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The COVID Priests
Aaron said, “Sir, don’t be angry. You know the people — that they’re intent on evil. They told me, ‘Make a god for us who will go before us because, as for this fellow Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what has become of him.’” (Exodus 32:22-23)
The Israelites were worried and scared. Their leader Moses was AWOL, or so they thought. They needed someone to take care of them, someone to tell them what to do. They needed a god, and apparently any god would do, even one of their own making. They were ready to create a god and a religion based on their hundreds of years of experiences in bondage. How very human of them.
I don’t think I’m especially good at partnerships, except in my marriage (I think). I’m too stubborn, am not always prepared to compromise, and have a short attention span. So I rarely partner with a person, because I generally fear the worst—damaging or losing a friendship.
The Torah describes the process of rapprochement between G-d and the Jewish people in a dance of oscillating words: the people do X, and G-d does Y. Then the people respond with Q, and G-d moves onto P, and so on (see Deut. 30). There is fluid movement on both sides, changes in posture and attitude and desires, sometimes flexing in toward each other, sometimes bending away or even – when things go very wrong – one of the dancers abruptly breaking it off and leaving the dance floor.
A joke is told of a man who is drowning 50 yards off shore. There are countless variations, but the simplest political version I know is that the Democrat throws the man 200 yards of line, then drops his own end. And the Republican throws 40 yards of line, because even a drowning man has to learn to help himself.