This week’s Torah portion talks about the sin of the golden calf. Moses had ascended Mount Sinai to receive instructions from God and the two tablets of the covenant known in Hebrew as the luchot habrit. Moses was supposed to have been away for forty days and forty nights. However, the Israelites miscalculated and on the fortieth day mistakenly thought that Moses had been killed and was not going to descend. The people therefore approached their high priest, Aaron, who was also Moses’ brother, and told him that they wanted to create an idol in place of Moses who, they thought, had disappeared never to return.
Aaron reluctantly acquiesced to their request and told the Israelites to remove the golden jewelry and earrings from their wives and children and bring them to him. Aaron did this as a delaying tactic, hoping that the women would object to having their jewelry used for such profane purposes. However, the men did not give the women and children a chance to object. They ripped the earrings off their ears and snatched their jewelry. Within a short period of time, enough gold was gathered to create an idol. Aaron took all the gold, fashioned a golden calf, and pronounced it the god of Israel who had brought them up from Egypt.
The next day, the people arose early and began offering up sacrifices to the golden calf. A pagan party then ensued which included such immoral behavior as incest and adultery. The Israelites had returned to the idolatry they had learned during their time of servitude in Egypt. At this point, God told Moses what was happening at the base of the mountain. He related to Moses how the Israelites had forsaken Him and built an idol which they were now worshiping and declaring as their god. And then He told Moses (Exodus 32: 9 – 10): "I have seen this people and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave Me alone, and My anger will be kindled against them so that I will annihilate them, and I will make you into a great nation."
Upon hearing that God wanted to kill the entire nation of Israel, Moses began pleading for mercy on their behalf. Here, instead of saying that there were righteous people amongst the Israelites—which would have been correct—and pleading to God not to do something that was unjust as Abraham had done, Moses took a slightly different tack. Let us examine the exact words Moses used.
Moses pleaded before the Lord, his God, and said (Exodus 32:11 – 14): “‘Why, O Lord, should Your anger be kindled against Your people whom You have brought up from the land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand? Why should the Egyptians say: 'He brought them out with evil intent to kill them in the mountains and to annihilate them from upon the face of the earth'? Retreat from the heat of Your anger and reconsider the evil intended for Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your very Self, and to whom You said: 'I will multiply your seed like the stars of the heavens, and all this land which I said that I would give to your seed, they shall keep it as their possession forever.' The Lord then reconsidered the evil He had said He would do to His people.”
With this argument, Moses persuaded God to retreat from his previously stated decision to annihilate the entire nation of Israel and to begin anew with Moses and his descendents. An analysis of Moses’ negotiating strategy shows that he did three things here: he used questions, he asked whether God’s intent was in his best interests, and he asked whether it was in line with God’s own policy.
The Use of Questions
First, Moses appeals to God’s pride and asks God why He would expend such energy in taking the Israelites out of Egypt using unprecedented miracles only later to kill them. Moses was using questions to suggest that such action would show that God misjudged things and expended a “strong hand” for the wrong people. Notice how, like Abraham before him, Moses was using the negotiating technique of questioning to great effect.
Is It In Your Best Interests?
Secondly, Moses tells God that killing the Israelites would be a public relations disaster for Him. The Egyptians were skeptical of God’s powers anyway and were just looking for a way to say that this God who had defeated them was not so mighty after all. Moses was telling God that if he killed the Israelites, the Egyptians would say that the God of Israel had lost strength and could not finish the job of taking the Israelites into the Promised Land, and so, to save face, He killed them in the desert. This would diminish God’s perceived power in the world. This strategy is very effective in all negotiations. If you can show the other party that their position is not in their own interests, succeeding in negotiations is far simpler.
Is It In Line With You Own Policy?
Moses’ third strategy was to remind God of promises He had made to the Israelite’s forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had said that their descendents would inherit the promised land and would become a numerous and great nation. Moses told God that if he was to kill the Israelites, He would be breaking those promises.
In other words, Moses neither confronted God nor questioned His justice or His omniscience. Instead, Moses made God realize that he was truly on His side. Moses made it known that he was looking out for God’s interests. Moses was gently telling God that killing the Israelites would not get Him closer to His real goal: recognition in this physical world that was seemingly devoid of Divinity. Instead, it would bring ridicule upon God—the opposite of what God had really wanted to achieve when He emancipated the Israelites from Egypt.
To negotiate in this way, Moses had to first have a very good understanding of what God really wanted and what was motivating His desire to kill the Israelites. Moses realized this when the Israelites worshipped the golden calf they had insulted God and caused His recognition to be diminished. This was counter to what God was aiming for. Moses then subtly explained to God that killing the Israelites would only further diminish that recognition and not take Him in the direction He wanted to go. Killing the Israelites would lesson God’s status in the eyes of the Egyptians, the other nations, and even in the eyes of Moses, because He would have been breaking his pledge to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses thus showed God how the act of killing the Israelites was against His own agenda. Moses’ technique here was to really understand the other side’s needs and then show them how they are able to reach them. This ended up being a winning technique.
The Torah gives us tools in every area of life. This is just one example of such a tool and it can be used to successfully navigate negotiations in every aspect of our life.
The above article is an excerpt from Rabbi Levi Brackman’s upcoming book Jewish Wisdom for Business Success co-authored with Sam Jaffe and to be published in October 2008 by AMACOM