Vayikra

Isaiah on Idols: Wood Then, Oil Now

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow *, 3/15/2005

When the Rabbis chose what haftarah — what Prophetic passage — to assign for synagogue reading on the Shabbat when the community begins its reading of Leviticus, the book of priestly offerings, they chose Isaiah 43: 21 through 44: 22.

Isaiah invokes a powerful image to ridicule idolatry. Indeed, what he ridicules can help us understand what "idolatry" is:

"A carpenter cuts down cedars; or s/he chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest; s/he plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it.

Food, Our Innards, and God's Inwardness

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We enter Leviticus, the book that describes how food becomes the crucial connection between the Israelites and God.

We often hear the words "sacrifical cult" used to describe the process of offerings to God in a Shrine. But this phrase is so vague, bloodless, and theoretical that it screens from us the truth: All the offerings were food.

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