Verse Ex29-01b discussing the consecration ceremony of the priests states And this is the thing that you shall do to them to hallow them, to minister to me in the priest’s office; Take one young ox, and two rams without blemish, The consecration ceremony symbolically affirmed values needed by Priests to do their work. In my article The Priest as Vocational Counselor, presented at the Midwest Jewish Studies Conference in 2006, and to appear in the Jewish Bible Quarterly in 2010, I have shown that the 6 items offerable as sacrifices correspond to the 6 basic personality types of the internationally accepted Holland theory of personality. Rams correspond to social leaders and oxen correspond to producers [for example, secretaries, tailors, etc].

Using this symbolism we can easily understand that a Priest has to be a Ram, a social leader. Rashi explains that Priests have to have continuous daily productive activities (like oxen ploughing a field). Rashi explains Continuous productive activity is an antitode to boredom which leads to sexual sin.

We see boredom, leading to sexual sin, in the sin of the Golden calf - the people had nothing to do, so they made a party, and one thing led to another. Similarly Jewish Law strongly protects a married woman's right to work (since otherwise the resulting boredom would lead to improper behavior).

Advanced Rashi: Rashi actually simply and tersely says The ox atoned for the sin of the golden calf. Some have interpreted this as a (cheap) play on words: ox - calf. However I believe there is a deeper symbolic meaning: Ox-like productivity atones for the boredom that led to the sexual orgies of the golden calf. Note especially that that we have interpreted the golden-calf as primarily a sexual sin rather than an idolatrous sin. This is consistent with the Talmudic observation that the Jews worshipped idols after the decalogue, not because of beliefs, but rather because of the parties associated