Expert: Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner - 3/16/2010

Question
Rabbi,
 I was watching the story of Moses on the history channel today. They said that when Moses found the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, he ordered the Levites to kill certain people with thier swords, some of whom were members of thier own families. This did not sound familiar to me, so I looked in Exodus and Dueteronomy and I didn't find this story in there. Can you please shed some light on this subject?
                               Thank you
                               Robert

Answer
Dear Robert,

Thanks for writing.

What you have experienced on television was a script that was Biblically based but amplified with Midrash Aggadah, written about earlier as "Midrash Haggadah," and older spelling,  in the Jewish Encyclopedia. You will find additional material as well inmthe new Encyclopedia Judaica.

Using the Biblical story as the structural scaffolding, the Rabbis over the course of centuries amplified the literary narrative with "wondrous imagination and flexibility" - my terms.

I love the Midrash, and I encourage you to study it as well. Midrash provides depth, lighting, intensity and moods, the variations in every dimension and sensibility that brings the Bible to life and makes for it to be constantly current.

Thus Midrash enabled the storytellers of the History Channel show to provide the "fundamentals" of the Biblical story and nuances they selected to tell their interpretation of the story, if not here and there writing their own contemporary Midrash on the Biblical narrative - for better or for worse, for more or less.

There are several wonderful English sources I can recommend: (1) a multivolume series entitled "The Legends of the Jews" by Ginzberg; (2) an English translation of a Hebrew classic - rather large volume - "Book of Legends" translated by Braude. Both are still available for purchase or in libraries.

Good luck and enjoy the history channel - I do.

Rabbi Dov