Radical Torah

This week’s Torah portion opens with what the rabbis considered a very cryptic term: “ekev”, which most agree is intended to denote the idea of consequence. “Ekev” is the beginning of an “if…then” statement. If we will listen to all God’s laws to keep and do them, then God will keep for us the covenant and the kindness which he promised to our forefathers, the first line of the parsha informs us. This formulation seems pretty straightforward. God seems to be trying to impress upon us that His Providence is contingent upon our actions. But what does that mean, exactly?

Another string that weaves through the parsha is the continuing theme of idol worship. God warns Israel, a desert people on the cusp of nationhood, that upon entering the Land they may likely be ensnared by the faulty but attractive religious posture of the Canaanites. What is so attractive about idol worship? I think the simplest answer is, well, simplicity. Idolatry is an intellectually and theologically undemanding practice; it requires only the most meager ability to think in the abstract and does not push for spiritual growth. The “ekev” of idolatry is a sharp proportionality: if we do this, sacrifice that, perform each cultic ritual correctly, we are guaranteed results. It is this magical thinking – emotionally appealing but religiously insipid – that is so dangerous to the Torah’s worldview, that God perpetually warns against. But isn’t it also the central idea that this week’s Torah portion pivots around – the idea of “ekev”?

What constitutes idolatry? Are idols only things that are made of stone or silver, or can idols also be ideas, worldviews and theologies?

In contemplating these questions I can hardly help but think of a program I ran a few weeks ago with the kids I teach in the city’s Modern Orthodox summer camp. After explaining to them the Torah’s view that people were created “betzelem elokim”, in God’s image, I asked them to draw what they think of when they hear those words. After a moment Ariella, a bright third-grader, presented me with a drawing entitled “Half-Hashem, Half-Me”. The picture showed a figure which was half-male (boasting a long beard, a boy’s piercing, a men’s shoe) and half-female (long wavy hair, a dangling earring, and a stilleto heel). This viscerally jarring androgynous image of God struck me even more than the conversations that followed: “So where does God live?” “In the sky – like Mary Poppins!” Or even this first grade exchange: “But how can we draw it? We don’t even know if Hashem (God) is a boy or a girl!” “Hashem is a boy!”

Extreme anthropomorphism, I think, is one kind of ideological idolatry. It reduces God to a person with special powers, like Mary Poppins. Specifically male imagery adds insult to injury, reading women out of all godly experience and limiting God even further by assigning not only ontological but sexual boundaries as well. However, I think that there are other forms of idolatry rampant in our (Jewish religious) society, even more hidden and potent, chief among them the idolatry of “ekev”.

The famous second paragraph of the Shema appears, too, in our parsha, reiterating the notion that if we listen to God’s commandments, then God will reward us by taking care of us materially. How is this seemingly direct proportion different from the magical thinking espoused by idol-worshipping societies? I believe the answer is that most of the time, for most of us, it is not. The classic Jewish view of Providence is still very much a literal, simplistic affair which I feel often teeters dangerously close to idolatry. God’s railing against such practices in this parsha behooves us to develop a more sophisticated view of reward and punishment, to finetune our interpretation of such tricky passages as this second paragraph of Shema.

The parsha’s warning against idolatrous practices can (and should) be read as a criticism not only of the cultic or pagan rituals of long ago but of certain aspects of Jewish society and theology that are still alive and kicking today. We have to be careful both in the way we image the Divine and in the way we imagine God’s relationship to us. What is to replace current problematic understandings and how the switch should take place is open to debate, but Parshat Ekev serves to remind us that unless we’re careful, we run the risk of turning ideology into idolatry.