One of the greatest dangers to religious life is organized religion—when religion turns into religious conformity and, in the case of Judaism, Halakhah (Jewish law) becomes commonplace. At that moment it loses its excitement, vitality, and grandeur and becomes stale and dusty. It gets caught in a quagmire and morphs into behaviorism.

The first time we see this phenomenon is in the aftermath of the sin of the Golden Calf.

According to many commentators, the need to build the Tent of Meeting was the direct result of the breakdown of absolute monotheism that had been established through the great Divine revelation at Sinai.[1] In that revelation the unconditional prohibition against making any image of the Divine became sine qua non. There could be no compromise on this commandment.

Yet the very fact that there was a need for such a prohibition demonstrated that there was trouble brewing from the outset. The inability of humankind to live up to an uncompromising monotheism was hovering over all of Judaism. Even a thinker of the stature of Spinoza made this mistake when he declared that God and Nature (Deus sive Natura) are one and the same. In so doing he elevated nature to the level of God. For Judaism this is idolatry.[2]

The need for concrete expression

The incident of the Golden Calf proved the fragility of this prohibition. It showed that pure monotheism was too much for the Israelites to manage. They needed a tangible God, which was reflected in the creation of the Golden Calf. The worship of tangible deities, as the Israelites had experienced in Egypt, stuck with them despite the revelation at Sinai.

In response to the transgression, God does something very dangerous. Instead of enforcing the edict, He compromises on the prohibition.

After He “realizes” that His dream of absolute monotheism is asking too much, God introduces the requirement to build the Tent of Meeting—a variety of tangible monotheism that includes symbolic images in the forms of the Holy of Holies, the cherubim (golden angels on top of the Ark), the sacrifices, the altars, and more. All of these had originally been forbidden (see Seforno on Shemot 25:9).

Absolute monotheism did not work. It has to be lived on a lower spiritual level. This was the purpose of the Tent of Meeting.

But it also introduced the need for many more mitzvot as a means to compensate for the spiritual weakness of the Jewish people.[3] All this is part of the Divine compromise. Judaism slowly becomes an adapted and compromised religion, different from God’s original intention.

Tangible commandments such as tefillin—phylacteries that require a Jew to place these items on the forehead and the arm—were introduced, while originally they were meant to be completely spiritual: “You shall bind them (these Divine words) on your hand and as a sign between your eyes” (Shemot 13; Devarim 6).

And so it is with many other commandments such as the laws of kashrut and the laws of purity and impurity. All these laws were not necessary before the incident of the Golden Calf. They are all “negotiated” mitzvot, given in response to the Golden Calf.

Individualism and community

Concurrently, this began the development of an organized Judaism. There is now a central place of worship. The Jewish people become a community through collective conformity. No longer can the Jew live his spiritual life entirely on his own.

At Sinai each Jew was independent. Each could stand on his or her own feet before God.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)