A Bupkes Pesach story

We are pleased to report that the Golden Calf is alive and well.

It’s somewhere between day 4 and 73 of Passover. The annual Jewish festival, which the goyim tend to forget is why they get to chase chocolate eggs at about the same time of year, drags out long enough to make wandering through the desert feel like a walk in the park.

Exodus has it all: miracles, plagues, mixed marriage, suspiciously low tides, morally ambivalent first-born infanticide, unlucky lambs, divine elocution lessons, godly yoga, food in the form of precipitation, more rules than you can shake a staff at, and enough counting to ensure you will never get to the Seder meal to sop up the four glasses of wine you’ve downed — but definitely need all that wine to get through the counting.

… four questions, four sons, a bunch of rabbis wondering aloud if it was ten plagues or 200 — or 250? Was it all the days of their lives or the nights, too?

Holy kneidlach, the Haggadah is the most Jewish thing, like, ever. Oy gevalt.

It’s the story we tell that tells the story of rabbinical bros telling the story about the story of how Israelite slaves in Egypt became Hebraic shareholders in Judaism LLC, led by CEO (emeritus) Moses, COO Aaron, and the 12-tribe-strong board of Judaic trustees. Along the way, Yahweh smites most of them and they smite most everyone else they come across. Because these Jewish forebears might have been a bit much, but they were still the “chosen ones.” And a covenant’s a covenant.

The saga of liberation from bondage — and not the kinky, fun kind — is The Greatest Story Ever Told OG.

It’s also the most awkward. Seder is a great time to figure out which of your friends and family delights a little too much in licking his pinkie of the blood-wine you’ve spilled out for those you’ve plagued and drowned, chants “next year in Jerusalem” a little too literally, and forgets the whole part about once being a stranger in a strange land so be nice to the strangers in yours.

So, someone please top up our wine, pass the charoset, and put another dollop of chrain on the matzah because the gefilte fish is looking at us funny and there’s an Afikomen to find.

In an era when the Israel we’re stuck with gets more biblical by the day, it’s a good time to remember the folly of false idols and why there’s no manna to eat.

And never forget to lean left.

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that fellow Moses — the man who brought us from the land of Egypt —we do not know what has happened to him.” 

Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 

And all the people took off the gold rings that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 

This he took from them and cast in a mold, and made it into a molten calf. And they exclaimed, “This is your god!” 

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it.

Early the next day, the people offered up burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; they sat down to eat and drink, and then rose to dance. 

God spoke to Moses, “Hurry down, for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted basely. They have been quick to turn aside from the way that I enjoined upon them. They have made themselves a molten calf and bowed low to it and sacrificed to it."

God went on: “I see that this is a stiffnecked people. Now, let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation.” 

But Moses implored his God, saying, “Let not Your anger blaze forth against Your people, whom You delivered from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand. Let not the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he delivered them, only to kill them off in the mountains and annihilate them from the face of the earth.’ Turn from Your blazing anger, and renounce the plan to punish Your people. Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, how You swore to them by Your Self and said to them: I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and I will give to your offspring this whole land of which I spoke, to possess forever.” 

And God renounced the punishment planned for God’s people.

Thereupon Moses turned and went down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the pact, tablets inscribed on both their surfaces. The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing.

As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. 

He took the calf that they had made and burned it; he ground it to powder and strewed it upon the water and so made the Israelites drink it. 

Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such great sin upon them?” 

Aaron said, “Let not my lord be enraged. You know that this people is bent on evil."

Moses saw that the people were out of control — since Aaron had let them get out of control — so that they were a menace to any who might oppose them. 

Moses stood up in the gate of the camp and said, “Whoever is for God, come here!” And all the men of Levi rallied to him. 

He said to them, “Thus the God of Israel: Each of you put sword on thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay sibling, neighbor, and kin.” 

The men of Levi did as Moses had bidden, and some three thousand of the people fell that day. 

And Moses said, “Dedicate yourselves to God this day — for each of you has been against blood relations — that God may bestow a blessing upon you today.”

The next day Moses said to the people, “You have been guilty of a great sin. Yet I will now go up to God; perhaps I may win forgiveness for your sin.” 

Moses went back to God and said, “Alas, this people is guilty of a great sin in making for themselves a god of gold. Now, if You will forgive their sin, but if not, erase me from the record which You have written!” 

But God said to Moses, “Only one who has sinned against Me will I erase from My record. Go now, lead the people where I told you. See, My messenger shall go before you. But when I make an accounting, I will bring them to account for their sins.” 

Then God sent a plague upon the people, for what they did with the calf that Aaron made.

Exodus, 32:1-35. Adapted from The Contemporary Torah, JPS, 2006, via sefaria.org.