Ki Tissa
Exodus 30:11-34:35
I Kings 18:1-39
I’ve been thinking a lot about idolatry lately. I don’t mean the egregious kind, like that described in our parashah, in which people literally worship the work of their own hands, like a molten calf.
I don’t even mean the subtler kinds of questions: What is of ultimate value in your life? What do you actually treat as most precious? Surely, such questions can invite rich reflection. Ask yourself, for example, what someone following you around during the course of each day would see as your goal for the day: Is it to get a lot done? To avoid pain or conflict? To gain the approval of others? Just to keep your head above water? Or do you see each day as an opportunity to use your gifts to help others, to serve life, to be a partner in the ongoing healing of the world?
More intimately, I find myself thinking about the silent, internal acts of worship we perform throughout our waking hours, as we make decisions – whether conscious or not – about what to do with our thoughts. Ask yourself this question: What actually occupies most of your attention during the course of each day? Which thoughts do you tend to cling to, and which do you allow to slip out of view?
I found a remarkable contemporary commentary on idolatry in a favorite book, “How Long Till My Soul Gets it Right?” (Robert M. Alter with Jane Alter).
“Our true spiritual nature is a worshipful nature. Worship is its essential nature and its heart’s desire. There is an altar in the heart, and we must place something on it as our object of worship because until that altar in our heart is occupied, our worshipful nature has nothing to worship and we cannot rest. There are lots of things we can place on the altar of the heart for our worship. … Whatever we call it, we must place it on the altar of our heart and spend the rest of our days worshiping it through our thoughts, words, and actions because if we don’t, if that altar stays empty, an addiction will eventually land on it. Then the worshipful energy of our spiritual nature will flow to the addiction instead of to the Spirit.” (p. 138)
I return to this powerful passage again and again, needing to hear its stark and sacred claim that our heart’s deepest desire is to serve something larger than ourselves. And I need to be reminded repeatedly that the heart will not tolerate an empty altar. If we are not vigilant, what lands there is quite likely to be a piece of psychological baggage or a distorted value of our culture like approval or material comfort, or outright addiction.
Back in the Torah’s grand account of the Golden Calf, a single word brings us a profound teaching about spiritual life. After the people had created and begun to worship the calf, God said to Moses, “Hurry down, for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted basely. They have been quick to turn aside (saru maher) from the way that I have commanded of them …” (Exodus 32:7-8)
The verb “to turn aside” (saru) immediately reminds us of the second paragraph of the Sh’ma, where the same verb appears: “Be vigilant lest your heart be tempted and you turn aside to worship other gods and to bow to them.” (Deuteronomy 11:16) The Ba’al Shem Tov is said to have noted the juxtaposition of the two Hebrew words “vesartem va’avad’tem/you will turn aside and you will worship,” without any intervening word. In this turn of phrase, the Torah wants to teach us that it only takes a moment for the mind to wander away from the wholesome, the holy and the true. As soon as we relax our commitment to mindfulness, our attention will roam off to superficial, ephemeral or downright base concerns, as the mind will do. It takes conscious choice, or perhaps — a sense of being summoned from beyond ourselves, to bring our thoughts back again and again to our true objects of devotion.
Remember, something will occupy our thoughts, or fall on our heart’s altar, demanding our attention. Do we want that decision made by inner demons or by societal conditioning? We must make this choice ourselves. Anything less is the path to idolatry.
Rabbi Amy Eilberg is a spiritual director in private practice.