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Idol Worship and the Trouble with ‘Normal’
A 3,500-year-old Canaanite clay tablet discovered by a six-year-old Israeli boy. Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority.
JNS.org – Are you into the TV show “American Idols?” Do you enjoy watching all that talent on television? What about other “idols?”
In this week’s Torah reading, Re’eh, Moses warns the Jewish people not to follow the pagan ways of the Canaanite nations when they inherit the Land of Israel. There is to be zero tolerance for idolatry and paganism. Those nations practiced the most outrageous forms of idolatry, including child sacrifice and other depravities. The great Torah scholar Rashi quotes Rabbi Akiva as saying he’d witnessed a pagan man tie up his own father and then unleash a pack of wild dogs who killed the father. Such was the norm in that ancient pagan society. The Israelites were taught repeatedly not to learn from them in any way.
The Torah offers three examples of how people may be swayed and seduced into idolatry.
The first is by listening to a false prophet. Such a charismatic individual may lure people away from Jewish values, charming them and tempting them to embrace an idolatrous path.
The second is when a family member or friend incites, instigates or persuades others to practice idolatry.
The third example is when an entire city is overcome by temptation and swept up into practicing idolatry. This is called a “wayward city,” when a whole town has gone astray and engages in paganism.
The whole thing sounds rather ancient and archaic. People today are not into idolatry. I don’t know of anyone who is tempted to go out and buy a statue and get on his or her knees to bow down to it. But there are still lots of “idols” out there that we may be tempted to worship.
For instance, even today we have false prophets—powerful and charismatic spiritual leaders who command the obedience of many followers. We’ve even read or heard about the tragic outcomes of some of these strange cults where a magnetic personality led his people to disaster or mass suicide.
We’ve seen family members and the wrong kind of friends mislead individuals and drag them down to the depths of despair and desperation.
And today we’ve even seen entire communities, cities, and sometimes even whole countries, being swept up in a strange ideology that is different and dangerous.
So, I was wondering, of these three examples, which do you think is the hardest to resist?
For people who lack self-esteem and are easily influenced by others, perhaps the first two situations may be the most difficult to resist. Yet I imagine that for most of us, it is the third scenario, where an entire city is caught up in paganism, that may be the most difficult of all to resist.
Why?
Because it’s one thing to resist a powerful, charismatic individual or a few friends who want to tempt you into doing something you know is wrong, but to reject what your whole town is doing takes unusual strength of character.
When everyone else is doing something, most people just follow the herd. If everyone else says “Yes,” who am I to say “No?” I don’t want to be different. People don’t enjoy standing out in a crowd and being looked at as funny or peculiar. Who wants to stick out like a sore thumb? No one!
A person may think, “Well, if everyone else is bowing down to those idols it must be OK. So, why shouldn’t I?”
What about worshipping idols of stage and screen? Are you a “Swifty?” Who do you “follow?” Today, we are blessed with a host of self-appointed celebrities who have absolutely nothing of significance to offer other than an attractive face. And yet they have millions of followers!
To me, the biggest “idolatry” of all is to follow the norm.
What is the “norm?”
Is getting divorced “normal?” If so many others are doing it, then why shouldn’t I? Why should I work at my marriage? It’s too hard. I’ll just get divorced. After all, it’s “normal.”
If the standard business practice in my industry is to bribe your way to get that big order, then why shouldn’t I do it as well?
And if the norm in my school is to cheat on exams, then why shouldn’t I? Everyone else is.
And if the norm in my community is that Shabbat ends on Friday night and Saturday is for golf or the hairdresser, then why must I be a religious fanatic?
Or if the norm in my community is to keep a kosher home but to eat out at non-kosher restaurants, then who am I to be “holier than thou?”
So the story of the wayward city gone astray reminds us that the “norm” is not necessarily “normal.” In fact, normal may just be another word for average or mediocre. Why be normal? Swim upstream, go against the current and be a mensch. Celebrate your individuality! Why be average? Be exceptional! Be special!
When ungodly, immoral or any other unwise behavior is “normalized,” then we mustn’t be normal. We must stand out with pride and principle. Who knows? Others may follow our lead.
The post Idol Worship and the Trouble with ‘Normal’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Finds Terror Tunnel Next to Hospital in Samaria
Israeli troops during counterterrorism activity in Tulkarem, northwestern Samaria, September 2024. Photo: IDF.
JNS.org – Israeli forces discovered a tunnel during a counterterror operation in the Tulkarem camp in the West Bank, the IDF said on Friday.
According to the Israeli military, the underground complex was located adjacent to a hospital in the camp, situated north of the city of the same name, and contained an entrance but no exit, as it was still under construction.
“The forces are continuing to investigate the complex and will dismantle it,” the IDF added.
While Hamas built a vast terror tunnel network in the Gaza Strip over many years that the Israeli army has been working to dismantle since war started on Oct. 7, these types of tunnels are rare in the West Bank, where the IDF regularly operates to locate and destroy terrorist infrastructure.
The tunnel was found as the IDF restarted its major operation in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley on Sept. 10, which has been dubbed “Summer Camps” and was initially launched on Aug. 28.
Since the operation resumed, the IDF has killed more than 10 armed terrorists in ground and aerial attacks, including four in the areas of Tulkarem and Nur Shams, the army said. Three of the latter terrorists were killed in an aerial strike on Sept. 11, and the fourth in close-quarters combat.
One of the three killed in the aerial strike was named by the IDF as Muhammad Abu Ataya. He was suspected of killing Master Sgt. (res.) Maxim Rizkov, 30, from Beersheva, of the Israel Border Police’s Yamas undercover unit, on Oct. 18, 2023.
In addition, the IDF said that it hit another 15 terrorists during the operation, without specifying whether they were wounded or killed or how they were attacked.
During a 48-hour counterterrorism operation in the areas of Tubas, Tamun and Far’ar, Israeli forces killed a terrorist throwing explosive devices during exchanges of fire. The forces also located a vehicle rigged with explosives. Inside, they found explosive devices and a long-range detonation system that was dismantled.
In all the areas of activity, Israeli forces seized large amounts of weapons, including sniper rifles, two M-16s, handguns and additional weaponry.
In Tulkarem, forces located and dismantled four bomb manufacturing laboratories and four operational communications centers equipped with cameras. Additionally, a machine used to manufacture weapons, within which weapon parts were found, and many IEDs in the area were dismantled.
Furthermore, five armed terrorists were killed by an aircraft in Tubas.
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France: Antisemitic Tag at Memorial for Murdered Jewish Women
A postcard campaign calling for justice for Sarah Halimi addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron. Photo: courtesy of Israelite Consistoire of Haut-Rhin
JNS.org – A memorial garden in Nogent-sur-Marne, France, dedicated to two victims of gruesome antisemitic murders in Paris in 2017 and 2018, respectively, was defaced with a swastika.
The city mayor, Jacques Martin, strongly condemned the act, describing it as “vandalism” and stating that “hatred has no place in Nogent.”
The municipality quickly removed the antisemitic tag and made available to investigators CCTV recordings of the area.
The garden, inaugurated in November 2022, is of particular importance to the community.
Sarah Halimi, born in Nogent-sur-Marne in November 1951, spent some 30 years of her life there as a nursery director before her tragic murder in Paris.
The mayor stressed that, until now, Nogent-sur-Marne had been spared by the upsurge in antisemitism seen nationwide in recent months.
He said he is determined not to let such behavior take root in his city, declaring that ignorance and hatred would not be tolerated. He affirmed the town’s determination to preserve the memory of Sarah Halimi and Mireille Knoll, refusing to see them “murdered a second time.”
In April 2021, the French Supreme Court ruled that Halimi’s murderer was criminally irresponsible. Twenty-five thousand people gathered across France on April 25, 2021, at the call of citizens’ groups and representatives of the Jewish community, to protest the lack of a trial following the murder.
Halimi, 65, was beaten to death in her Paris apartment before being defenestrated by her 27-year-old neighbor, to cries of “Allah Akbar” (“God is the greatest” in Arabic).
Mireille Knoll, who had fled Paris in 1942 to escape the Vel d’Hiv roundup, was stabbed 11 times and her body burned.
Her two killers were convicted in 2021—one was acquitted of murder but sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for theft, and the other was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 22-year security period for murder, with the aggravating circumstance that the victim belonged to the Jewish community.
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Man Who Set Himself Afire in Boston Reportedly Was Anti-Israel Protester
Members of UMass Boston’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine surround, shove and hurl epithets at CAMERA researcher Dexter Van Zile outside the ADL office in the city. June 24, 2021. Source: X
JNS.org – A man set himself ablaze in downtown Boston, not far from the Boylston Street entrance to the Public Garden shortly after 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
It wasn’t clear what the man’s motives were, but the incident occurred at 19 Columbus Avenue, according to a report that the Boston Police Department provided to JNS. That address is in the vicinity of the Consulate General of Israel to New England.
The man was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital with “severe burn wounds,” per the police report. The report stated that the incident wasn’t a suspected hate crime.
Video that circulated on social media purported to be from the man. In the video, a man who identified himself as Matt Nelson said that he would engage in “an extreme act of protest,” and that “we are all culpable in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
The man also spoke in the video of everyone being “slaves to capitalism and the military industrial complex,” and said that Washington must stop supporting the Jewish state and must back the (proposed) International Criminal Court indictment against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Free Palestine,” the man in the video added. (JNS sought comment from the Israeli consulate.)
A Boston Globe staffer with the same name as the man in the video posted that some had mistaken him for the man in the video.
The post Man Who Set Himself Afire in Boston Reportedly Was Anti-Israel Protester first appeared on Algemeiner.com.