The Moses Intuition

Why did the Jews choose a calf to be the leader to replace Moses? What does the story say about our desire for leadership, and how does G-d see it differently?

The Intercom Rebbe

In the 1960s, a chassidic rebbe living in New York became famous as a “mind reader.”

People would come to him for advice, and before they had a chance to say a word, the rebbe would begin: You’re married, you have three children, your daughter is dealing with this-and-this problem, you went to a certain doctor, but I think you should see a different one… If someone came for business advice, he would supposedly identify the business, the amount invested, and then offer guidance on the spot.

People were stunned. How could he know details that, in some cases, even their own spouses didn’t know?

Naturally, word spread quickly. This rebbe gained a following, and his court prospered financially. He promised that for a certain donation he would pray for sick relatives, and people came in large numbers. Donations flowed, and the operation flourished.

Around 1971, a journalist came to investigate.

As soon as he entered—before he said a single word—the rebbe launched in: You’re married, you have three children, and so on, followed by advice. But the journalist wasn’t married and had no children… Rather, he had given those false details to the rebbe’s assistant beforehand.

Here’s what was going on:

Among many rebbes, it is customary for the gabbai (attendant) to write down, before the meeting, why the visitor came and what he wants to ask. This journalist, knowing the custom, deliberately lied to the gabbai and said he was married with three children.

That exposed the trick.

The “rebbe” was not actually reading minds. He was hearing whatever people told the gabbai before entering. A later investigation found that an intercom had been installed between the gabbai’s room and the rebbe’s room. So everything said in the waiting room could be heard inside. By the time a visitor walked in, the rebbe was already “briefed” on all the details and could perform as though he knew people’s thoughts.

Once the fraud was uncovered, he was charged with obtaining money under false pretenses, convicted in court, and eventually forced to step down.

Looking for Moses

This week’s Torah portion centers, above all, on the sin of the Golden Calf.

The Rebbe asks an obvious question: How could such a thing happen? Just a short time earlier, the Jewish people had stood at Mount Sinai and heard the Ten Commandments—including “I am the L-rd your G-d” and “You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” They had experienced revelation on the highest level. How, after all that, could they even consider idolatry?

The Rebbe answers by pointing to the Torah’s own wording. The people say: Moses is late in coming down the mountain… make for us a leader, because this man Moses—we don’t know what happened to him. In other words, they were not asking for a replacement for G-d, G-d forbid. They were asking for a replacement for Moses.

And when they said, “Make for us an elokim,” the Rebbe explains that they immediately clarified what they meant: not a deity, but something “that will go before us”—a guide in Moses’s place. In this context, the word elokim can mean a ruler or authority figure, not necessarily “god.” Only later did some of them get swept further and further into the sin until it became actual idol worship (Likkutei Sichos, vol. 11, p. 141ff.).

At the outset, they were not trying to create a new religion. They were looking for a substitute for Moshe Rabbeinu.

But the question still remains.

Granted, Moses had disappeared, and they did not know what had happened to him. In normal human society, when a leader dies or steps down, people appoint a new leader. So if Moses was gone, the obvious next step should have been to nominate someone else—Aharon, Kalev, Yehoshua, or another recognized leader.

Why, then, a calf?

How did they arrive at that idea?

Why Not a Holy Alexa?

Some explain it this way: the Jewish people were afraid that if the “middleman” transmitting G-d’s word was a human being, then someday a fraud might show up and claim to speak in G-d’s name.

So they preferred something more “mechanical”—almost like an ancient version of Alexa—through which G-d’s message could pass without human filtering. No free will, no ego, no ability to distort the message, add to it, or subtract from it. That, according to this approach, is why they proposed a calf.

But in practice, we see that G-d wanted His word to come specifically through a human being—through Moshe, and later through the prophets who followed him.

And yes, the concern they feared turned out to be real. The Tanach does describe false prophets, and the Torah itself warns us not to be misled by them. So the question becomes even stronger: if that danger is real, why didn’t G-d create some kind of “Siri” to deliver His word in a way no one could twist or manipulate?

Because Moshe’s role—and the role of the prophets after him—was never just to deliver information.

Moshe was not meant to announce G-d’s will and then walk away. His task was to awaken each Jew to actually live by that word.

In Chassidic language, Moshe is called a memutza hamechaber—a connecting intermediary. As the verse says, “I stood between G-d and you” (Deuteronomy 5:5). Moshe was not a divine courier service, as if G-d needed a delivery boy to bring the Tablets from Sinai down to the camp.

His mission was much deeper: to make sure every Jew truly connected to G-d.

If even one Jew remained disconnected, that was Moshe’s problem.

Like a shepherd who must make sure every sheep is fed—because if one is neglected, it will not survive—so too Moshe, who is called the shepherd of Israel, had to ensure that every Jew received spiritual nourishment and formed a living bond with G-d.

And that, in essence, was the role of the prophets throughout Jewish history.

A Prayer from the End of the World

I’d like to share a story that captures what it means to be a “shepherd of Israel.”

In the 1960s, the Sofer family was living on a kibbutz in Israel affiliated with Hashomer Hatzair. The father, Michael, was a professor of statistics. He and his wife later left Israel and moved to Tasmania, Australia.

At the time, about thirty Jewish families lived there. None of them were observant, but they still maintained a communal Jewish life and attended synagogue on Shabbat and holidays. The community had no rabbi. Their chazzan—the man who could lead services and read from the Torah—effectively served as the community’s religious leader.

Michael and his wife were not involved in community life. They were focused on their academic work at the university. One day, community members approached Michael and asked to speak with him.

Their chazzan had left, they explained, and they had decided that Michael was the best person to replace him—as both prayer leader and Torah reader—because he was the only one who could read Hebrew properly.

Michael was stunned. He had no real connection to synagogue life and no background in religious practice. He told them he had barely ever been in a synagogue and knew virtually nothing about any of this.

They didn’t back down.

They told him that, as far as they were concerned, his personal lifestyle was beside the point. What mattered was that he could help them keep the community functioning the way it always had. They kept pressing, and Michael eventually agreed. He didn’t see it as a religious role, just as helping the local Jewish community.

So he began serving as chazzan and Torah reader.

Slowly, he and his wife became more involved. As that happened, they began thinking seriously about their children’s future and the danger of assimilation. They concluded that if they wanted to protect their children’s Jewish identity, they needed to start keeping some mitzvot—at least enough to create a meaningful distinction between their children and the non-Jewish environment around them.

But they had no observant Jews around them, and they themselves had no idea how to do it properly.

So they started with what they knew, on their own: lighting Shabbat candles, making kiddush, keeping Shabbat as best they understood it, and a few other familiar practices.

Very quickly, that wasn’t enough.

They wanted to understand more—what the mitzvot meant, how to observe them, and, more broadly, what Judaism actually asked of them. But there was no one to learn from. In the entire region, there was no one to turn to, and there were hardly any Jewish books to be found. This was before the internet. They felt genuinely trapped: a deep desire to learn and grow, with no way to do it.

One small anecdote captures just how little they knew: once, a visiting Jew who knew slightly more than they did came to the synagogue and pointed out that in Maariv (the evening service), you don’t repeat the Amidah out loud.

One day, Mrs. Sofer prayed to G-d from the depths of her heart and said:

“Master of the Universe, we want to keep Your Torah—but we don’t know how. Please help us.”

How the Right Person Arrived

A few days later, a bearded Jewish man dressed like a rabbi appeared in their synagogue.

Michael approached him with enormous excitement and began asking question after question—everything he had been wanting to understand. The visitor later came to their home as well, where he patiently answered their questions and guided them in how to observe mitzvot.

That rabbi was Rabbi Chaim Gutnick, a well-known Chabad rabbi from Melbourne.

Over time, the relationship grew stronger. Little by little, the Sofer family began observing more and more mitzvot and drawing closer to a Torah way of life. Eventually, they moved to Melbourne and joined the local Chabad community.

Until they relocated, they had no idea what had brought Rabbi Gutnick to Tasmania in the first place.

Then one day, Mrs. Sofer met Rabbi Gutnick’s daughter, and in the course of conversation she mentioned that they had once lived in Tasmania. When Rabbi Gutnick’s daughter heard that, she said she had an incredible story connected to Tasmania.

She explained that several years earlier, her father had received a letter from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. In the letter, the Rebbe wrote that because rabbis are naturally occupied with the needs of their own communities, the Jews living in small and remote towns are often neglected—and that rabbis should take to heart the responsibility to help those communities as well.

The Rebbe specifically mentioned Tasmania as a place that should be visited.

Rabbi Gutnick immediately followed the Rebbe’s guidance and traveled to Tasmania. That is how he arrived at a small, isolated synagogue community—and met a family that was searching for Judaism. In time, the family returned to Jewish life. (B’Darkei HaChassidim, p. 31)

This is what it means to be a “shepherd of Israel”: to feel that somewhere in distant Tasmania there is a Jew who needs connection to G-d—and to send the right person to help.

And for us, there is a lesson too. Every person has a piece of Moses inside them. Our job is not to be the Holy Alexa, that preaches to others and feels superior. Instead, we are responsible for others—we need to make sure to influence them positively, with kindness and compassion. We could be the Moses for our fellow Jew.