Post-Egypt: Adulting

All Atonement is Atonement for the Golden Calf

Aaron shall then offer his bull [par] of sin offering, to make expiation [v’chiper] for himself and his household. He shall slaughter his bull [par] of sin offering, and he shall take a panful of glowing coals scooped from the altar before the Lord, and two handfuls of finely ground aromatic incense, and bring this behind the curtain [parochet]. He shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord, so that the cloud from the incense screens the cover [kaporet] that is over [the Ark of] the Covenant, lest he die. (Leviticus 16:11-13)

Parashat Acharei Mot (Levitivus 16:1-18:30) describes the origins of Yom Kippur, the day of expiation or atonement. Wordplay on Kappara—the process by which transgressions and failings of various kinds are either expunged or elevated—appears throughout. The priest is instructed to bring a bull (par) as part of his sacrificial offering. While we are more familiar with the wordplay that links Yom Kippur to Purim on the basis of the shared theme of lots (Yom Kippur = “A Day like Purim”), we could also say that Yom Kippur means a day like bulls, a day involving bulls, given how often the word par appears in the parasha.

Two other recurrent words suggest a link to atonement, the parochet or curtain in the Holy of Holies and the kaporet, the cover of the Ark. Both suggest entrance into a place otherwise concealed. Yom Kippur is a day unlike others—a Sabbath of Sabbaths. Metaphorically, it’s a time when we are permitted to perceive things which on other times might be destabilizing or debilitating. To atone, one must go to the root of the error. But living in such a state of raw vulnerability all the time would be a drag, at best, and a distraction from getting on in the world at worst.

So Yom Kippur is a singular time of going behind the curtain, a time of uncovering or unconcealing. But what about the bulls?

My hypothesis, and this is all speculative, is that it has something to do with the sin of the golden calf (egel hazahav), the first and fundamental error of the people as they leave Egypt for their newfound freedom. Recall that Aaron was the one who aided and abetted the people in their golden calf worship, so the expiation that Aaron now needs to make by means of a bull for himself and his household could refer ontologically to this original leadership failure. That is, whatever else Aaron is atoning for, and whatever else any given priest is atoning for, all atonement is anchored to an original event. Genesis has its primal transgression in the eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree; Exodus has its primal transgression in the worshipping of the golden calf.

But if the Torah wanted to link the act of seeking atonement to the sin of the golden calf, why not command the sacrifice of a calf? A bull is the adult form. Perhaps there is a lesson in the switch from child (calf) to adult (bull) about maturity. To atone is to grow up, to develop beyond one’s previous limits and shortcomings. Another possibility: the people worshipped a calf because they could not wait for Moses to return from atop the mountain. Their impatience and their lack of faith are connected. Those who want immediate results are more likely to err by following shallow, but glitzy schemes rather than doing the laborious work of making small changes day in and day out. They don’t have time to wait for the calf to grow into a bull because they want Enlightenment now. The corrective to a spiritual get-rich-quick mindset is something like patience. The sacrifice of the adult cow serves as a reminder that transformations of character and world take time.

Yom Kippur is a time of self-affliction. A time to refrain from bathing, sexual activity, self-decoration, pride. It’s a time of humility and of death-consciousness. We come from dust and to dust we will return. By contrast, the sin of the golden calf emerged from the legitimate human impetus to celebrate life with aesthetic excess, to harness the powers of human creativity and imagination in the service of the gaudy. “This is my God and I will beatify Him” (Exodus 15:2).

There is nothing wrong with decoration. But decoration without a moral sense or a directed sense of purpose can become a kind of escapism or self-indulgent dandyism, a worship of style and panache that hides a bitter nihilism. Decoration cannot be an end in itself. So on Yom Kippur we must de-decorate ourselves. We must unlearn our attraction to surface appearances. The golden calf has the allure of a commodity. But the adult calf, the real calf, unadorned, does not need allure because it merely is. We have to get away from seeing ourselves falsely (the static, golden calf version of ourselves) and see ourselves truly (as the lively, panting animals that we are). The golden calf version of ourselves may be shiny, but it lacks life.

These things are all connected: going for the surface of things, being taken in by false conceptions of the beautiful, affirming models and representations instead of embracing vitality, impatience with hard work in which results are often elusive. The sin of the golden calf is paradigmatic of all transgression. Or said differently, all transgressions repeat in their own miniature way the worship of a golden calf; our lives of error are Midrashim on the original error to which our ancestors, including Aaron, succumbed.

But unlike in Augustinian Christianity, in which the sin cannot be undone and is simply a mark of human fallenness, we have a ritual and a mechanism for grappling with our primal propensity for error. We can go behind the curtain and find the “Nothing” that “renovates the world,” to borrow a phrase from Emily Dickinson. We are not condemned to stay at the level of the self-satisfied materialist who worship only things of their own making. We may not stay behind the curtain, stripped of our pretense, and our success will never be complete, but we are required to work at unconcealment, anyways.

You might be thinking, “Passover just ended, what does this moment have to do with Yom Kippur?” But Passover celebrates only leaving Egypt. Now the work begins. We don’t hold children accountable for their actions in the same way that we do adults. Now, the people are adults. They began by worshipping calves, because they were spiritual infants. But with Yom Kippur, we are offered an opportunity to rejoice in the less glamorous, but more enduring freedom of adulthood. In Egypt, we could be victims. After all, we were oppressed. But on Yom Kippur, we can no longer blame Egypt. We must go behind the curtain and contend with ourselves.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins @ Etz Hasadeh

P.S.—Here’s a new podcast I did with Zachary Davis of Ministry of Ideas. I gave my twenty minute account of the meaning of life.

You may also enjoy my recent conversation in the Paris Review with Sheila Heti, David Heti, Nathan Goldman, and Noreen Khawaja, on Annie Hall.

I’m hosting an “Ask Me Anything” Salon with a focus on skepticism on May 4. Sign-up here.

If you appreciate this work and feel moved to support it, you can make a tax deductible donation here. You can also support it by subscribing to my philosophy newsletter, What is Called Thinking? and my podcast Meditations with Zohar. (Rating the show 5 stars and giving it a review on Apple Podcasts helps it become discoverable.)