The Idolatry of Permanence

Like physicists in search of a unified field theory, the sages of old sought the Torah’s great unifying principle—that which encompasses and undergirds all of God’s teachings to the Jewish people. 

Rabbi Akiva proposed: “And you shall love your fellow man as yourself.”  (Leviticus 19:18)

Ben Azzai offered: “This is the book of the lineage of Adam.” (Genesis 5:1).

For both of these sages, the Torah’s unifying principle is love. For Rabbi Akiva, this is expressed explicitly in a divine commandment. For Ben Azzai, it is implied by the fact that we are all one human family, descendents of a shared ancestor, Adam. (Bereishit Rabbah 24:7).

Rabbi Ishmael, however, saw things differently. For him, the great principle of the Torah was the prohibition against idolatry. (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael 12:6)

There is something undeniably charming about Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai’s answers. That everything boils down to love is a pleasing idea. That said, it is a bit of a stretch. It’s not that the Torah is unconcerned with love. It isn’t. But it is hugely concerned with other matters as well—matters which, on the face of things, have no plausible connection to either Rabbi Akiva or Ben Azzai’s great principles. 

And so, Rabbi Ishmael’s great principle, despite its lack of pith or pathos, calls out to us for reexamination.

In Hebrew, idolatry is known as “avodah zarah” which means “strange worship.” One might also say, “estranged worship.” As with the charge of “estrangement of affection” in a divorce proceeding, the implication is that the idolator’s chief sin is comparable to the infidelity of a lover. 

In the words of scholar Moshe Halbertal, however, the Torah’s “prohibition against idolatry entails not only a ban on the worship of other gods but also a ban on certain ways of representing the right God,” i.e. with graven images.

Avodah zarah thus refers to two opposite sins. The first is the sin of taking a finite object and treating it as though it were the Infinite. The second is the sin of taking the Infinite and treating “it” as though it were finite.

Avodah zarah thus refers to two opposite sins. The first is the sin of taking a finite object and treating it as though it were the Infinite. The second is the sin of taking the Infinite and treating “it” as though it were finite.

Idolaters of the first variety are those who take the vain achievements of wealth, fame, and beauty—and make them into gods. 

Idolaters of the second variety take the infinite—God, religion, Torah—and make “things.” God becomes a star to be wished on or a weapon with which to bash others. Torah becomes a petty rule book. Religion becomes a social club. 

In the Torah, both idolatries are deeply connected to the practice of making images—hardened statues of stone or metal that are worshipped as deities, or else graven images that reduce God to god.

For the Torah, a polemic against statues and graven images is in truth a discourse about perception. To see the world rightly is to see that it is a living being. At every corner, it defies understanding and categorization. It is, in the words of mystic philosopher Martin Buber, an infinitely deep “Thou,” rather than an “it.” 

The world of idols is a world of illusion. In Hinduism, this concept is known as “maya.” Maya is the dazzling magic show that conceals the true, deeper nature of the universe. 

According to philosopher Alan Watts, the word “maya,” shares an etymology with the word “matter.” This is to say that the world of matter, of hardened forms, is in some way what we are talking about when we discuss “maya,” the world of illusion. 

This is not to say, as some religious teachers have it, that the material world is somehow less valuable or real than some imagined spiritual realm. The material world is deeply real. That said, we are deeply confused about its true nature. We like to imagine that the universe is a collection of discrete things—a space cluttered with junk. We imagine the world as a hardened place, when it is, in truth, ever changing—better represented by the flickering flame and the melting candle than the golden candelabra. 

“Maya,” then, is the delusion of permanence in a universe of impermanence. It is the delusion of essentialism in a universe of flux. Similarly, idolatry is the sin of taking this vast, shifting, electric, unnamable reality and casting it as a graven image.

In the book of Psalms, it is written of idols that “a mouth they have but they do not speak, eyes they have but they do not see. Ears…but they do not hear… hands… but they don’t not feel.” The Psalmist warns us, “those who make them” and “all who trust in them” will become “like them.” (115:5-8).

To worship a statue is thus to become a statue—to harden and be limited, to be insensate to the world in its fullness. This is the grave danger of the graven image.

To worship a statue is thus to become a statue—to harden and be limited, to be insensate to the world in its fullness. This is the grave danger of the graven image.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell famously said that what people are seeking is not the “meaning of life” but rather “an experience of being alive.” To the person who has become a statue, it is this experience that is lost.

Trapped by cosmic illusion—by maya and matter—our senses turn to stone. In this state, what use can Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai’s great principles be to us? What we need is Rabbi Ishmael to drag us from our statues and set fire to our idol trees. 

He is here to remind us that the Torah did not descend from heaven in order to inspire us with lovely words but rather to save us from spending our whole lives entranced by stone images as our eyes become dull.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.