A THEORY ABOUT RELIGIOUS DISLOYALTY

Sidrah:  Leviticus 1:1-5:26

Haftarah: Isaiah 43:21-44:23

            We know how dear the Beit ha-Mikdash was to the Jewish people.  How, then, after little more than a century, would they fall into the kind of snare described in our Haftarah:  cutting down a tree, burning half the wood as fuel, and then using the other half to make an image to be worshipped as a god?

            The kings of Judah and Israel may not have completely banished or destroyed the Canaanite communities condemned by the Torah, but would such Canaanite remnants have friendly relations with Jews, whom they might well have seen as foreign invaders?  Would worshippers of Hashem really want to take on the customs of people who viewed them with hostility?  On the other hand, we may have absorbed alien worship from the descendants of Esau who intermarried with us; after all they were our relatives.  Some of the previous inhabitants may have adopted a solution to the conquest of the Land of Israel similar to that of natives of the Western Hemisphere who were subjugated by Christian armies. Just as some inhabitants of the Americas incorporate their ancestral beliefs and practices into the Christian religion, some idolaters may well have mixed their old beliefs into their worship of Hashem. In addition, Israel, and subsequently the Northern and Southern kingdoms, had trade agreements with neighboring kingdoms. Kings of Israel took foreign wives as a condition of peace treaties.  Commerce can lead to acculturation, especially if business associates share a border.

            And the Canaanite religions may have had an attraction we no longer know about.  When I was in college I knew Jewish students who actually had “Chanukah bushes” and laughed when I called such objects a mere excuse for owning a Christian symbol.  The idols of our neighbors may have represented concepts with tremendous emotional appeal; they may have been associated with agriculture, or may have been aesthetically beautiful.  The growing popularity of “Messianic Judaism” in the State of Israel demonstrates the ability of alien beliefs to take root and flourish even in the very homeland of the Torah.