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From Julia Neuberger Senior Rabbi at the West London Synagogue:
This coming Sabbath, our Torah reading is the famous story of the Golden Calf. Moses had gone off up Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights, to collect the 10 commandments. Whilst he was away, the Israelites started acting up. They complained to Aaron, Moses’ brother, that they didn’t feel secure. So they handed in all their jewellery- nose rings, bracelets, the lot- and Aaron got a golden calf made, which they proceeded to worship. 
Moses was FURIOUS, as was God. Moses smashed the two stone tablets, and God threatened to destroy the people. Moses pleaded with him to relent, and eventually Moses burned the golden calf, ground it up, and made the Israelites drink it mixed with water!!!! We usually interpret the story as teaching the people, including us, not to worship idols. But there’s another fascinating way of looking at this that I think has relevance today. Why was it a Golden Calf? We know the Egyptians were quite keen on bull worship, especially the bull god Apis. Maybe we’re seeing an old Egyptian practice emerging, where, bereft of their leader, the Israelites go back to their old ways - learned from their captivity in Egypt.
Perhaps that’s why they had to wander for 40 years, when the normal length of the journey would be barely 3 months! They needed to get bull worship knocked out of them. That makes much better sense than just getting lost…… if you want people to change their habits, it takes a generation or more. You can change the law- take race discrimination, or sex discrimination, outlawed in the 1970s. 
But 40 years on, we still have racism and sexism. Changing people’s behaviours takes ages, and rational argument doesn’t always help. If the real reason the Israelites had to wander so long was to get idolatry out of their system, it shows us that allowing a long time to change people’s behaviours is nothing new. It was known in Biblical times. So our problem now is to work out ways of getting people to change their ways more quickly, to save the planet, to save our animals, and to save our way of life. 40 years is a very long time. 
I wonder whether we human beings are clever enough to change behaviour more quickly.