PROHIBITING IDOLATRY; CREATING FREEDOM
INTRODUCTION TO PARASHAT HASHAVUA
PARASHAT YITRO
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In memory
of Yakov Yehuda ben Pinchas Wallach
and Miriam Wallach bat Tzvi
Donner
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PROHIBITING IDOLATRY; CREATING FREEDOM
By
Rabbi Yaakov Beasley
A.
INTRODUCTION – GIVING THE TORAH
Our parasha begins
with the seemingly insignificant visit of Moshe’s father-in-law, Yitro, to the
camp of Bnei Yisrael and thereafter quickly gains momentum with the
arrival of Bnei Yisrael at the foot of Har Sinai in the beginning of the
third month, Sivan. With the sense
of the approaching historical event palpable in the air, the people receive
their charge to become a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” They begin their final preparations to
ready themselves to hear Hashem’s words directly, without
intermediaries. At the sound of the
shofar, those words begin:
2 I am Hashem your God, who brought
you out of the
3 You shall not make for yourself a graven image, nor
any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, that is in the
earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
4 You shall not bow down unto them, nor serve them;
for I, Hashem your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of those that
hate Me.
5 And showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of
those that love Me and keep My commandments.
The Ten Commandment begin
with the declaration, “I am Hashem your God,” which is followed immediately with
the prohibition against idolatry.
Living in a time that colors our understanding of idol worship as a
primitive form of service, embodied by the offering of sacrifices and
prostration to stone carvings, we tend to dismiss the relevance of the second
commandment in today’s day and age. This week, we will explore the parameters of
this prohibition, as discussed by the medieval and modern commentators, to see
what lessons we moderns can derive from it.
B. THE
NATURE OF THE PROHIBITION
What precisely is the
prohibition in the second commandment (or “dibra”)? According to Maimonides, the prohibition
encompasses even entertaining idolatrous thoughts (Hilkhot Yesodei
Ha-Torah, Ch. 1). The Sefer
Ha-Chinukh also maintains that the issue addressed in this commandment is
one involving thought: “‘You shall
have no other gods’ forbids us to believe in any other god beside
Hashem.” According to these
opinions, the first two commandments mirror one another; the commandment to
believe in Hashem is parallel to the commandment prohibiting belief in
idolatry.
In contrast, Rashi quotes the
Mekhilta, which states that the prohibition involves holding idols in
your possession, even those made by others: “The Torah states, ‘Do not make for
yourself any carved idol or likeness’ (v. 4). This forbids the fashioning of new
ones. How do we know that one may
not hold an existing one in his possession? This is deduced from, ‘You shall have no
other gods besides Me’ (v. 3).”
Many of the medieval
commentators and halakhic decisors share the Mekhilta’s approach, including the
Behag and the Sefer Mitzvot Katan. The famed commentator on the Mishna,
Rabbi Ovadiya Barternura, suggests that the second dibra follows a pattern of
ascending severity. First, we read
that “You shall have no other gods (v. 3), forbidding us to keep existing idols
in our possession, which involves no action on our part. Then we read, “Do not make for
yourselves any carve idol” (v. 4), which involves a physical act, but which
still does not incur the death penalty.
Next, we come to “Do not bow down to them” (v. 5), which incurs the death
penalty even though bowing down does not necessarily signify full-fledged idol
worship. Finally, it states, “Do
not worship them” (ibid.), the level of full-fledged idol worship.
The Ramban, however, found
this understanding difficult. After
acknowledging that Rashi’s interpretation is that of the Mekhilta, he uses the
Bartenura’s structure as the basis for rejecting that
approach:
But why would [the Torah]
place maintaining idols in one’s possession, which is a mere negative
commandment, before prostration and worship, which both involve excision and
execution by the court? In my
opinion, the Halakha is not in accordance with this baraita, for it was
taught in accordance with the opinion of an individual sage [but opposes the
majority view] …
The more sound explanation,
according to the plain and simple understanding of the phrase, is that it is
related to the expression, “Then Hashem will be a God to me”… saying that
we may not have besides Hashem other gods… is a prohibition stipulating
that one should not believe in the divinity of any one of the [other] beings or
accept it upon himself as a deity, and he should not say to it, “You are my
god”… (Commentary to 20:3)
C. THE
AKEIDAT YITZCHAK AND FREEDOM
Perhaps the most fascinating
approach towards the prohibition against idolatry is that of Rabbi Yitzchak
Arama, a contemporary of Don Yitzchak Abrabanel. In his commentary, the Akeidat
Yitchzak, he expands the boundaries of the prohibition regarding “Do not
have any other gods” from the technical issues of construction and worship of
idols to the recognition of any other power or force in the world as
Divine. Not content to simply
detail the prohibition’s negative dimensions, the Akeidat Yitzchak
describes both the active and present effects of idolatry, but also its positive
ramifications:
Idolatry, as it exists today,
remains quite strong. There are
many people who invest all of their thoughts and efforts into achieving wealth
and success. These are their mighty
gods, and upon them they do rely. As for Hashem’s glory, they deny
that He exists and they abandon his Torah to a lonely corner. This is the very essence of
idolatry: “If I have made gold my
hope, or have called fine gold my shelter; if I rejoiced because my wealth was
great and because my hand has gotten much… this too is a criminal offense,
betraying Hashem above” (Iyov
31:24-28).
Accordingly, the prohibition
against idolatry does not correspond to a specific form of worship, but to a
person’s acknowledgement of any physical entity as having mastery over the world
and his reliance on it in place of Hashem. Sorrowfully describing the
state of Jewry in his day, the Akeidat Yitzchak adds, “We hopelessly
yearn for wealth, and can never be satisfied. We violate, therefore, ‘Do not make a
statue of anything associated with Me.
Do not make silver or gold gods for yourselves’” (Shemot
20:20).
By removing the focus from
the specific form that idolatry assumes and placing it upon the act of ascribing
any powers upon anything beyond Hashem, the Akeidat Yitzchak gives
the prohibition a much broader meaning, relevant to every generation. However, the Akeidat Yitzchak
added one more aspect to the prohibition – its positive
ramifications:
Regarding the intention of
the second commandment, I say that even though this commandment is a warning and
prohibition against ascribing Divinity to any other beings, it also contains
within it a tremendously positive message and total freedom – for once
Hashem is our sole God, close to us, and His power far outweighs all
others, what need do we have of serving others?… The Torah states that, “The
tablets were the work of Hashem, and the writing was Hashem’s
writing, engraved [CHA-RUT] upon the tablets” (Shemot 32:16). On this, Chazal comment, “Read
not engraved [CHA-RUT], but rather read freedom [CHEIRUT]: freedom from death, from monarchs, from
suffering.”
When a person behaves with
true faith, he does not acknowledge any other mastery over the world aside from
Hashem. The prohibition
against idolatry serves to liberate him, not bind him.
We conclude this idea with a
paraphrase of an anecdote from Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s On
Repentance:
A psychiatrist once
approached me and tried to advance his belief that Judaism was a crippling force
in the world. Having studied all
the major pathologies in the world, he argue that they all stemmed from
excessive fear. And here was the
Torah, commanding us to fear the Lord… I rejected his claim dismissively, for it
was clear that he did not understand with true fear of God meant. For when a person truly fears
Hashem, he has no other worries or concerns that bind him. It is truly the most liberating feeling
known to man…