Profile Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Why Did Aharon Make the Aigel?

Now that Pesach is upon us, and Shavuose coming soon, it is time to ask a question why Aharon HaKohen made the Aigel HaZohov, as the Torah says, "The Aigel that Aharon made." The Zohar talks about Aharon the saint and one so removed from evil, but it does not explain why Aharon did what he did. We can also quote the opinion that Aharon saw that the son of Miriam, Chur, was murdered by the Egyptians who left Egypt to join the Jews. These Egyptians saw the miracles of the Going Out of Egypt and decided to become Jews. The Egyptians vastly outnumbered the Jews and thus the Egyptians killed Chur one of the holiest Jews. Aharon realized that if he protested what the Egyptian EIRUV RAV did, they would kill him also. And if they killed him, the High Priest, who knows what would happen to the Jewish people?

Thus, I pose this question, a very important question, but the basic answer is not here. How did Aharon the pious stumble into this mess so that the Torah writes "the Aigel that Aharon made"?

They key to the answer is to find something that Aharon did that was not a sin in of itself, but for a person on his level, it was imperfect, and thus, somewhat sinful. For this Aharon ended up with the blame for the Aigel. But what did Aharon do that was imperfect? After all, Rashi tells us that Aharon and Moshe were equal. So, the first part of the puzzle is to find out something that Aharon did that was imperfect. The next part is to show why this imperfection fitted in perfectly with the punishment that Aharon should be blamed for making the Golden Calf, which sprung forth only after Aharon pushed the gold of the Jews into the furnace.

 Some clever people may find the answer in an open passage in the Torah about Aharon and how he acted when he found out that his brother, younger than Aharon, would lead the Jews from Egypt and be the leader of the Jews. And some very clever people may find the basic idea in a passage in the Torah about the Jews singing a song of praise to HaShem.

This is a very difficult riddle, and I only found the answer the easy way, by reading it in the book of biblical commentaries, but that isn't much of a hint. So, after dropping this and that idea, who knows, maybe somebody will figure it out.

Shalom,
Dovid Eidensohn

No comments:

Post a Comment