Who Built It? (פרשת עקב)

Parshat Eikev (,פרשת עקב Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25) warns against an aveirah (עבירה) that is especially common among the wealthy: namely, the belief that I am singularly responsible for my own success in life and owe nothing to anyone else.

Perhaps because this aveirah is so consonant with the individualism of American culture, it is hard to condemn it in America without stirring up political controversy. Consider, for instance, these remarks made by former White House adviser (later U.S. Senator) Elizabeth Warren in Andover, Massachusetts, in 2011:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

U.S. President Barack Obama reiterated Warren’s point in a campaign speech in Roanoke, Virginia, before the 2012 U.S. Presidential election:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me—because they want to give something back. They know they didn't — look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

The fundamental point that both Warren and Obama made was that wealth is a social product of many people working together. Of course, Karl Marx had made the same point more than 160 years earlier in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: “Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.” Not surprisingly, then, some Americans regarded the point as socialistic, and the phrase “you didn't build that” subsequently became a political flashpoint. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared that it was insulting to entrepreneurs, and the 2012 Republican National Convention adopted the slogan “We Built It” in conscious opposition to Obama's comments.

What does last week’s Torah portion teach us about who built it? In his valedictory, Moses assures the people that they will enjoy bounty and abundance in the Promised Land, but he warns them to be ever mindful of its true source: “And you will say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand made me this wealth.’ And you will remember the Lord your God, for He it is Who gives you power to make wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18). Just as it is God who gives the people the power to defeat the fearsome Canaanites (Deuteronomy 7:17-24), so it is God who gives them “power to make wealth.”

Underscoring the lesson, Moses adds: “And you shall know that not through your merit [צדקתך] is the Lord your God giving you this goodly land to take hold of it, for you are a stiff-necked people” (Deuteronomy 9:6). As Robert Alter explains, to be stiff-necked (קשה–ערף) signifies “rigid pride: instead of bowing the head when submission is appropriate, the stiff-necked person remains presumptuously, defiantly, erect.” He is too proud to acknowledge that he owes or depends upon others, even when that other is God.

To drive home the dependence of each person on the One who daily sustains them, Moses tells them: “the land into which you are coming to take hold of it is not like the land of Egypt from which you went out.” Unlike Egypt, which relies on human-initiated irrigation (“you sow your seed and water it with your foot”), the bounty of Israel is dependent on “the rain of the heavens” (Deuteronomy 11:10-12). The message of the portion is clear: human beings are dependent on the One who causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall; only God is truly independent and self-reliant because He alone is the absolute master of nature and history (Deuteronomy 7:18-19, 10:14, 10:17). To think otherwise is a form of idolatry, which the portion vigorously warns against.

If God is the source of wealth, then you didn’t build it—at least not on your own. (It is significant that in the Hebrew, the “you” to whom Moses directs his remarks is singular [אתה] and not plural [אתם]; this indicates that the admonition is to the individual rather than the nation.) Fair enough, you might say; I depend upon and owe God, but what, if anything, do I owe to society? If we equate God with society, as the sociologist Emile Durkheim did in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, then the answer is clear. But even without taking this step, the Torah portion teaches us that the individual incurs obligations to other people because of the help he has received from God (Deuteronomy 10:12-13). The person who enjoys the bounty of the Promised Land, Moses teaches, is obliged to keep God’s “commands” and “statutes” (Deuteronomy 10:13), which include justice and compassion for the orphan, the widow, and the stranger (Deuteronomy 10:18-19). In short, he is obliged to create and maintain an ethical community, for the covenant (ברית) forged at Sinai binds the individual not only to his God but to the community as well; it is the archetype of Warren’s “social contract.” This notion shouldn’t be so hard for Americans to understand. After all, as sociologist Robert Bellah and his co-authors showed in Habits of the Heart, American individualism has historically been counterbalanced by a biblical tradition—exemplified by John Winthop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity”—that draws on last week’s portion to remind us of our obligations to one another.

Gathered to His Kinfolk (פרשת ויחי)

Last week’s Torah portion, Vayechi (פרשת ויחי, Genesis 47:28–50:26), recounts the passing of the patriarch Jacob: “Jacob finished charging his sons, and he gathered his feet up into the bed, and he breathed his last, and was gathered to his kinfolk” (Gen. 49:33).

That phrase—“gathered to his kinfolk” (ויאסף אל-עמיו)—was on my mind last week as I traveled to attend the graveside service of my recently departed uncle, of blessed memory. What does it mean? It’s a recurring phrase in Genesis, also used to describe the death of Jacob’s father Isaac (Gen. 35:29) and his grandfather Abraham (Gen. 25:9). In an article about the phrase published in 1948, the Bible scholar Bern Alfrink pointed out that it always appears in a sequence between death and burial (died–gathered–buried). Alfrink reasoned that it could not literally mean burial in an ancestral tomb or family sepulcher because, for example, Abraham is buried in Machpelah with his wife Sarah but far from his ancestors, and Jacob is said to be gathered to his kinfolk while still in Egypt, long before his body is taken back to Canaan to be interred with his fathers at Machpelah. Alfrink concluded that the phrase must refer to a spiritual reunion of the deceased with his ancestors in Sheol (the afterlife).

Whether we understand it in a physical or spiritual sense, it’s striking that the gathering of Jacob to his kin in death parallels a family reunion in life. First, there is Joseph’s tearful reconciliation with his brothers. “Come close to me,” he says to them, “I am your brother who you sold into Egypt” (Gen. 45:4). Second, there is Joseph’s tearful reunion with his father Jacob, who had long thought his son to be dead. “Let me go up and tell Pharaoh,” says Joseph, “and let me say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household that was in the land of Canaan have come to me’” (Gen. 46:31). Third, after Jacob’s death, Joseph and his brothers recapitulate their earlier reconciliation. Afraid that Joseph will “pay us back for all the evil we caused him,” the brothers plead for his forgiveness. Joseph, again weeping, promises to sustain them and their children, and “he comforted them and spoke to their hearts” (Gen. 50: 15-21).

I was struck by a similar parallel in my own experience last week. As my uncle was gathered to his kin in death—literally buried in the same cemetery with his parents—his far-flung extended family was reunited, at least briefly, for an all-too-rare gathering in life. Just as Joseph sustained his brothers, that gathering helped us all to sustain one another. In that moment, I was reminded of something that  Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist and the son of a rabbi, wrote in his classic study of religious life. “The basis of mourning,” he suggested, “is the impression of enfeeblement that is felt by the group when it loses a member. But this very impression has the effect of bringing the individuals close to one another.... And from all this comes a sensation of renewed strength, which counteracts the original enfeeblement … To commune in sadness is still to commune, and every communion of consciousness increases social vitality, in whatever form it is done.” Perhaps that is the real meaning of being gathered to one’s kinfolk.

Joseph between Millstones (פרשת ויגש)

A thought about Vayigash (פרשת ויגש, Genesis 44:18 - 47:27): The portion ends with Joseph, whom Pharaoh has made his chief administrator, using the famine in Egypt to dispossess that country’s peasants. Out of desperation they offer their land and themselves for some of the grain that Joseph had the foresight to stockpile. Joseph accepts, and in a process akin to Marx’s primitive accumulation, they become a class of landless, enslaved sharecroppers for Pharaoh. The peasants, we are told, are grateful to be kept alive. But how long before their gratitude turns to resentment, which is directed not at Pharaoh, the “good czar” who now owns their land and steals a fifth of their crop, but at Joseph, the intermediary in the antagonistic relationship between Pharaoh and the peasants?

The pattern reappears in later Jewish history. “The catastrophe of the Jews of Spain,” sociologist Werner Cahnman observed, “shows with great clarity the price Jews have to pay for their role as agents of the powers that be; it can happen that they are ground between the upper and nether millstones.”

There is no mention in the Torah of Egyptian jacqueries that become pogroms. But when, in Shemot, the new Pharaoh arises and orders his people to commit genocide—“every [Hebrew] boy that is born you shall fling into the Nile”—none of the Egyptians demur.

Open Spaces (פרשת תולדות)

I couldn’t help but think of the politics of resentment in connection with the week’s Torah portion (תולדות). As Robert Alter comments: “the spiteful act of the Philistines in blocking up the wells [that Abraham dug] expresses a feeling that if we can’t have the water, nobody should.” That feeling seems to imbue contemporary politics in Wisconsin, the nation, and maybe the world. Alter adds: “at the end, Isaac’s workers discover a new, undisputed well and call it Rehoboth, which means ‘open spaces.’ We are being prepared for the story in which only one of the two brothers [Esau and Jacob] can get the real blessing, in which there will be bitter jealousy and resentment; and which in the long run will end with room enough for the two brothers to live peaceably in the same land.” Let’s hope the story prefigures open spaces for us all.

What Does the Akedah Teach Us About Mitzvot?

On the second day of Rosh HaShanah it is customary to read the story of the Akedah (עקדה), the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22:1–19), which is included within Vayeira (וירא). According to the story, G-d commands Abraham  to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, Abraham obediently takes Isaac to Mount Moriah (later the site of the Jewish Temple) and binds him on an altar, but an angel of the Lord appears at the last moment to stay Abraham's hand.

What was the purpose of the Akedah? In accordance with Gen. 22:12 ("now I know that you fear G-d"), it is traditionally understood as a test of Abraham's obedience to divine commandment. But this reading is troubling because, as Søren Kierkegaard pointed out, the test seems to require a "teleological suspension of the ethical." In other words, in order to obey G-d's command, Abraham must apparently renounce his ethical duty to nurture, protect, and care for his own son. Divine command and ethical duty are thus counterposed.

On Rosh HaShanah 5771, I learned that the Hebrew word mitzvah (מצוה‎), commonly translated as commandment, means "connection" in Aramaic. This opens up the possibility of finding a different meaning in the Akedah. What if Abraham is seeking not to obey, but to connect with his G-d?

As Rashi points out, G-d never instructs Abraham to "slaughter" (לשחוט) Isaac, but rather to "bring him up there" (העלהו שם) to Mount Moriah (Gen. 22:2). The Hebrew verb  "to bring him up" (להעלותו) shares the same root as olah (עלה), the "ascending offering" described in Leviticus chap. 1, which is completely burned up by the fire on top of the altar. And G-d does indeed instruct Abraham to give Isaac the status of an עלה. But these words also share the same root as aliyah (עלייה), "ascent," as in spiritual ascent to the bimah or the Land of Israel. What kind of ascent is intended here and by what means?

Perhaps Abraham mistakenly thinks that the only way to connect with his G-d, to ascend spiritually, to return the divine spark in his son to its original root and source, is through the annihilation of his son. This would make the Akedah akin to the religious suicides once practiced in India. Emile Durkheim, in his classic sociological study of suicide, described such suicides this way: "We actually see the individual in all these cases seek to strip himself of his personal being in order to be engulfed in something which he regards as his true essence." To be sure, the Akedah is a story of sacrifice, not self-sacrifice--but if Abraham's love for his son causes him to identify so strongly with him that he cannot lose Isaac without losing some part of himself, this may not be a significant distinction for him.

If this reading is correct, Abraham's mistake is to think that connection with his G-d requires complete self-abnegation (or abnegation of others). The purpose of the Akedah may not be to test his obedience so much as teach him that connection with his G-d be cannot come at the expense of his connection with his son (and, by extension, his connection with other human beings). On the contrary, as the Hassidic tzaddik Mendel of Kosov preached, love for one's neighbor (or son) is only another side of the love of G-d. "If a man loves his fellow," Mendel taught, "the Divine Presence rests with them." In this way, they ascend together. The Akedah is therefore indeed instructive, but its purpose cannot be to provide an omniscient G-d with knowledge that G-d must already possess; rather, it is instructive for human beings.

Give It a Rest: The Social Significance of the Shmitah Year (פרשת בהר)

This week's double Torah portion, the first part of which is פרשת בהר (Lev. 25:1 - 26:2), includes the instruction to keep the שמיטה (shmitah) (Leviticus 25:2-4):

When you come to the land that I am giving you, the land shall rest a Sabbath to the Lord. You may sow your field for six years, and for six years you may prune your vineyard, and gather in its produce, but in the seventh year, the land shall have a complete rest, a Sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field, nor shall you prune your vineyard.

This institution now finds a distant echo in the sabbatical, a period of paid leave granted to a university professor for study or travel, traditionally every seventh year. Professors are often asked by those who work outside the university to justify the practice of the sabbatical. In the same way we might ask, what is the reason for the shmitah?

While a variety of answers have been given, some of the rabbis stress the social significance of the shmitah year, seeing in it an institution of solidarity and mutual responsibility. Maimonides, for instance, argues that "this law was given in order that we may show sympathy for our fellow men who have neither land nor vineyards, and that they may be happy in the shmitah year, as the rich are happy every year." This explains the obligation to renounce ownership of all agricultural produce and declare it public property (Lev. 25:6-7), but what about the obligation to suspend agricultural work? What is the social significance of this part of the mitzvah?

Both Abraham Ibn Ezra and Abraham Isaac Kook provide insightful answers to this question, anticipating respectively Karl Marx's critique of alienation and Emile Durkheim's conclusions about the rhythm of social life.

Ibn Ezra writes: "The suspension of work in every seventh year causes us to realize that our mission on earth is not to be slaves to the soil but a much higher and nobler one. Work should only serve the purpose of providing food and other needs, while our task is to attain the supreme end; the purpose of giving this land to this people was not to be brought into the land in order to be enslaved by it.... Their purpose is to accomplish themselves and seek perfection, according to the will of their Creator, while satisfying the needs of their sustenance." Here Ibn Ezra recognizes the possibility and danger of inverting the normal subject-object relationship, such that production becomes the objective of man rather than man the objective of production.

 

Abraham Joshua Heschel makes an analogous point about Shabbat. He criticizes Philo for representing Shabbat “not in the spirit of the Bible but in the spirit of Aristotle. According to the Stagirite, ‘we need relaxation, because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end’; it is ‘for the sake of activity,’ for the sake of gaining strength for new efforts. To the biblical mind, however, labor is the means toward an end, and the Sabbath as a day of rest, as a day of abstaining from toil, is not for the purpose of recovering one’s lost strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labor. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work. ‘Last in creation, first in intention,’ the Sabbath is ‘the end of the creation of heaven and earth’” (Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, [1951] 1979], 14).

Both Karl Marx and Max Weber would later point to the inversion of the normal subject-object relationship as characteristic of modern capitalism. Capital, which for Marx is nothing more than congealed, objectified, or accumulated labor, should serve as "a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer." Instead, Marx wrote, "bourgeois society" inverts the relationship: in a capitalist mode of production, "living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour." Likewise, Weber noted that the spirit of capitalism made "the earning of more and more money" an "end in itself": "Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship ... is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence." Ibn Ezra implies that such a reversal was possible in precapitalist agrarian societies too, and he points to the shmitah as a way to periodically restore what Weber calls the "natural relationship." Without this restoration, Ibn Ezra suggests, social and spiritual ends tend to be subordinated to material production, which is contrary to the Torah's intent. (This point is worth remembering today, when the ends of education are defined less and less in terms of self-development and increasingly and narrowly in materialistic and economic terms.)

Kook, noting that "what the Sabbath achieves regarding the individual, the shmitah achieves with regard to the nation as a whole," adds to Ibn Ezra's interpretation: "The treasure of the nation, the Divine blessing that is implanted in it, the order of the world, the righteous and good life, lived in harmony with justice and honesty, peace and tranquility, grace and courage ... none can be activated in the day-to-day life. The very nature of this life obfuscates the spiritual majesty of the Divine soul (which dwells in the nation) and prevents its bright and shining light from penetrating the profane reality. Life can only be perfected through the affording of a breathing space from the bustle of everyday life.... The periodical suspension of the normal social routine raises this nation -- when morally settled -- spiritually and morally, and crowns it with perfection." Kook's point was not to draw a sharp dichotomy between the profane and the sacred--a viewpoint he implicitly rejects with his reference to the penetration of the profane--but rather about the proper relationship between them. The satisfaction of physical needs is a necessary means to the attainment of spiritual perfection, but it must not be allowed to crowd out or obscure spiritual aspirations.

If Ibn Ezra brings to mind Marx and Weber, then Kook brings to mind Emile Durkheim. Like Kook, Durkheim associated the profane and the sacred with variations in the rhythm of social life. Durkheim found that life among Australian aborigines also alternated between two different phases: a "dispersed state" of "low intensity" in which "economic activity predominates," and periodic moments of "collective effervescence" when the community congregates for intense religious ceremonies. "The first is the profane world," Durkheim wrote, "and the second, the world of sacred things." Sacred time, Durkheim concluded, is essential for the solidarity of the community: "There can be no society which does not experience the need at regular intervals to maintain and strengthen the collective feelings and ideas that provide its coherence and its distinct individuality. This moral remaking can be achieved only through meetings, assemblies, and congregations in which the individuals, pressing close to one another, reaffirm in common their common sentiments." Interestingly, Kook and Durkheim arrived at these strikingly similar ideas at about the same time; Kook wrote Shabbat ha-Aretz prior to the shmitah year of 1910, and Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life was published in 1912.

In light of this remarkable convergence of thinking, perhaps we are justified in asking whether there is not a close connection between Marx's vision of an un-alienated social world and Durkheim's notion of a "moral remaking." Can it perhaps be said that the sacred is not just the product and representation of the society as it is, at a moment of collective effervescence, but an anticipation of a morally remade society, a world that is no longer inverted, in which the realization of the human being is no mere fantasy but a living reality?

The Fetishism of the Golden Calf (פרשת כי תשא)

Last week's Torah portion, כי תשא (Ex. 30:11 - 34:35), includes the infamous incident with the Golden Calf.

Robert Alter, in his translation of the Torah, asks why the people say "these are your gods" (Ex. 32:4) even though the calf is singular. He answers: "The gods are plural while the calf is singular because ancient Near Eastern people were polytheists, not fetishists: the golden icon was conceived as the terrestrial throne or platform for the deity (singular or plural), having precisely the same function as the cherubim over the Ark," upon which the Divine Presence was to rest. "The Golden Calf," Alter reasons, "is thus a kind of anti-Tabernacle or anti-Ark, meant for the same end of making the divine dwell among the people but doing it in a prohibited fashion." (The episode in which the people give their gold jewelry to make the golden calf may thus be seen as a sort of negative parallel to the subsequent moment in which the nation’s women contribute their mirrors for the building of the Mishkan [Ex. 38:8].)

Alter's reading is similar to the interpretation of the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Judah Halevi. In his book The Kuzari, Halevi suggests that the Golden Calf was not an idol but simply a material symbol that the people constructed to facilitate their worship of G-d. For Halevi, the only difference between the creation of the Golden Calf and the creation of the cherubim is that G-d did not command the calf. "They themselves had no right to determine the mode of worship and make an altar and sacrifices in accordance with it." In other words, it was not the fashioning of material symbols that was problematic--after all, what were the Ark and the throne of the cherubim if not material symbols?--but the fact that the Golden Calf was not made in accordance with G-d's wish. In support of this view, Halevi notes that G-d says "they have quickly turned from the way I commanded them" (Ex. 32:8), not "they have turned aside from Me."

Alter and Halevi thus raise an interesting question: Was the Golden Calf a fetish? While they both answer negatively, the conventional view--that the Golden Calf was an instance of idolatry--suggests the possibility of an affirmative answer.

To determine whether the Golden Calf was a fetish, we have to answer a more fundamental question: What is a fetish? I always ask this question to the students in my social theory class when we turn to Karl Marx's famous discussion of the "fetishism of commodities." My students are typically uncertain, but when pressed for an answer they can usually articulate (with a considerable amount of giggling) some version of the Freudian conception which has entered into popular culture. This provides a good teaching opportunity as we compare how Marx and Freud used the notion of a fetish.

A fetish, in its original religious meaning, is an inanimate object worshipped for its supposed magical powers or because it is thought to be animated or inhabited by a spirit. Freud and Marx built on this original meaning and extended it in creative and insightful ways.

For Freud, a fetish is an object that a person endows with sexual significance and without which he or she is incapable of sexual excitement. The Freudian fetish is unconsciously associated with a person without being one, and it appears to have power over you because it gives you the (sexual) potency you otherwise lack. The Golden Calf fits this Freudian conception in interesting ways. The Torah indicates that after making sacrifices to the calf, the people "rose up to play," "sport," "make merry," or "revel" (Ex. 32:6). The Hebrew verb used here (לצחק) has sexual connotations, as many commentators have pointed out, which are usually lost in the various English translations. Furthermore, as many commentators have noted, when Moses burns the calf, grinds it into dust, scatters it over water, and makes the people drink it (Ex. 32:20), his actions parallel the ritual procedure for a woman suspected of adultery (Numbers 5:11-31). In addition, the language that G-d uses later in the portion is clearly sexual: the people are warned not to whore after other gods (Ex. 34:15-16). As Robert Alter suggests, "the God who has chosen Israel implicitly represents Himself as Israel's husband and lover (a metaphor that both Hosea and Jeremiah will make explicit)." Lastly, it's interesting to note that the calf is associated with a person; namely, it is a substitute for Moses (Ex. 32:1), which may be why G-d pointedly tells Moses that Israel is "your people," not "My people." (Ex. 32:7). (Interestingly, it should be recalled that Moses was instructed to be "like a god" for Pharaoh [Ex.4:16, 7:1], not for the Jewish people.) In sum, the covenant at Sinai is akin to a wedding, but the bride (Israel) is incapable of excitement without an object (the calf) which is associated not with her Husband (like the Ark) but with His rivals ("other gods") or her tutor (Moses).

For Marx, the fetishism of commodities refers to an inversion of the normal relationship between subject and object. The product of labor, "as soon as it assumes the form of commodities," appears to have an intrinsic value, independent of human beings and their activities, when in fact its value derives from human labor. As a result, social relations (the exchange of labor among producers) are disguised as relations between things (products). Just as in the religious world "the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life," "so it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands." While Marx focuses on labor relations rather than sexual relations, his conception of fetishism has much in common with Freud's: both emphasize the apparent domination of human subjects by the objects they produce while insisting that fetishism disguises human agency and interaction by transposing them to a realm of things. Not surprisingly, then, the Golden Calf exemplifies the Marxian conception of fetishism as well as the Freudian conception. The Torah emphasizes the role of human labor: in response to the people’s demand to “make us gods,” Aaron “fashioned” their gold jewelry “in a mold and made it into a molten calf” (Ex. 32:1, 4). (Where did the gold come from? The Torah tells us that the people took it from their Egyptian neighbors on the eve of the Exodus [Ex. 3:22; Ex. 11:2; Ex. 12:35-36]—an act sometimes understood, Robert Alter notes, as “restitution for the unpaid labor exacted from the Hebrew slaves.” So what we have then is an exchange of labor among producers, for the gold which the people give to Aaron, no less than the calf he gives to them, are both in some sense products of Jewish labor.) But if in a normal relationship the product serves the needs of the producer, this relationship is now inverted as the producers bow down before the product of their own hands (Ex. 32:8), which appears to them as an independent being with a life of its own. When Moses asks Aaron why he "brought a great sin" upon the nation, Aaron answers: "I flung [the gold] into the fire, and out came this calf!" (Ex. 32:24). Aaron's language is telling: downplaying his own agency, he suggests that the calf emerged and formed on its own.

When the Golden Calf incident is read via Freud and Marx as an instance of fetishism, the dramatic smashing of the tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai makes more sense. What did Moses hope to achieve by breaking the tablets? In Meshekh Hokhmah, R. Meir Simhah suggests that it had the educative aim of combating idolatry: "He feared they would deify them as they had done the calf. Had he brought them the Tablets intact, they would have substituted them for the calf and not reformed their ways." By smashing them, Moses sought to demystify the fetishism that gripped the people: "Even the Tablets--'the writing of God'--were not intrinsically holy, but only so on account of you. The moment Israel sinned and transgressed what was written thereon, they became mere bric a brac devoid of sanctity." As R. Meir Simhah points out, this also explains why the broken pieces of the Tablets were placed in the Ark: "It was the first Tablets which were the work of God that were broken, not the Tablets hewn by Moses, which remained whole; demonstrating that no holiness resides in anything created other than that invested in it by Israel's observance of the Torah in accordance with the will of the Creator and His holy name." Just as sexual significance and economic value are not inherent in objects but derive from human action, so too for holiness. Smashing the tablets and placing them in the Ark may thus be seen as a means of liberating the people from the fetishism that gripped them, for as Marx put it, "every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to man himself."