Parshat Ki Tissa (Exodus 30:11-34:35) March 7, 2015

Moses was on Mt. Sinai for forty days and forty nights, during which time God revealed to him the various laws and regulations to be included in the Torah. But as this period dragged on and Moses remained on the mountain, the people below began to doubt that he was still alive. “This Moses fellow,” they said, “the one who brought us up out of the land of Egypt—who knows what has happened to him?” They then approached Aaron with a strange request: “Come, make us [the image of] a god who will go before us” in Moses’ absence.

That they should resort to idolatry was surprising enough—after all, wasn’t this practice specifically forbidden in the Ten Commandments? Still more surprising was the role of Aaron in the events that followed. When the people approached him, he uttered not a word of protest. Instead, he told them to collect gold from their families’ jewelry and then used it to fashion the image of a calf with his own hands. What came over Aaron that caused him to cooperate in this grievous sin?

In searching for an answer, ancient interpreters came to focus on a single individual, even though his name is not mentioned even once in the whole incident. Hur was, quite literally, Moses’ right-hand man. When Israel was attacked by the Amalekites (Exod 17:8), Moses asked two people—his brother Aaron and Hur—to help hold his hands upright during the battle. Later, when Moses was about to ascend Mt. Sinai, he told the people: “If you have any legal disputes while I am gone, take them to Aaron or Hur” (Exod 24:14). It was thus clear to interpreters that, along with Aaron, Hur was Moses’ chosen leader. If so, interpreters could only marvel that, in the whole incident of the Golden Calf, Hur was never mentioned; in fact, he was never heard from again in the Torah.

Interpreters came to the conclusion that this thunderous silence held a message: Hur must have been killed by the rabble for having refused to make the Golden Calf. It would make sense for them to have turned first to Hur. Why? In ancient times, artisans were generally introduced to their craft by their parents; metallurgy, among other arts, was passed on from father to son. When it came to the construction of the mishkan, one man was chosen to lead the effort, someone who knew specifically how to “design things to be made of gold and silver and bronze” (Exod 31:3-4). That man was Bezalel, son of Uri, son of Hur. It thus seemed only logical to interpreters that Hur himself had been a metalworker and had passed this profession onto his grandson.

The Torah reports that Aaron, after having fashioned the Golden Calf, “saw and built an altar in front of it” (Exod 32:5). What did he see? Actually, the Hebrew letters of the word “he saw” could be pronounced as if they were spelling “he feared,” and this, for interpreters, was the last piece of the puzzle. Aaron was no coward, but he feared that if he refused to continue with this worship, the people might kill him as they had Hur—and this in turn would cause God’s anger to spill over against all of Israel, with disastrous results. “It is better,” he thought, “for me to take the blame.” And so he did.