation at the giving of the Torah,) came out of Egypt and out of the status of slavery, they were accompanied by ‘the mixed multitudes’. These were Egyptians who saw the miracles that the Jews had merited,  and wished to join the Jewish nation, however they were not sincere. Rather than adopting the newly given values from Sinai, they became rabble rousers and provocateurs. Additionally, they possesed knowledge of black magic, which had been widely practiced In Egypt at the time. (We,ll refer back to that later.)

The Hebrews themselves had to go through adjustments. You know how a lion that is used to a certain size cage will continue to pace within the confines of the old cage even when transferred to the new and larger one? The Hebrews were used to not having free choice and didn’t know how to handle it. They had suffered abuse and had a victim mentality.

All of this was the background to the sin of the golden calf.

When Moses ascended the mountain to receive the details of Torah, the people knew that he was supposed to return after 40 days. There was an error in calculation however, and there is a Midrashic explanation that the Satan showed them Moses’ (non-existent) coffin. At any rate, they reached the mistaken conclusion that they had been abandoned, and felt very insecure. The mixed multitudes played on this insecurity and instigated the demand for the Golden Calf. Aaron, Moses’ brother, tried to buy time by telling the men to go and collect jewelry from their wives, knowing that the women were stronger in their faith and would be less inclined to cooperate, as was indeed the case. Moreover, the rebels had killed his nephew Hur, who had rebuked them. Aaron did not want them to incur any more guilt in G-d’s eyes.

According to one opinion a man called Micah who was morally challenged had salvaged a holy object from a previous incident, and used it to bring the calf to life. According to another opinion, the mixed multitudes used their witchcraft to  enliven it.

So, how do we understand this?


The Torah has four levels of interpretation, and all of them are valid.

Pshat – the plain meaning.

Remez – the meaning that is hinted at

Drush – a deeper level

Sod – the esoteric level, or inner dimension.

All of this is part of the Torah that was handed down by Moses . The Midrashim are part of the oral law, and come to impart the psycho-spiritual aspects of the incidents in the Torah. They can also hint to even deeper concepts from the esoteric aspect, and sometimes  are not necessarily literal, but do come to impart very important lessons.

The existence of the supernatural is a topic for another question.

All the best!


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