The new Golden Calf

Reading my Talmud Wikipedia, following the roots of one Jewish legend after another, I find myself looking at a a painting of the Israelites, fresh out of captivity in Egypt, impatiently waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain and worshipping a Golden Calf.

The story is preposterous on many levels, if you take it as factual reporting.

For one, it is hard to imagine "worshipping" a hunk of metal, when you are in the uncivilized desert with many other issues.

The story only makes sense at all, and has great resonance, as a metaphor.  The Golden Calf is anything that is not God, that we put ahead of God.

In my post reform judaeo atheist UUism, my nameless "God" is all goodness, and foremost among that goodness, is Love and Respect.  This is congruent with all religions that come to mind, though they may add additional elements. 

In other words, Anything that is NOT Love and Respect, that we put Ahead of Love and Respect, is the Golden Calf, and as long as we continue to worship it, we are in Deep Badness, as illustrated by the Golden Calf story.  Love and Respect comes first, always, that's what it means to be a Good Person, the kind of person one should be.

Which brings to mind Israel, the Zionist State and the Love and Respect of the non-Jews who were there in the 1920's and their descendants.  Where was the Love and Respect for the indigenous, say, in the Balfour Agreement?

Recently, CIA-owned-and-operated NPR has broadcast (or more likely rebroadcast, for the nth time) an interview with Bari Weiss, the Queen of Zionism.

The intrepid might try to tabulate lengthy sympathetic interviews on NPR of the likes of Bari and, Omar Baghouti.

Anyway, I'm tasked for dredging up the best deconstructions of her words, as I myself have attempted before.  She hasn't gone unnoticed in the quarters of the left anti-Zionism she equates with anti-Semitism, going way back.

Here's a deep left Jewish review of Bari's book.