Thoughts on parashat Ki Tisa
The central event of this weekly portion of the Torah is the golden calf incident:
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt—we do not know what has happened to him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” And all the people took off the gold rings that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. This he took from them and cast in a mold, and made it into a molten calf. And they exclaimed, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Ex 32:1-4)
In Hebrew the incident is known as het haeggel which means the Sin of the Calf. This sin caused a great wrath of God and He wanted to destroy the Israelites. He did not do so only through the intercession of Moses, whose rhetoric relied on God’s good name:
Let not the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that He delivered them, only to kill them off in the mountains and annihilate them from the face of the earth.’ Turn from Your blazing anger, and renounce the plan to punish Your people. (Ex 32:12)
God had mercy for the Israelites. But we know that what they did was a bad thing: all our scriptures tell us so. The rabbis saw this as a fateful historic event with very serious and long-term consequences. In fact, it could be considered the Jewish version of ‘original sin’, about which I wrote in my sermon a year ago.
But is idol worshiping really as bad as the Bible and the Rabbis tell us? How can these ideas be understood in contemporary times?
Let’s first reflect on what it means “to worship” something. To worship something means to show a great reverence and adoration for something. In other words, it means to put something above everything else or to put the value of something absolutely above the value of everything else. It is a crucial point because worshiping something has a direct impact on our individual value systems, both in theory and in practice. It has a profound impact on the way we see value in the things in the world, the way we value certain things and don’t value other things. That’s what idol worshiping means on the level of values.
Now, let’s ask what may be considered “contemporary idol worshiping.” Religious people, especially Christians, often point out material things and goods like cars, houses, electronic devices and gadgets… the list can be very long because it may basically contain any material thing that has great value for people. All of them can be put into one category: resources. How can we get resources? Typically, with money. Thus worshiping money is another example of idol worshiping and it is not exclusively a contemporary phenomenon. But in the example of money worshiping we already see how idol worshiping works: by worshiping it, or by worshiping things that we obtained with it, we significantly limit our life experience. By saying “It’s all about money” we limit, often unconsciously, the scope of things we can experience to those we can get with money. There are plenty of them but everyone knows that things like love, passion, happiness cannot be bought. Money and resources often help, sometimes crucially, but they are just means for our further life goals, on which achievement, wellbeing and happiness is dependent. People who believe that money is the key to everything often don’t value things like those belonging to the ‘higher’ realms of human existence, like spiritually, culture and art and often don’t pay enough attention to love, compassion, spiritual and moral development. However, the complete denial of value of “the things of this world”, typical for a very traditional, Christian ethos, is another mistake. I would call this phenomenon “an existential resentment”.
Other examples of idolatry often mentioned in this context are: power or position worshiping, career or prestige worshiping. This can make these ‘idol worshipers’ ruthlessly competitive and insensitive towards the positions of others. It is usually rationalized by simplistic beliefs like everyone has what they deserve or every man is the architect of his own fortune etc. And again, if we say that “everything is about power” (as some famous postmodern philosophers openly claimed) we again limit our attention, our efforts and our experiences to everything that is power- or position-related. In this way we overlook or literally throw in the trash basically everything that isn’t power-related – again, plenty of valuable things and experiences. If you really believe that everything in social relations is about power it is likely that all your social relationships will be about power. Is that a good thing for you? I don’t think so. Career worshiping can easily turn into narcissistic self-worship. Being an individual involved in that kind of cult we can miss a lot of great, personal life opportunities and experiences, like love, marriage, family and kids that constitute the core experiences of our human existence. All those experiences can wait for us for some time, but not infinitely. Typically, the same outcome is associated with worshiping of sex and life pleasures. There is also the cult of the individual in the political dimension and it is particularly dangerous. On this issue our history, especially of the 20th century, has thoroughly and painfully taught us.
Two more things are relevant to mention in the context of contemporary idol worshiping: technology and reason. First, technology. It has brought a lot of good to our world. Our world is now incomparably different from the one that existed, let’s say, 100 years ago. Technology has changed tremendously the way people do literally everything: communicate, engage in relationships, work, make money, travel. It’s unbelievably great and amazing. But again, saying that “everything is (only) about technology” is still limiting us and our experiences, as long as we still are alive human beings and not trans-human like technological beings. Technology brought a lot of good and blessings, it is extremely helpful in everything and raises the standard of all human life on the planet to a level never seen throughout the history, but it also, as we know, has brought a lot of challenges and dangers, with which we have to deal now. Thus, worshiping technology is an idol worshiping. Worshiping something that is potentially dangerous for us is not the best idea anyway.
Worshiping reason and its products: human knowledge, science, political ideology. Having knowledge and reasonable beliefs is helpful, having a good idea how to implement social change is also helpful and good. But the belief that some systemic change or a particular political system can solve all human problems is an idea equally fascinating as terrifying, given mankind’s historical experiences. All of these are products of human minds and none of them are 100% reliable. Political ideology is the least, science is the most, if based on thoroughly constructed methodology, but still, there is no methodology that would free science from error. As I mentioned in my drasha a few weeks ago, there always will be objectively bad, mistaken knowledge, bad science and bad religion. All these things are human products and they per se are of different quality. Worshiping something means also relying on something and putting hope in it. So now we easily understand why relying or putting faith and hope in something that is – even if only sometimes – unreliable is not the best idea. We generally don’t trust people who let us down. So we shouldn’t trust completely also things or human inventions that can let us down, let alone worship them.
Idolatry is inherently tied with reductionism, with the belief that nothing else besides our object of cult has a real value. This reductionism may be, and often is, temporary useful. But about the negative effects of these reductionisms we learn late, sometimes too late to make changes in our lives.
Shabbat shalom!
Menachem Mirski
