FROM TALMUD AND MIDRASH
Exodus Rabbah 41:7
Aaron’s Prudent Fear
“When the people saw
that Moses was delayed
in coming down from the Mountain,
the people assembled against Aaron…
and said, ‘Make for us gods…
for this man Moses,
who brought us up from the land of Egypt,
we do not know what has become of him!”
(Exodus 32:1)
What prompted the people to respond to the delay
by assembling against Aaron?
“Before ascending to the Mountain of God,
Moses said to the Elders:
I am leaving Aaron and Hur in charge;
whoever has a complaint should turn to them!”|
(Exodus 24:13b-14)
The Rabbis explain: In anticipation of Moses’s return from the Mountain, the people anxiously searched the heavens for sight of him. Satan encouraged their illusion by pointing with his finger and saying, “This is the man that was Moses” (Exodus 32:1), leading them to believe that they were seeing his corpse suspended between heaven and earth!
When the people first assembled against Moses, Hur arose and exclaimed: You are harming yourselves; do you not recall all of the many miracles the Holy One, blessed be He, performed for you?! Whereupon they overpowered him and took his life. Then, “the people assembled against Aaron” (Exodus 32:1), and they said to him: Just as we have done to Hur, so shall we do to you!
“When Aaron saw [vayar] (the gold?),
he built [vayiven] an altar [mizbeach] before it [lefanav]
and declared the morrow a festival.”
(Exodus 32:5)
More likely we may interpret:
Aaron was afraid [vayeera]:
he understood [vayaven] from the slaughtered [mizavuach]
before him [lefanav]
(that he needed a tactic to deflect the people’s fear and anger),
so he declared the morrow a festival,
for which he promised to build an altar, hoping that Moses would return before he completed it. But when he built it, Moses still had not returned. “So they arose early the next day and sat down to eat and drink and celebrate” (Exodus 32:6) idolatrous worship.
Ultimately, in response to the plea of Moses (Exodus 32:11-13), “the Eternal remitted the punishment He had first sworn to bring against His people” (ibid. 14). Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses: In this world it is because of their evil impulse that they engage in idolatry, but in the future to come I shall remove from them that evil impulse and replace it with a heart of flesh, as the Prophet says:
“I shall take you from among the nations…
and bring you to your own Land…
and I shall purify you from all of your idols.
I shall give you a new heart,
and a new spirit will I place inside you;
I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh
and give you a heart of flesh.”
(Ezekiel 36:24-26)
Exodus Rabbah 33:2; 37:2
Aaron’s Moment
“Bring near to you, from the Children of Israel,
Aaron your brother…to make Aaron My Priest.”
(Exodus 28:1)
“Aaron accepted the gold from them,
and he formed it with a graving tool,
making of it a molten calf…”
(Exodus 32:4a)
When Moses came down from Sinai and saw Israel worshipping the golden calf (cf. Exodus 32:19ff.), he glanced at Aaron, who appeared to be sculpting it with his hammer. But Aaron was going through the motions, only to hold the people back until Moses returned. Yet Moses believed, from what he observed, that Aaron was cooperating with the people and that he shared their motive in worshipping the calf!
So the Holy One, blessed be He, said, “Moses, I know that Aaron’s intention is for good.” Aaron was acting like the preceptor of a prince, teaching him and protecting him. One day the prince gets it into his head to invade his father’s exclusive domain and take it over for himself. But his preceptor stops him and says to him: Don’t wear yourself out, allow me to break in for you! The prince’s father, the king, observes the preceptor breaking in and says to him: I understand your intention, I know what you are doing, and you can be sure that I shall trust no one to oversee my palace from now on, but you!
So it was, at the moment when Israel said to Aaron, “Get up and make for us a god…!” (Exodus 32:1b) that he replied, “Alright, remove the gold rings that are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring them to me” (ibid. 2): I am a priest, I shall make it and sacrifice before it! All of this Aaron did for the sole purpose of keeping the people at bay until Moses should return. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to Aaron: I understand your intention, I know what you are doing, and you can be sure that I shall trust no one to oversee the offerings of My children, but you! Thus did God command Moses, “Bring near to you, from the Children of Israel, Aaron your brother…to make Aaron My Priest” (Exodus 28:1), and it was in the Tabernacle following the incident of the golden calf:
“You, O Eternal God,
who have triumphed over all [aleetah lamarom]
and taken Your captives [shaveetah shehvee],
You have accepted the gifts of men ,
even the idolatrous nations [v’af sorereem],
to settle in Your Temple [lishkon]!”
(Psalms 68:19)
You who went up to the Heights [aleetah lamarom]
and returned to captivity [shaveetah shehvee],
taking the Gift for man—
it was specifically for your idolatrous [v’af sorereem]
that the Eternal God
would settle in the Tabernacle [lishkon]!
Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses: When the other nations premonish you that I will not return with you because “your people have rebelled [saru]” (Exodus 32:7-8), I assure you that even when they are rebellious, I shall not abandon them, “but even with the rebellious [v’af sorereem] shall the Eternal God dwell [lishkon]!”
Leviticus Rabbah 10:1,3
Aaron’s Righteous Love
“The Eternal speaks to Moses, saying:
Take Aaron and his sons…”
(Leviticus 8:1-2)
Out of all the tribe of Levi,
why Aaron for the High Priesthood?
“Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever;
your royal sceptre is the emblem of truth.
You have loved righteousness,
and you have hated wickedness.
Therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness above your fellows.”
(Psalms 45:7-8)
Rabbi Berechia in the name of Rabbi Abba bar Kahana interpreted the Davidic verses in reference to Aaron. When Moses ascended the Mountain of God to receive the stone Tablets with the Torah and the Mitzvot, he left Aaron and Hur in charge (cf. Exodus 24:12-14). Then, when Israel sought to build the golden calf, they went first to Hur (cf. Exodus 24:14) and demanded, “Get up, make for us a god” (Exodus 32:1)! When he refused, they killed him. Then they turned to Aaron with the same demand. When Aaron heard their demand of him, he was afraid:
“Aaron saw [vayar] and built [vayiven]
an altar [mizbeach] before it [lefanav]…”
(Exodus 32:5a)
What did Aaron “see” that would cause him to build an altar “before it?”
He had already taken their gold and knowingly formed it into a molten calf (ibid. 4a)!
Rather, interpret the verse:
Aaron feared [vayeerah] from discerning [vayaven]
a slaughtered man [mizavuach] before him [lefanav]!
Now what shall I do? thought Aaron. They have already killed Hur, who was a Prophet; now, if they kill me, a Kohen, they would have committed the unthinkable, “Shall both Kohen and Prophet be slain in the Sanctuary of the Lord” (Lamentations 2:20)? If that were the case, they would be culpable for exile centuries before the verse originally applied!
Alternatively, what did Aaron “see?”
He “saw” alternative outcomes. He realized that if they built it, they would work together to complete it quickly. But if he built it, he could delay its completion until Moses came down from the mountain and rejected the work in progress as idolatry.
Also he thought: If I build the altar, I can build it in the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He, as was said: “…Aaron built the altar and announced, ‘Tomorrow is a Festival to the Eternal’” (Exodus 32:5b)!
He also realized that if they built it, then the offense would be attributed to them: Better that the offense be attributed to me, he thought, and not to Israel!
“I address my verses to the king…
You love righteousness and you hate wickedness;
rightly has God, your God, chosen to anoint you
with oil of gladness over all of your peers!”
(Psalms 45:2,8)
Rabbi Berechia in the name of Rabbi Abba bar Kahana
interpreted these verses as associated with Aaron:
“You love righteousness” in that you love to defend and justify My children, “and you hate wickedness” in that you hate to see them condemned. “Rightly has God, your God, chosen to anoint you with oil of gladness over all of your peers”: therefore has God chosen to anoint you as Kohen Gadol over all of Israel out of all of the tribe of Levi!
Avot d’Rabbi Nathan 12
Aaron as Exemplar
Hillel says: Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving shalom and pursuing shalom, bringing shalom between people and between a man and his wife, loving people and bringing them close to Torah.
He used to say: A name made great is a name destroyed; if one does not increase, he ceases; one who does not learn is deserving of death; and he who exploits the crown shall pass away.
He used to say: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
(In the first-paragraph rendition of his Mishnaic teaching, Hillel seems to use “shalom” in the sense of “peace” more than in the sense of “security.” Consider especially, “bringing shalom between…a man and his wife.” The two subsequent paragraphs uphold the related themes of integrity and balance.)
Rabbi Nathan applies to Aaron as exemplar the Prophetic verse: “The Torah of truth was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found upon his lips; in peace and uprightness did he walk with Me, and many did he turn away from sin” (Malachi 2:6). Rabbi Meir explained this last attribution–“and many did he turn away from sin”–as Aaron’s practice of befriending even the wicked, so that when next tempted to engage in his usual transgressive behavior, the wicked friend would feel constrained out of shame from disappointing his new “friend.”
Somewhat similarly, when two otherwise decent people quarreled and seemed destined to remain enemies, Aaron would meet privately and confidentially with each one, convincing each one respectively that the other was ashamed of the foul treatment he had inflicted on him. Aaron would persist with each one until resentment was gone, so that the next time the two met, they would embrace and kiss one another. It was because of this that “all of the House of Israel wept for Aaron for thirty days” when he passed away (Numbers 20:29).
Stellar evidence of Aaron’s love of peace and pacific influence upon Israel is the fact that many thousands born in Israel were named “Aaron.” This is because, as Hillel taught, Aaron brought shalom, peace indeed, “between husband and wife,” so that they were intimate with each other and named the result of their “peace” after him!
Sedra Summary 