Parashat Re’eh and the most sophisticated form of idolatry.

When we hear the word idolatry, most of us picture an ancient world of carved statues, pagan temples, and forgotten rituals. It belongs, we assume, to the same distant universe as chariots, desert wanderings, and long-extinct civilizations. We read the Torah’s warnings against Baal and Asherah as fascinating history rather than a living moral challenge, convinced that idolatry is one biblical commandment that has little to say to people living in the twenty-first century. That confidence, however, may be our greatest mistake. Idolatry has never disappeared; it has simply changed its form. Today, we rarely bow before statues, but we still bow before money, power, success, ideology, status, and even our own certainty. Every generation creates its own golden calves. The only thing that changes is what they are made of.

The Bible’s golden calves have given way to modern ones. Today we rarely bow before statues, but we willingly bow before other masters. We sacrifice our health, our families, and sometimes even our integrity on the altar of success. We measure our worth by careers, followers, profits, or public approval. We become servants of productivity, prisoners of our calendars, worshippers of endless growth, convinced that if only we earn a little more, achieve a little more, or win one more argument, we will finally find peace.

The object has changed. The impulse has not. Perhaps the simplest definition of idolatry is this: whenever something finite occupies the place that belongs only to the Infinite. Money is not evil, but money becomes an idol when profit matters more than people.........

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