Genesis Idolatry Happens
Parashat Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1-17:27)
God said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
And so begins Parashat Lech Lecha and the journey of Abram, who will become Abraham, forefather of the Jewish people. A few verses later Abram reaches Canaan, which God promises to his offspring. This early passage from the house of his father to the land of Canaan echoes and resolves the concluding verses of the previous parashah: “Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan; but when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah came to 205 years; and Terah died in Haran” (11:31-32).
Tradition teaches that Abram’s rejection of idolatry distinguishes him from his father. As we read in Breshit Rabbah: “[Abram] arose, took a club in his hand, shattered all the idols, and placed the club in the hand of the largest among them. When his father came, he said to him: ‘Who did this to them?’ [Abram] said to him: “…This big idol, who was standing among them, got up and took the club and shattered them.’ [Teraḥ] said to him: ‘What, are you mocking me? Are they sentient at all?’ [Abram] said to him: ‘Do your ears not hear what your mouth is saying?’” (38:13).
Terah sets out for Canaan, the same place Abram will migrate a generation later, but stops short and settles in Haran; his dialogue in the midrash recognizes to some extent the emptiness of idolatry, yet he is unable to reject and depart from it as his son does. In both cases, Terah demonstrates some amount of potential to take the journey assigned to Abram in this week’s parasha. If we read the texts together as establishing the characters’ similarity, rather than divergence, a new set of questions emerges about how to depart from idolatry.
Just like both men can set out from the land of their fathers, but only one can make it to Canaan, Terah can see on some level that the idol is false, but Abram can smash it. Perhaps the message is not that Terah and other worshippers are inherently corrupt, nor is Abram uniquely righteous. The midrash guides us toward something more subtle: Idolatry happens. It can happen without our even knowing it, unremarkable and uncomplicated, in its way, to participate in. Each one of us is susceptible, and once we acknowledge it, it is upon each of us to distance ourselves from it.
“An idol purports to be the embodiment of that which it represents,” writes historian of religion Jaroslav Pelikan, “but it directs us to itself rather than beyond itself.” Pelikan was writing about how some aspects of a tradition can persist in meaning across generations while others become inert, but his ideas have a broader application. Idolatry is caring more that your team won the world series than that, by cheating to do so, they violated what is sacred about sports. Idolatry is buying a painting for its speculative value even though it sparks no emotion within you. Idolatry is a country club enshrining a code of conduct or civility while excluding people on the basis of race.
Idolatry is not uncommon. A thing can, by every outward experience and perception, seem good and righteous, and still persist as an idol because it is concerned chiefly with the perpetuation of its own status. It can say all the right things and yet stand for none of them. I think the authors of Genesis Rabbah believed this as well. Idolatry can attach itself to practically anything we care about if we are not careful in our behavior toward it. The older I get, the more I believe that this is the most important, least heralded lesson that Judaism has to offer this era in both American and Jewish history. We live in a world full of apparently profound signifiers that insist on nothing more than themselves, in a moment when some of our greatest symbols are co-opted as vehicles for narcissism, denial, and dehumanization.
Departing from idolatry is something we must do on a constant basis, and it is the areas of life we feel and experience most deeply where we must be most vigilant. To paraphrase Pelikan, we are meant “to go beyond them –– through them, but beyond.”
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