20th Century Jewish Religious Thought: Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements, and Beliefs

Idolatry

Idolatry Yeshayahu Leibowitz A lthough one who repudiates idolatry may not yet have acknowledged the Torah, in a way he has already done so. While his subjective acknowledgment of the Torah may have still to crystallize, he is regarded by the rabbinic sages as though he had already fully affirmed the God of Israel: "Anyone who repudiates idolatry is viewed as though he had acknowledged the entire Torah" (BT Kid. 40a). Hence, while he has not yet formally become a jew, in a way he is already worthy of being so designated: "Anyone who repudiates idolatry is called a jew" (Meg. 13a). This is already implicit in the Ten Commandments , the fundament of jewish belief. The first verse of the Decalogue- "1 am the Lord your God" (Ex. 20:2)-literally concerns the giver of the commandments, but the more far-reaching meaning of the verse is derived from the one that follows: "You shall have no other gods besides Me" (Ex. 20:3). Thus Maimonides, observing that the first positive commandment addressed to the jew is "1 am the Lord your God," explains it on the basis of the first negative commandment, "You shall have no other gods besides Me." Accordingly, he notes that God "cautioned us against believing in any 446 IDOLATRY other deity apart from him" (Seier ha-Mi~vot, "mi~ot 10 ta'aseh," a). The meaning of the "faith" implied here is further clarified as an injunction not to serve any other one "apart from Him" (Seier ha-Mi~vot, "mi~vot 10 ta'aseh, " b). From one point of view, the simple repudiation of idolatry is the first stage in the fulfillment of the commandment to believe in God. From another, however, it is the final stage, reached by the believer only after he has worked long and hard to purify his faith. Not everyone who sees himself as a believer in the one God is able to achieve this stage. While the word idolatry might, on the face of it, seem to refer to the making of "a sculptured image, or any [other] likeness" (Ex. 20:4), that is, to the worship of actual, concrete idols, its meaning is immeasurably augmented by the immediately preceding verse: "You shall have no other gods besides Me." Maimonides, though he knows full well that the deities of "the Sabians, the Chasdeans, and the Chaldeans ... the Egyptians and the Canaanites" have passed from the world, also knows that man's devotion to idolatry in all of its sundry and peculiar forms is nowhere near vanishing, and that its power over his soul continues to be enormous. To this very day, even the most pious of the faithful are still not immune to it: "Consider how perfidious was he who originated this opinion and how he perpetuated it through this imagining, so that its trace was not effaced though the Law has opposed it for thousands of years" (Guide, 3:37). Though the midrash in Yoma 69b may relate that the members of the Great Assembly succeeded in wiping out the jewish people's idolatrous urge, this is mere legend. The jewish world is and has always been the scene of a desperate, unceasing struggle between its monotheistic faith and the natural attraction of man-and jews are no different from others in this respect-to the worship of idols, which may even appear in the guise of monotheism. How difficult it is for man to accept the distinction between the holy and the profane, between the creator, who alone is "truly real" (MT Hil. Yesodei ha-Torah 1:1) and utterly holy, and his own status in God's world, which is contingent and profane. It takes an enormous effort of faith on man's part to recognize that the world and all that is in itincluding man himself-are subsidiary to God. This idea is expressed succinctly in the liturgical hymn Adon Olam: "Before the world was createdYou were He, and now that the world has been created-You are He." Only when man has come to realize that the transcendent God is not in the world, while he himself is but a part of it, does man become aware of the task incumbent upon him: Only by his own efforts, through service to God-that is, by keeping his commandments-can man create a link IDOLATRY 447 between himself and God; and if...