The covenant which Hashem made with Avram provided for the Jews’ leaving Egypt with great wealth (Bereishis 15:14). Why was this promise so important that it was incorporated into the covenant itself? We know that, to the righteous, material assets are often considered a burden. The Chassidic master, Reb Bunim of P’shischa commented on the verse (Bereishis 13:2), “And Avram was heavy with livestock, gold and silver,” that, in fact, Avram saw these riches as a heavy weight. If so, in what sense was Hashem’s promise of wealth a good thing for the Jews?
Avram was a private individual; if he could manage with less, why encumber him with more? After all, Chazal teach (Avos 2:7), “With plenty of property comes plenty of worry.” The Jewish nation as a whole, on the other hand, needed wealth. The infrastructure of the planned Jewish state – and especially the building of the Sanctuary – required a strong financial base. (It is well known that one of the major causes of small business failure is undercapitalization.) This was the purpose of the “great wealth” promised to Avram.
This explanation points to an uncomfortable fact of life. Freedom, in the sense of relief from external constraints, means very little in the absence of the material means for the realization of one’s goals and ambitions. Without the great wealth, freedom from the enslavement of Pharaoh would have been a hollow victory. (To illustrate: Martin Luther King, leader of the American civil rights movement, in the last years before his assassination, changed the focus of the movement from the attainment of legal rights to the realization of economic opportunity.)
It is noteworthy that several observances of the Seder night are described in Halachic sources as being “the manner of freedom” – reclining when eating the ritual foods, for example – but would be more correctly characterized as “the manner of wealth”, being that these were the practices of the upper classes when the rites of the Seder received their final form. The association of freedom and wealth is obvious.
This wealth, however, created a terrible challenge. The gold of Egypt was eventually made into the Golden Calf. The Talmud (Berachos 32a) records that Moshe Rabbeinu’s defense of the Jews was that given their abundance of gold the sin was bound to happen:
They said in the school of R. Jannai: Thus spoke Moshe before the Holy One, blessed be He: Sovereign of the Universe, the silver and gold which You showered on Israel until they said, “Enough,” led to their making the Calf…R. Hiyya b. Abba said: It is like the case of a man who had a son; he bathed him and anointed him and gave him plenty to eat and drink and hung a purse round his neck and set him down at the door of a brothel. How could the boy not sin…
More surprisingly, according to Chazal, Hashem accepted this argument:
R. Samuel b. Nahmani said in the name of R. Yonathan: From where do we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, in the end agreed to Moshe? Because it says (Hoshea 2:10), “And I multiplied unto her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.”
Before we proceed, we must first understand what Moshe Rabbeinu meant to say. Does the granting of means always guarantee that the sin will be committed? We may conjecture that the Golden Calf was a unique case. Why? The temptation to manufacture tangible objects for worship was a common practice among the ancients. According to our tradition, the Jews in Egypt were no exception:
And I said unto them, Cast away the abominations of your eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am Hashem your G-d. But they rebelled against Me, and would not listen unto me; they did not cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither did they forsake the idols of Egypt
Given the means to do so, there would be a strong likelihood that, after the Exodus, the Jews would revert to their old ways. The sin of the Golden Calf could only have been prevented by depriving the Jews of the necessary gold. (See Ramban to Shemos 32:2 where he explains – based on Kabbala – that the intentions of the people could only have been fulfilled with a calf of gold; in the absence of gold they never would have made a calf of silver, wood, or stone.)
Now that we understand Moshe Rabbeinu’s point, we must now advance to the next question: Why did Hashem grant this gold knowing that the consequence of this gift would be an inevitable sin that would have consequences for all time? This question we will take up next week.
(To be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment