This series is dedicated to the memory of Dorina Kalaty, Esther bat Eliyahou A”H, a beloved Torah teacher in our community who left us too soon.
In our last post, we explored the significance of the prayer of Hanna and how it helps deepen our understanding of the role of tefillah in our personal growth. When Hanna recited her prayer, she did not expect her words to change the external world or to persuade God to change His mind. What she said was the expression of an inner transformation that had probably already been in the works for quite a long time and had finally reached its conclusion. It was Hanna’s insight and change in outlook, reflected so beautifully in her tefillah, that prepared her to receive blessing from the Almighty.
This week I would like to shift gears and travel even further back in time to the period of the Exodus from Egypt and the prayers and supplications of Moshe Rabbenu. While he is on Mount Sinai receiving the Torah, Moshe is informed that the Jews have committed the terrible sin of worshiping the Golden Calf. In fact, God tells Moshe that He intends to destroy the Jewish people as punishment for this transgression.
Unwilling to accept this decree, Moshe implores Hashem to rescind it, and promptly returns to the Israelite camp at the foot of Sinai, where he dramatically throws down and shatters the tablets that had contained the Ten Commandments. After burning the Golden Calf and casting its ashes on the water, Moshe chastises the Jewish people for their error and then returns to Mount Sinai, where he prays for forty days and forty nights until Hashem agrees to renew His covenant with the Jewish people and to inscribe the Ten Commandments on a second set of stones.
The prayers of Moshe Rabbenu seem to challenge the understanding of tefillah we have been developing thus far. After all, it appears as if Moshe is talking Hashem out of His plan to annihilate the Jews, and then persuading Him to offer them another chance. If prayer is really about inner transformation and not “convincing” God to fulfill our wishes, how can we explain Moshe interceding on our behalf and praying for us to be forgiven?
In order to approach this question, we must take a closer look at the text of Moshe’s prayers. This week, we will examine the first supplication offered by Moshe before he comes down from the mountain to confront the worshipers of the Calf. When Hashem first announces that He plans to destroy the Jews because of their sin, He says “let Me go, and I will destroy them.” The Sages infer from the phrase “let Me go” that Hashem was actually inviting Moshe to pray for forgiveness. Hashem was presenting the impending destruction of the Jews to Moshe for his consideration before He followed through with the plan.
How does Moshe Rabbenu react to this challenge? In his prayer, Moshe observes that the decimation of the Jewish people in the desert will lead to a desecration of the name of God in the eyes of the nations of the world. The Egyptians, in particular, will interpret this Divine punishment as a confirmation of their idolatrous beliefs and as proof that the God of the Jews had an evil purpose in leading them out of Egypt. Therefore, Moshe asks that Hashem recall the promise He made to the Patriarchs – Avraham, Yitzchaq and Yaaqov – and spare their children from this terrible fate. Hashem accepts the argument of Moshe, and relents.
Why does the prayer of Moshe effectuate a change in the Divine plan? If God’s justice dictated that the Jews should be destroyed for their sin, why would an impassioned speech from Moshe make any difference? And if the concerns expressed by Moshe – the potential desecration of God’s name and the dishonor of the oath to the Patriarchs – were valid, why didn’t Hashem consider these issues Himself?
The answer to this question is fundamental not only to the concept of tefillah but to Judaism in general. Hashem’s actions in this world are meant to benefit and educate us. However, as intelligent beings with freedom of choice, how we interpret His actions is as important as the actions themselves. And how we process Hashem’s interactions with us and learn from them depends solely upon us. If we misunderstand His message, even His kindness toward us may hurt us.
Imagine parents dealing with a young child who has misbehaved. In responding, they have three options. The first is to be kind and ignore the inappropriate conduct. Seeing this, the child will assume that his actions are acceptable to his parents and will continue acting out or become even worse. The mercy of the parents thus backfires, since they fail to educate their child and do him more harm than good in the long run.
A second option is for the parents to implement a swift and harsh punishment, like grounding the child for a month with no exceptions whatsoever. This way they clearly communicate to the child that they will not tolerate his inappropriate behavior. However, the manner of conveying the lesson may be overly painful for the child physically, socially or emotionally. Grounding may have additional and unintended negative effects, such as preventing the child from engaging in positive and healthy activities like sports, music lessons, etc., that would otherwise benefit him.
A third option is for the parents to engage the child in the disciplinary process, sharing with him what they believe to be the appropriate consequence for his misdeed. The child may suggest an alternative consequence that is less harsh, acknowledging that a punishment is justified but explaining that the strictness of this particular punishment would interfere with his development rather than promote it. If the parents see that the child understands what he has done wrong and is genuinely remorseful, they might agree to his proposal. This way they accomplish the objective of making sure the child has learned his lesson but do not have to impose an overly strict punishment in order to teach it.
Had the child not been actively involved in the process, this kind of compromise solution would not have worked – he would have perceived it as softness on the part of the parents. But since he understood what kind of punishment he actually deserved and only then worked out an alternate proposal, there is no concern that he might get the wrong message just because he wound up receiving a lighter sentence.
It is easy to see how this analogy is relevant to Hashem’s response to the sin of the Golden Calf. Had Hashem simply decided against punishing the Jewish people altogether, they would have assumed that this was because idol worship is not such a big deal. Hashem’s display of mercy would have been counterproductive, because the absence of serious consequences would have given everyone the wrong idea, pushing them even farther away from the truth. Therefore, Hashem had “no choice”, so to speak, but to insist upon the harshest punishment imaginable, total destruction.
Like the parents who take the third option in the analogy, however, Hashem divulged his plan to Moshe Rabbenu, the representative of the nation, before implementing it. This afforded Moshe the opportunity to formulate and suggest an alternative response that would send the correct message to the Jews while avoiding unnecessary “side effects.”
Moshe saw that it was possible to frame the pardoning of the Jewish people not as a “soft stance” on idolatry or an endorsement of pagan behavior, but as a necessary measure to prevent the desecration of God’s name on a global scale, despite the enormity of the Israelite crime. If the Jews had perished in the wilderness, then the Patriarchs’ mission to sanctify Hashem’s name in the world – a mission they were promised would be carried on by their descendants – would have been undermined. The application of strict justice to the Jews would, in effect, have been a disservice and an injustice to the rest of humanity.
Once Moshe Rabbenu could envision Hashem’s graciousness in a way that both condemned idol worship and spared the lives of the Jewish people, Hashem no longer had to destroy the Jews in order to get His point across. As the teacher and spiritual leader of the nation, Moshe Rabbenu helped his students understand the gravity of their crime as well as the true reason why their lives were saved. However, he was only capable of doing so because he first exercised his free will and intelligence and developed this viewpoint himself on Mount Sinai, only then presenting it to God in the form of tefillah. The change in his own perspective and attitude, which he subsequently imparted to his flock, was what made them worthy of the blessing of forgiveness and the gift of a second chance.
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