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The Hidden Lesson of the Golden Calf: OCD, trauma, and the problem with convenience

Updated: 14 hours ago



As a child, I used to hear about the story of the Golden Calf and think, “If this were me, I’d never do that!” It always perplexed me why my ancestors would abandon the all-powerful God for something that can’t think, see, or hear their prayers. It made no sense that right after seeing the 10 plagues, the Red Sea parted into the world’s first aquarium tunnel, and a pillar of cloud and fire that guided them constantly, they’d immediately forget God. That God! Who did all that! No way!


But every time I’d read the story, that’s what it would seem like.

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, focuses on the story of the Golden Calf and the immediate aftermath. After years of reading this portion with confusion, disdain, and—honestly—some arrogance, I decided to do a deep dive into this portion and what it says about trauma, humanity, and the human trait of serving God when it’s convenient.


Fresh Trauma, Triggers, and Communal Pain

When we read this portion, the first thought that typically comes to mind is that the Israelites made an idol out of the calf, pulling something familiar from Egypt, to replace God after Moses was feared to have died on Mount Sinai. We create thousands of drashes about how we can make life or the things in life idols, and how having more emunah (faith) can help us get through hardships.


Some view this strictly as a lapse in faith or a moral 'sin’. The blame is always on the disgruntled members of the community, Aaron’s failure at leadership, and the Israelites being too hasty to forget a God who literally just saved their hides multiple times in a row. Many sages and rabbis have added commentary on this story, assessing the purpose and outcomes of the Golden Calf incident.


However, one specific perspective stands out to me. The Ramban (Nachmanides) argues that the Israelites never intended to replace God with the Golden Calf. Instead, he claims that they wanted to replace Moses and made the Golden Calf as a replacement intermediary between God and them. All so they could continue to connect with God. In some twisted way, our ancestors wanted nothing more than to continue the relationship they had with God, and then got carried away. I was genuinely shocked to learn this, and, as you’re probably thinking right now, I wondered, “How on earth can this possibly make sense?” Let’s see.


After almost 40 days of sitting at the bottom of a very ominous mountain in the middle of the desert, people started to ask questions. “Where is Moses?” they asked. “Did God kill him or did he abandon us?” In reading this again, I’m sensing some abandonment issues, lots of anxiety, and past trauma rearing its ugly head. Eventually, whispers and intrusive thoughts became ideas and conversations. That mix only triggered panic.


The Talmud says that the disgruntled/scared members of the community began to spread so much doubt about whether or not Moses was returning from the mountain that the people collectively had a vision of Moses being dead (Shabbat 89a)! It was literally mass hysteria in real time. They were really going through a tough time.


We are talking about a group of people who were held hostage for generations in a land they were “left” in by Joseph, abused by leaders who didn’t keep their promises, and were just starting to understand what freedom felt like. Every decision was weighed. Every choice was assessed for safety. Every word spoken was rooted in fear, survival, and past pain. So, according to the Ramban, when they started to sense they were on their own and had no guidance, they decided to take matters into their own hands and get some answers from God on their own—through an idol. That still led to broken laws, and it was still a sin, but it didn’t start off that way.


Unlike when I was a child, seeing the story as a lesson on abandoning God and swearing that would never be me, I see now how many Golden Calves I’ve made in my own life because of how much I feared losing control of a situation or outcome. Not because I had a present reason to be afraid, but because my brain showed me past trauma, whispered “it will happen again,” and I panicked. None of the decisions I made during those moments were good for me or had positive outcomes; none of them made me feel any better after the moment of temporary relief was gone. But for one brief moment, I felt in control of the world and prepared for anything. It’s in reflecting on those moments that it all makes sense.


God and Convenience

A relationship of any kind is built like a two-way street or a door; we both have to give to make it work. That includes our relationship with God.


For a long time, the Israelites were receiving a lot from God. But after Egypt, it got to a point where God was asking for intentional effort, loyalty, exclusivity, and a permanent place in their hearts. Because of past trauma, commitment and connection by choice were foreign, scary concepts. It was easy to love God when His chivalrous actions benefited them, and they had to do little in return. It was harder to love God when He asked for commitment back.


Humanity today is the same way. We get turned off by religion because it is too restrictive. We avoid traditional committed relationships because we don’t want to be tied down. God is no longer a focal point in our everyday lives because the way we see God is filtered through receiving, past trauma, and societal norms. We seek God only when it’s convenient for us or pursue religion when we are looking for meaning. God never stopped working on our behalf, advocating for us, and setting the world up with us in mind, but we can go through most of life without ever caring what He thinks or how He feels.


It was easy for the Israelites to forget the reason they originally made the Golden Calf, just as it was easy for them to forget how God had proven Himself constantly to be consistent and caring, and still think Moses would have abandoned them. They saw signs of inconvenience, signs of abandonment, and signs of tension, and they decided to take matters into their own hands. Instead of sitting with the uncertainty (as I am learning to do in OCD therapy), they decided to try to fill the void and find answers on their own. In their quest to find God on their own terms, they distanced themselves from God altogether until God stopped being what they were after.


By the time Moses returns, they are so caught up in their fantasy of a connection that they refuse to come back to following God the way He required (all except the Levites). The fury of Moses was worse than God’s, and a good chunk of the Israelites died.


Brokenness Travels with Us

In the midst of all of this, Moses is gifted with the stone tablets carved by God Himself, which describe the initial and core laws of the Jewish people. In pure neurodivergent fashion, upon seeing the debacle at the foot of the mountain, Moses smashes the tablets to pieces. Nice, Moses!

Thanks to that ingenious idea, Moses has to go back up and get new tablets, only this time, God says, “You break it, you buy it,” and makes Moses carve the stones out by hand for God to write on a second time. Both versions are stored in the Ark of the Covenant, as symbols of the Jewish legal system and God’s mercy.


This represents how brokenness is a part of our story, both as a people and as individuals. Just as the Israelites carried a permanent reminder of their flaws, mistakes, and broken covenant with God, so we carry brokenness in our own stories and in our generational history. We can’t hide it, deny it, or erase it. It’s what makes us who we are, and it’s how we learn who we will be. The broken and the whole traveled side by side as a reminder of God’s love. Our own stories and experiences do the same.


God knows that we are broken people in a broken world, not because of our imperfections or mistakes, but because we often try to fix the wrong things at the wrong times. We make golden calves in situations in which we don’t feel safe or sure, and we make idols out of our circumstances, forgetting that God is present and willing to help.


We often hear the statement, “God never promised things would be easy,” to prepare people for life’s hardships. As if acknowledging that life will be hard can make the triggers disappear. But as a trauma survivor with OCD, that statement scares me more than it encourages. Yes, life was not promised to be easy. But it can be, and living life expecting pain is not how we harness the joy of living. The “easy” part of life comes when you let go, when you sit with uncertainty rather than trying to take matters into your own hands, and when you acknowledge your trauma and allow it to inform your actions rather than hiding it and allowing it to control your reactions.


The mistake the Israelites made wasn’t just a lack of faith; it was an inability to sit with uncertainty. Like many of us managing OCD or trauma, they reached for a ‘compulsion’ (the Calf) to soothe the ‘obsession’ or trigger of Moses’ absence. By keeping the broken tablets in the Ark, God reminds us that the goal isn’t to be unbreakable, but to carry our brokenness and recognize that all aspects of our journey are sacred.


So, yes, it would be me. In fact, on a bad day, that is me. I have built golden calves in response to fear and uncertainty instead of trusting God, because in truth, I didn’t even trust myself. When I look at it this way, I see the humanity of my ancestors instead of their mistakes. I see a pathway forward for all of us. It’s in acknowledging our brokenness and sitting with the uncertainty that we learn life is meant to be fumbled in as much as it is designed to be lived. It’s not the mistakes God disapproves of; it’s when we try to hide our feelings and avoid commitment and care in the name of “wisdom” or being “proactive.” Instead, let’s learn to sit with uncertainty and give as much as we receive from God.


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