Either Friendship or Death

Either Friendship or Death
Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal

When I was a freshman in college, I wandered into a graduate level seminar that I probably had no business being in. The topic of the seminar was Exodus 32, the story of the golden calf that we read this week. I’m not sure what made me take the class, but I imagine I was curious how we would spend an entire semester on one chapter of Torah.

Aside from a lot of detailed information about the Golden Calf (seriously, ask me anything), this class changed my life in one very important way. Another student, who I knew a little bit from our paths crossing at Hillel, was also in that class. Feeling equally unprepared and with no other undergrads to talk to, we became hevruta, or study partners, spending hours of time pouring over texts, doing our assignments, and generally trying to keep our heads above water.

Our time studying together developed into a lifelong friendship. We celebrate and mourn together, turning to one another in all of life’s moments, big and small, and our kids are now building a second generation of friendship. Our friendship transformed what could have been a lonely and difficult academic experience. It exemplifies the idea the rabbis teach in the Talmud – o hevruta, o mituta, either friendship or death.

The ancient rabbis were onto something here, and we now have the research to back up their instinct that being in relationship with other people is an essential human need. In 2023, the former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a report called Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, which outlined research showing that loneliness and lack of community can dramatically increase our risk of death and disease. It is the scientific embodiment of hevruta o mituta, either friendship, partnership, community, or death.

I can feel some of you wondering what that has to do with this week’s parasha and the story of the golden calf. For that, we turn to the beginning of Exodus 32, where we find Moses at the top of Mount Sinai with God. The verse states that when the people saw that Moses was so long coming down the mountain, they gathered against Aaron. The rabbis ask what it means that Moses was so long in coming down the mountain. Most of the commentary centers around the idea that perhaps Moses was later than he said he would be in his visit with God at the top of Mount Sinai and that the people got scared that they had been abandoned by their leader.

Put yourself in their shoes. They have only recently come out of slavery. The primary thing they know about God is that God sent plagues to the Egyptians and then split the sea and took them to freedom. But for all the miracles, they lack a personal relationship with the divine, and God hasn’t done a lot to convince them that God won’t turn on them at any moment. During the giving of the Ten Commandments, which was supposed to be a pivotal moment for the Israelites, they were so scared by God’s voice that they asked Moses to intercede. And now Moses, the only leader they really know, hasn’t come back and they feel isolated, abandoned, and alone.

And so the Israelites do the one thing they know they shouldn’t. The verse continues, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for we do not know what has happened to Moses—the man who brought us from the land of Egypt.”

In their fear and loneliness, they demand that Aaron build them not an idol, but a god who will go before them. Ramban understands the people as asking not for another God, but for another Moses, because it is Moses that they actually miss. In either reading, the Israelites are asking for someone to lead them, to show them the way, to bring them together as a community. They are scared and alone and they need guidance. And they believe that Moses may not come back.

Just a few weeks ago in Torah time, God spoke to the people and told them they should have no other Gods, and that they should not pray to idols. And yet, in just a short time without Moses the people start asking for new and more present leadership and are willing to build an idol to get what they need.

In building the golden calf, the Israelites’ fear and loneliness is leading them to do something they might not otherwise do and to make a choice that will lead to pain and suffering for their community. Throughout the rest of their time in the wilderness, the people do a number of things that anger God, but as long as Moses is with them, as long as they are in community with one another, they never again try to build an idol. It is only when they feel abandoned that they make their worst mistake.

We know that fear and loneliness can drive us to make destructive choices. I’m sure each of us has an example in our own lives. Hopefully we don’t do things as catastrophic as building a golden calf, but we know from experience and from research that loneliness and fear can lead us down a terrible path, away from community, away from the things that once mattered to us.

But there is a tikkun, a repair, to the fear and loneliness that led to the golden calf, and that is the mishkan. Although both the golden calf and the mishkan are created from precious materials, the way they are built and the way the community responds are completely different. The golden calf is created in a moment of fear. The mishkan is constructed through the heartfelt contributions of everyone in the community, through everyone coming together to create a sacred space, as directed by God. And, as we read a few weeks ago in parashat Trumah, God asks that we build the mishkan, the sanctuary, so that God can dwell not in the space but among the people. The mishkan is sacred because through the building process, we create a community where God can dwell.

The surgeon general’s research and report bears this out as well. One of the best things we can do to combat loneliness and isolation is to strengthen social infrastructure and build a culture of connection. And, as the report reminds us, synagogues and other faith communities are uniquely suited to do this kind of work because we are places where people gather, support one another in hard times, celebrate and volunteer together, and build sacred community. We want to build the mishkan and not the golden calf, and one of the first things we can do to ensure that happens is by creating a community where everyone belongs. It is not just the job of the people who sit on this bima or those who teach you or your children, or those who answer our phones or help make our synagogue run. It is the job of everyone in this room, each member of our community, to create a space where no one is alone.

And so, when we are scared, or we feel alone, or we feel like the world is spinning uncontrollably around us, a feeling I know many of us feel even more intensely over these last five years of Covid, or since Oct. 7th or since this current war began, I urge you not to act like the Israelites in this parasha and give into your worst impulses, the ones that isolate and divide us from one another. Let us not build our individual or our communal golden calves. Instead, let us come together and build a mishkan, a space with room for each one of us, a space where we are welcome to come as we are, and to show up for others in the ways that they need. Let us build a place of hevruta, of partnership and friendship and community. Then God can truly dwell among us.