Smashing Idols
This year Sh’ma is inaugurating a monthly column in which authors from across the Jewish spectrum address the question: What are the idols that you had to/still have to smash in order to move on in your religious/Jewish life? I introduced the column and wrote the initial essay here.
Read it and weigh in.
It’s a terrific introductory essay. The text from Genesis Rabba is one of my favorites, and I like the way you link it with the Hasidic mode of reading. Yasher koach!
Well done, Aryeh. Yes, traditional Conservative Judaism is a hard sell over here as well. If you find it though, it is worth the effort. I am not entirely opposed to the Orthodox services though.
Aryeh Cohen, your excellent attempt to stir the pot kind of flopped in the comments. Never fear, Mika’s here!
Social justice is a religion. It has basic tenets of faith. It has its idols. It has its altars. It has its prophets. It has priests and a lay constituency. It has cannon texts. It has its dogma, code of ethics and a “morality police” to enforce compliance. It requires a leap of faith to believe, as so much social justice, resonating off so many beating chests, has achieved so very little for so very few.
If you think it through, who are the real extremists of the modern age, the real fundamentalists? Is it the people praying quietly in their homes and shuls, living lives of doubt and spiritual self refinement? Or is it those who force their idolatrous dogma on to the public square, develop an entire political program to legislate their preferred morality and behavior, suppress and criminalize dissent and force a system of belief based on some arbitrary, utopian, impractical, unachievable ideals? They even charge a tax on unbelievers!
Social justice is an idol.
Now, where did I leave my mallot?