The post-golden calf conversation between Moses and God ends with a promise from God to walk with the people and forgive them, though they have committed a grievous sin. But Moses, in soliciting the Divine Presence, uses an argument that might work one of two ways. The verse is Exodus 34:9:
ויאמר אם נא מצאתי חן בעיניך א-דני ילך נא א-דני בקרבנו כי עם קשה ערף הוא וסלחת לעוננו ולחטאתנו ונחלתנו:
(Moses) said: “If I have gained Your favor, Adonai, pray, let Adonai go in our midst, (כי) this is a stiffnecked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your own.”
The Medieval Spanish commentator Ibn Ezra renders the problematic preposition כי twice over: “Rabbi Marinus teaches, ‘even though they are a stiffnecked people.’… But by my reckoning, … ‘I admit that it is a stiff-necked people, and you will forgive.’” The second approach, disconnecting the phrases from each other, gives no moral valence to being stiff-necked. However the New Jewish Publication Society translation of the Torah picks up on the first approach – Moses’ argument is, “Even though they are a stiff-necked (i.e. stubborn, tenacious) people, please walk in their midst.” For Ibn Ezra, being stiff-necked is clearly not something the Israelites would have posted on their J-Date profile. Indeed that very phrase, kishinu oref/we have been stiff-necked, features prominently and repeatedly in the list of transgressions in the confessional prayers of Yom Kippur.
However, Ramban, commenting on this verse, takes an opposite tack. He writes, “The meaning of this verse is as it is written: God will walk in their midst because they are a stiff-necked people.” For Ramban, Moses is presenting the Israelites’ stubbornness as something attractive to a prospective deity. What’s so alluring about their behavior? Avivah Zornberg (The Particulars of Rapture, Ki Tisa) suggests that the Israelites dancing around the calf are not so much forgetting Sinai as remembering the style of hundreds of years of worship and divine service they’ve witnessed and participated in for generations. If the Israelites as a people are so tenacious about maintaining their ancestral ways, argues Moses, then once they figure out the whole monotheism/Jewish worship idea, they are never going to let go of it.
Is Jewish stubbornness a virtue? Has it served God well in the covenantal relationship with the Jewish people? Listen to Martin Luther rant about Jewish tenacity in his anti-semitic screed, On the Jews and their Lies.
It is not my purpose to quarrel with the Jews, nor to learn from them how they interpret or understand Scripture; I know all of that very well already. Much less do I propose to convert the Jews, for that is impossible…
They have failed to learn any lesson from the terrible distress that has been theirs for over fourteen hundred years in exile. Nor can they obtain any end or definite terminus of this, as they suppose, by means of the vehement cries and laments to God. If these blows do not help, it is resonable to assume that our talking and explaining will help even less…
We propose to discuss their argument and boast, and prove convincingly before God and the world - not before the Jews, for, as already said, they would accept this neither from Moses nor from their Messiah himself - that their argument is quite empty and stands condemned.
Apparently Moses, as understood by Ramban, was quite right to suggest that our tenacity would make us particularly suited to and passionate about the way of life we know as Torah and Mitzvah. Being stiff-necked, it turns out, is both something to regret on Yom Kippur and something to celebrate about our people’s culture and character. Our inherited resistance to new ideas protects us from the fad of the hour or the year; yet it can also impede our taking the next step. When we get stubborn in foolish ways, we end up building golden calves, ‘sacred cows’, if you will, that then impede us in small-minded ways from reaching our potential. However, when we get stubborn about the right things, we give life to our people’s tradition of the search for meaning even as we embrace our own potential. We’ve heard the fourteenth century sage Ramban tell us that our tenacity is precisely why God chose us to receive the path of Torah, why God chose to walk in our midst after the Golden Calf incident. Once we sink our teeth into something, when times get challenging, we hold on tight.
It’s important to check in now and again – as individuals and as a community – about what we choose to be stubborn about and what we’re just giving in for want of energy or passion. Are we sufficiently stiff-necked about being a supportive, tightly knit yet welcoming community? About being treating each other with decency and respect? About providing a quality Jewish education for the next generation? About living not just for our own comfort but also in the service of the other, and of the greater good? The places we’re most stubborn say a great deal about who we are and what we care most about.
Over the coming few weeks, you will begin to hear about a number of areas of communal life that will benefit from a good infusion of stiff-necked people (or, if you prefer, a solid dose of Jewish tenacity). We’re going to have to talk about invigorating minyan after two regular attendees (one of whom drove others to services) passed away this winter and another has been injured; about finding ways for intensive Jewish education to persist in Pittsfield even as the community’s day school is in financial straits; about redoubling our efforts to support the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and thereby head off damaging cuts to services provided; about those who are able transcending what’s comfortable and embracing new leadership roles in our community.
The people of Knesset Israel and the Jews of the Berkshires have repeatedly accomplished important goals by coming together in creative, focused ways to build community. We didn’t get this far by impulsively letting go of what’s most important to us. Let’s challenge ourselves to be stiff-necked and stubborn in the right ways, so that we can continue to welcome God’s presence into our midst.
