Golden Calf, The

Who were the sinners who required Divine forgiveness?

After such an interface with the Divine, how could they have transferred their loyalty to an idol? The Talmud responds by telling us that the Jews were, in fact, above this unseemliness. So what happened?

If Torah says that the episode of the Golden Calf is an "uplifting" story, then that is indeed the case. So what is the deeper meaning that lies behind the seemingly deceiving title?

I am thoroughly annoyed with rabbinic interpretations. There seems to be total whitewashing of the stories, just to make the heroes look sinless. Can’t there be a human side to the story too?

Sin leaves a "stain" on the spiritual aspect of the person. The highest levels of repentance may be so deep, that now a new level of goodness and holiness is reached, which could only be attained by repentance...

Who can make the physical world a holy place? One who remains untouched by its coarseness, or one who has succumbed to its temptations and triumphed over them? And what about the one who is still stuck in the morass of the material?

A closer look at the verses describing the Golden Calf debacle reveals some of the underlying issues which led to this national failure -- and teaches us some valuable lessons.

The golden calf debacle—in hindsight, how are we to view this catastrophe?

Is the Golden Calf episode justifiable? Can a people searching for spirituality be faulted for making an honest error?

Physical objects, they reasoned, can be safely preserved; they don’t walk away and disappear as Moses did