Look at it from the point of view of the Hebrews. They had lived in peace in Egypt for generations, and learned to worship Egyptian gods. Now along comes Moses, a crazy man who pesters Pharaoh so much, they are forced to leave their homes in Egypt. Not only does he make them abandon their lives and homes, he wants them to worship some mountain god he claims to be the god of Israel. All they have is the word of Moses for this.
It was natural that when crazy Moses went up into the mountain to talk to his invisible god, they should go back to the gods of Egypt that they had grown up worshipping. What is strange is that they didn't stone Moses, and his brother, to death to get rid of them, and go back to Egypt to beg Pharaoh to let them return. Think about what Moses was demanding of them -- that they abandon the gods of Egypt, which they had learned to rely upon, and worship some angry mountain god they had never heard of before.
The entire purpose of Judaism was to give their tribes racial superiority over their neighbors to justify the slaughter of innocents and the taking of others lands
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