The priesthood is the strangest survival in Judaism: a hereditary office with no altar, no sacrifice and no income, which nobody has abolished in two thousand years. A kohen is called up to the Torah first, blesses the congregation with the split-fingered gesture — daily in Israel and in most Sephardi communities, on festivals in the Ashkenazi diaspora — and lives under restrictions the rest of the community does not: no entering a cemetery, no attending most funerals, no marriage to a divorcee or a convert. The last restriction generates real anguish and a steady industry of rabbinic workarounds, and Reform Judaism cut the whole category in the nineteenth century. Aaron himself is treated by the text without protection: he builds the golden calf, makes an evasive excuse about the gold coming out of the fire on its own, and keeps the job. That the tradition kept both the failure and the office is the point.