If I Am Only for Myself

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Our re-employment group was talking this week about job interviews. What you say can make or break your chances of getting a job and often, under pressure, we are not fully conscious of all the implications of our remarks. The group worked on thinking through responses for some of the more difficult questions that they were likely to be asked.

It reminded me of a great story about a young man who was applying for a job as an usher in a movie theater. At the interview, they asked him,” What if there was a fire?”. “Oh”, he said confidently, “you don’t have to worry about me. I know how to take care of myself.”

Unfortunately in difficult times this is often the approach we take, let me worry about myself and as long as I make it through, it’s ok. Of course, that wasn’t what the interviewer was looking for.

In this week’s Torah portion Moses is put to the test. In a difficult situation, we get to see whether he will look out for himself or remain loyal to the Jewish people. Moses has every reason to abandon the people. They have disappointed him, even rejected him. Left on their own for a mere 40 days, they abandon all that Moses has taught them. They involve Moses’ brother, Aaron, who has been left in charge while Moses is gone, in the construction of a Golden Calf, and at least according to the Midrash heir mutiny extends to the murder of Hur, the other representative of authority at the time.

God is so angry at the people that He wants to wipe them all out and start over, with Moses as the patriarch of a new people. Moses already knows that it is Aaron’s sons who will take on the coveted and well rewarded positions of the priesthood and that it is not his sons, but Joshua the son of Nun, who will succeed him as leader of the people. You could imagine then that this offer was tempting. Though Moses would not have sought to have his family replace the Israelites, still having been handed this opportunity, how hard must he fight against it. Yet, Moses puts himself on the line completely for the Israelites. How?

The rabbis note that Moses takes a great risk in smashing the tablets. After all they were God’s handiwork, holy tablets, something unique in the world. The text tells us they were engraved on both sides- but how can something cut through be readable in both directions? One tradition is that they were black fire on white fire, another, that they were unearthly such that whichever way you turned them, the message was the same. They were clearly something very special and destroying them was an act of desecration.

Imagine if today I took the Torah out of the ark, threw it down on the ground and ripped the parchment in two. If you have trouble imagining my doing that, no matter what the frustration, how could Moses have done such a thing to an even holier object?

Exodus Rabbah says that Moses did this to prevent the Israelites from being accused of violating the second commandment. Moses reasoned, “ If they hadn’t received the law yet, they couldn’t be expected to keep them.”

Another explanation is that Moses wanted to make himself as guilty before God as the people. After all if Moses had felt that the people were not worthy to receive the Ten Commandments, he didn’t have to smash them. He could merely have returned them to God. By smashing the tablets he was saying to God: “They have sinned and I have sinned. If you forgive me, forgive them also.” In doing so Moses proved that he loved the community more than he loved the tablets, and fortunately he calculated correctly that God felt the same way.

Whether as parents at home, or managers at work, city officials or neighbors, our response to a difficult situation can’t be that of the young usher, “don’t worry, I can take care of myself.” Rather Moses models the servant leader, willing to take a risk, to protect the community for which he is responsible.