Do you ever talk to yourself? Of course you do. We all talk to ourselves, and when we do, so often we play the devil's avocate - bringing up the opposing side to the point we're making. In this week's parsha, G-d plays the devil's advocate. Moshe has been up on Har Sinai for weeks, in the most intense chavruta (study session) the world has known. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Aaron was doing his best to avoid a civil war amongst the people. Moshe was late in coming down from the mountain (or so the people thought due to a slight miscalculation). The tribe felt abandoned, afraid, lost... they wanted a connection to G-d that they could forge themselves, and were sick of having to depend on Moshe to lead them. It was obvious to them that Moshe had found a better gig up on the mountain and had moved on. The golden calf was their ticket back to their own connection to G-d. It wouldn't up- and-leave them in the middle of the night, it wouldn't make broken promises.
Up on the mountain, G-d described the scene below to Moshe. "You better get down there, things are going from bad to worse. They made a molten calf and are bowing down to it, bringing sacrifices to it, calling it their G-d... what a stubborn bunch! Really Moshe, you better go, cause I'm starting to get really angry and I feel like I just might do away with them once and for all. Come to think of it, I don't know why I contintue to bother with them. I mean, you're really the only one who understands what I'm trying to do. At least we can talk, at least I can count on you... hey, that's an idea! How about I wipe them out and repopulate the nation through you. You'd get it right, you're on my wavelength. Pretty good idea, if I do say so myself!"
Moshe was definitely tempted. He'd had such an amazing experience on top of Har Sinai that a big part of him wanted to stay forever. He didn't want to return to the people and deal with their lack of faith, their misunderstandings, their fears. When G-d suggested starting the nation over through Moshe, G-d was speaking to that side of Moshe that could imagine nothing better than being in touch with G-d and G-d only. But that was the devil's advocate. That was Moshe's "dark side," his selfish tendency. Wasn't it Moshe himself who had wanted to "pass" on being G-d's prophet at the burning bush? Wasn't it he who started praying instead of taking charge and leading the people into the Red Sea? Wasn't it he who refrained from asking for help when the people were standing hour after hour awaiting him to judge their court cases? Moshe went back, he couldn't forget. He'd been to that place of distance. He knew what it was to feel far from G-d, to feel like "I can't reach you on my own, I need someone or something to help me get there."
It's three thousand years later, and that feeling is still around. So what do we do about it, how do we get connected. There's no Moshe, we don't have any Jewish leaders that act as our intermediaries anymore, and G-d seems to have something against golden calfs. Rav Kook taught that the most unique thing about the Jewish people is that we have no direct connection to G-d. Oh great! Well, I might as well just pack it in right now. Hold on. Rav Kook saw our individuality as an illusion. At the root of our being we are all an enourmous soul...Yeah! So to be who we are, we need to get in touch with the rest of us. For Rav Kook, Ahavat Yisrael (loving other Jews) was not some sort of ethical goal; it's a self-defining need. Though it's been three thousand years and all of the nations that used to be our neighbors are gone, the Jewish nation is alive and kickin'!
Okay, so it's true that for every two Jews there are three opinions, but you won't find a Jew in Israel that's indifferent about the future of the Jewish Nation. It's much too important to simply let that connection disappear. As far away as we may feel from G-d, I bless us that we shouldn't let that keep us from connecting to each other. Each bridge we build with another soul is one more plank laid in the bridge back to finding our own soul.