A Zen master visiting New York City goes up to a hot dog vendor and says, "Make me one with everything."
The hot dog vendor fixes a hot dog and hands it to the Zen master, who pays with a $20 bill.
The vendor puts the bill in the cash box and closes it.
"After five minutes of silence, the Zen master asks: Excuse me, but where’s my change?"
The vendor responds, "Change must come from within."
This Shabbat in the portion of Reeh does the Torah warn the Jewish people against idolatry. Each time, the Torah follows up with a strange, identical term: You are in danger of following alien gods and idols, ones that you never heard of and never knew.
And then again: which you have never known—neither you nor your forefathers."
And then a third time: “Let us go and worship other gods, which you have never known."
We can notice an identical term used in all three descriptions: The Torah uses the expression, “to pursue other gods which you have not known."
Why does the Torah keep on emphasizing this? What’s the difference if you knew the alien gods before or not? Why was it not enough to simply state, “Let us go and worship other gods,” without the addition “which you have never known"?
One answer to this was presented by Chatam Sofer
Rabbi Moshe Sofer explains that with these seemingly superfluous words the Torah is conveying to us how an intelligent nation like Israel can sometimes be captivated by false gods. How can a wise and brilliant nation fall prey to the allure of counterfeit deities, hollow ideologies, foolish and empty ideas, treating them like gods, when at the end they prove to be worthless?
The prophet Jeremiah, observing the moral decline of ancient Israel, was astounded by this phenomenon.
Has a nation ever exchanged a real G-d for those who are not gods? Yet My nation exchanged their glory for the futile!
In each generation, some of our best and finest have been consumed by idols and ideologies of all types, venerating, idolizing and worshiping them, to a point of blind faith. Indeed, in each milieu, as a new movement arises with the promise to heal the world, you can count on a few Jews, somewhere in the leadership of the movement.
One of the most astounding and saddest examples were the dark Stalinist era in The Soviet Union.
Karl Marx, the grandson of two Orthodox rabbis (and son of parents who converted to Christianity) was the intellectual father of Socialism. Leon Trotsky, born Leibel Bronstein may be regarded as the intellectual father of Russian, later Soviet, Communism. In 1920, when Trotsky was head of the Red Army, Moscow's chief rabbi, Rabbi Jacob Mazeh, asked him to use the army to protect the Jews from pogromist attacks. Trotsky is reported to have responded, "Why do you come to me? I am not a Jew." To which Rabbi Mazeh answered: "That's the tragedy. It's the Trotskys who make revolutions, and it's the Bronsteins who pay the price." (Ultimately, in August 1940, living in Mexico, Stalin had him axed to death.)
Another Jew, Genrikh Yagoda, was the founder and commander of the NKVD Secret Police, the organization in charge of all the murders in Russia. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of millions. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was executed and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the "bloodthirsty dwarf."
But even outside of the Soviet security apparatus, millions of Jews—and leftists intellectuals— were staunch ideological supporters of the Communist ideals and parties. How could this happen?
In the words of Jeremiah: “They have forsaken Me, the spring of living waters, to dig for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that do not hold the water!...” Why?
This is a complicated question. The Chatam Sofer provides one perspective and It is indicated in the above Torah verse. “If your brother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your embrace, or your friend, who is as your own soul saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods, which you have not known, neither you, nor your forefathers.’"
The appeal and glitter of the alien gods is their sense of novelty. We look for something new, fresh, original and innovative. These new gods we never knew; they thus provide us with the high that comes from being part of a revolution.
Fishermen know that the best time to catch scores of fish is during or after a heavy rain, for then the fish rise to the top surfaces of the river. Why is it so?
The answer, says the Midrash, is that they are searching for freshwater… The rain brings the much needed extra oxygen and also cools the water. This turns on the fish and they swim to the top.
We, too, like the fish, are yearning for freshwater. We are bored and tired of SOS—same old spaghetti. When we, especially the young and idealistic among us, hear of a new ideology, a new vision for the planet, we are enamored and often transported on the wings of novelty and creativity. Mind you, the ideas pontificated can be nonsense, or partly nonsense, but the main thing is that it comes with the energy and vitality of freshness. It is something, in the words of the Torah, “we never heard of before.” That is the attraction!
That, says the Torah, is the power of all idolatry. It’s the discovery of alien gods that your father never heard of, that you never grew up with. Ah! I get to go against my father and grandfather? That’s awesome! Now I can count for something. In a few years, you might discover that these revolutions produced nothing but confusion at its best or destruction at its worst. But for now, it is exciting. If it is new, it must be awesome.
In recent years, scientific studies have confirmed the power of the new. People often like new things just because they are new.
That’s why people go with a new iPhone every few years, despite that nobody actually ever seems to demand or express a real need for the new features on the latest phones.
But at times, we can get duped by the thrill of the new. You are married for 18 years, and you meet a new person—and the thrill of the moment, or the few months, makes you shut down your sober brain, ready to cast away what you invested your life in and what ultimately matters to you more than anything.
This, says the Torah, is the deepest attraction of all forms of fake gods: the glitz, the dazzling effects of the new thrill, that we never saw or heard of.
This has been one of the saddest mistakes of our people. G-d, the Creator of the world, gave us a blueprint for living, a manual for conduct. The Torah and the Mitzvot provide us with the noblest lifestyle, ideals.
In the words of the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, Torah and mitzvot encompass a human person from the instant of emergence from his mother's womb until his final moment comes. They place him in a space filled with light, providing him or her with a healthy way of thinking, with acquisition of wonderful moral virtues, and good, kind behavior, not only in relation to Gād but also in relation to his fellow-man. For whoever lives his life according to Torah and the instructions of our sages live a life of deep joy and satisfaction, materially and spiritually.
A student once delivered his doctorate thesis to the professor. The professor failed him, writing on top: This thesis good and original.
The student was perplexed. He asked the professor, if it was good and original, why did he fail?
His teacher responded: There was one problem. The part that was good was not original; the part that was original was not good!...
What is the solution to all of this?
For this the Chatam Sofer points out a brilliant nuance in the opening verses of this week’s portion.
26 Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.
27 The blessing, that you will heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today;
Our souls are creative. Just as the organism of the body can never rely on old oxygen, or on the old blood circulation, the organism of the soul can’t rely on old inspiration and old spirituality to sustain it. It must remain fresh, new, active and vigorous. If our Torah is old, we die inside, and we search for adventure and excitement. Torah is infinite, and each day anew I need to dig deeper into my soul, into my mind, and discover a new insight, new depth, new challenges, new goals, new horizons. The spiritual life is like a bicycle. If you stop peddling, you fall.
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Tom Peacock wrote...