I sit alone at the end of the long
wood dining room table. The amber glow of the dimmed chandelier and the smell
of fresh coffee wafting from the steaming ceramic cup by my side are welcoming
settings for my early morning routine of Torah study. Outside is still dark.
Before me lies a leather-bound book, very large and heavy, of ancient Jewish
and mystical teachings. I search for the red satin string that marks the page
where yesterday’s lesson ended and where today’s must begin. I open the holy
book and always feel awed and comforted by merely looking at the beautiful
letters of the aleph beit that spill open before
me. The concepts are complex and not always easily absorbed. I look
away to ponder the teaching and search my brain for familiar
understanding, for a point of reference. I stare and stare into the cozy
glow and low and behold, a devil is looking back at me. Yes it is a devil, I’m
sure of it. There are not one now, but four. I jump up from my seat
to investigate. I’m in shock. Why have I never noticed this before. Here in the
dining room of my childhood home, my mother’s home, stands a beautiful ornate
expensive mantelpiece clock which has four devil heads that serve as its
feet. I was quite certain, even for art’s sake, that this was not
permitted in a Jewish house. The devils were multiplying. For I then
noticed that two matching candelabras were also supported by these horned
heads. I now had 12 devils to deal with. And so I do what I do best,
I bother a very busy respected rabbi with the likes of questions that only
Aliza can have. “Dear Rabbi, I have an odd question, but I guess in
Judaism there are no odd questions. Here goes…… Is that idol worship? Should I
and can I remove just the legs and throw them away or have I created an issue
where there is none?”
Friends, for 30 years, those items
decorated our home, neither I nor my mother, the acquirer, ever noticed that an
idol was in our midst. I think of the years we celebrated holidays
in that room, the years my father prayed there and donned his tefillin, all the
years I studied Torah in that room and then I think of the devil holding up
“time,” i.e., that clock, and I’m not pleased. The rabbi replied. My “odd”
question indeed had an answer. The faces had to be smoothed down to destroy the
semblance of a graven image or alternately they could be
removed altogether. As the Second Commandment states: “You shall not make
for yourself a graven image, nor any manner of likeness of anything that is in
heaven above, that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the
earth.” G-d’s law is pretty clear, “You shall have no other gods
before Me.”
Judaism teaches, however, that
idols are not just statues and graven images. Idols are anything that we
worship that comes between man and G-d. Materialism, beauty,
fitness, money, the government, politics, the army, physicians, etc. can all be
considered idols if we empower them with the belief that they are what sustain
us and not the Will of G-d. Idol worship does not preclude belief in
G-d but assumes that some things exist in their own right apart and separate
from God’s holiness. Judaism teaches there is nothing but Him, ein od milvado. If we
relegate Him as merely G-d of the synagogue, no wonder many are no longer
afraid of Him nor serve Him in the other buildings of our lives. i.e., the
courthouse, the bank, the hospital, our living rooms, our
offices. In addition, how often do we really examine our environs
and take a good look at what is “decorating” our lives and whether we are
surrounded by idols both physically and perceptually? What is coming
between you and G-d? Greed? Laziness? Ego? Jealousy? Hedonism? Apathy? I can’t
help but think how even the American dollar, the idol of idols that many revere
as a god, is smarter than we are, for even the mighty buck itself declares “In
G-d we trust.”
In this week’s Torah portion,
Vayishlach, we learn that in exacting revenge upon the people of Shechem for
the rape of their sister, two sons of Jacob kill every man in the city,
rescue their sister and then plunder the city of its riches, including items of
idolatry. Jacob demands of his sons, “Discard the alien gods that are in your
midst… And they gave Jacob all the deities of the nations that were in
their possession and the earrings that were in their ears, and Jacob buried
them.…” Rabbi Norman Lamm describes this as a cathartic and
important episode worthy of replicating in our own lives. Imagine we too stand
before a huge pit and are asked to throw in our idols. Would you even recognize
them? Look at your life and examine what is not Jewish in it, what you have
picked up from foreign cultures and ideologies and what is disruptive as
regards your service to G-d and thus a priori to
your better self. Your artwork, your vanity, your technology, your
wardrobe, your food, your sexual behavior, your conversations, your compulsion
control, your gym, your habits and more, where do they all stand in
relationship to the G-d that mandated, “You shall have no other gods
before Me”? Would you be like Jacob’s sons and be able to cast off
the “idols” that feign favor and friendship but slaughter like a foe. Do
you worship foreign gods to fit into a society only to discover through
anti-Semitism that you were not meant to fit in. "Be holy to Me…. I will thus make
you separated for Me, to be mine from amongst the nations." (Lev. 20:26)
Truly a case of eyes wide shut as
30 years later I notice what was before me all this time. I couldn’t help but
think of Abraham, the father of monotheism who smashed all the idols in his
father’s shop. It was my turn now. Friends, countrymen, lend me your
ears. I come to bury idols, not to praise
them: What are the devils that are serving as legs in your life and where
are they leading you? All that surrounds us has an impact on our souls. When we
muffle G-d, the source of life, with the idols of our times, how can anything
in our life have clarity or blessing? Our task is to identify the idols in our
life and destroy them. Don’t give them a leg to stand on!
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