Rabbi Yehudah Halevi suggests that in the sin of the golden calf, “The people did not intend to give up their allegiance to God” in violation of the first of the Ten Declarations. Rather, they wanted to create a physical figure representative of God, thus violating the third of the Ten Declarations, which prohibits the making of a graven image (Exodus 20:4, Kuzari 1:97).

But the mainstream opinion is that, in building the golden calf, the Jews violated the first of the commandments. At Sinai, Am Yisrael (the Jewish People) were introduced to the concept of pure monotheism, belief in the One God, with no intermediary between the human being and the Almighty. The role of Moses was that of the prophet of prophets, but he was in no way a divine being.

Jewish men reach out to bless a Torah scroll at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

David Silverman / Getty Images

Jewish men reach out to bless a Torah scroll at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. David Silverman / Getty Images

When Am Yisrael thought Moses would not descend from Mount Sinai, they assumed that the model of pure monotheism would be replaced by a system of advanced polytheism, i.e., belief in a god with multiple sub-deities. Having emerged from Egypt, where animals were venerated as gods, Am Yisrael concluded that the golden calf would be an appropriate mini-god.

For this reason, argues Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk in his Meshech Chochmah, Moses broke the tablets. At first blush, this seems to be a sacrilegious act. But Moses feared that if he only destroyed the golden calf and not the tablets, perhaps the people would conclude that the tablets were sub-deities.

In the words of Rabbi Meir Simcha quoted by Nehama Leibowitz:

There is nothing intrinsically holy in the world, save the Holy One, blessed be He, to Whom alone reverence, praise, and homage is due.… Now we may understand why Moses, upon perceiving the physical and mental state of the people, promptly broke the tablets. He feared they would deify them as they had done the calf. Had he brought [the tablets] intact, they would have substituted them for the calf and not reformed their ways.

A core belief of Judaism is that there is only One God. As we recite in the Yigdal prayer summarizing Maimonides’s Thirteen Principles of Faith, “He is One – and there is no unity like His Oneness.”

Candle lighting:

Ki Tisa parsha

March 1 at 6:06 p.m.