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Adapted from Rambam's Mishneh Torah,
"Laws Concerning Idolatry," Chapter
1
Near the very beginning of time, in the third generation of
the history of mankind, in the days of Enosh, the grandson of Adam, the descendents of Adam - and even the wisest
among them - made a big mistake.
"Since the Alm-ghty created the stars and constellations to govern the world and the forces of nature,"
they reasoned, "and since He exalted them by placing them in the heavens, surely it is the will of G-d that
we should also praise and glorify them."
And sure enough, the descendants of Adam followed through on their faulty reasoning. They built shrines in honor
of the heavenly bodies, and they offered sacrifices to them and praised them - all in an attempt to fulfill what
they deemed to be the will of G-d. Although the people knew that there is none other than G-d, that no other being
exists in its own right besides the Creator Himself, Who continually sustains the existence of the whole world
and every single creature within it, they mistakenly believed the glorification of the stars and the constellations
to be the will of G-d.
After many, many years, false prophets began to surface among the the descendants of Adam. They claimed that G-d
was commanding mankind to serve the stars and to sacrifice to them, and to fashion their forms as idols in order
to bow before them, and so on. They would depict a form they had fabricated in their minds, and say, "this
is the form of the deity that I was shown in prophecy."
Idols were placed in the palaces and under the trees and on the mountaintops and on the hills, and the people would
gather together to worship them. The priests would say to the descendents of Adam: "This is the image of a
god who bestows benevolence to those who do such and such, and wields the power to cause harm to those who do such
and such. Surely, this god is worthy to be worshipped and feared."
Other would stand up and tell a different story, describing a different practice of worship for a different idol.
In this way, idolatry, in its many forms, spread throughout the world.
And with the passage of time, the most holy and awesome name of the true G-d was forgotten. With the exception
of a just a few special individuals [such as, Chanoch, Methuselah and Noah], no one recognized their Creator. Everyone
else believed that there was no G-d other than the idols they worshipped….
The entire world was mistaken. And the thing that had caused them to err in the first place, until the truth was
completely foreign to them, was their worship of the stars.
The big mistake of the descendents of Adam, the faulty reasoning that eventually evolved into full-fledged idolatry
and the denial of the existence of G-d, began with the careless deduction that it was G-d's will that they praise
the stars and the constellations. In truth, however, their reasoning was as foolish as "praising the ax in
the hand of the woodchopper." It is not fitting to "praise the ax" for the tremendous feat of leveling
a forest to build a settlement, for example, when it is "in the hands of the woodchopper," the one who
actually did the work. So too, it is not fitting to praise the heavenly bodies as if they were forces in their
own right for the tremendous feat of ministering over the world, when it is really the power of the Alm-ghty that
animates them.
Noah knew that there is one G-d, and that
it is He who animates the entire universe, He who created everything, and that in all of existence there is no
G-d besides Him.
Excerpts from a discourse by the Rebbe,
Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson,
on this chapter (adapted from Likkutei
Sichos vol. 20 pg. 13-21) :
In writing the first chapter of "Laws
Concerning Idolatry," the Rambam [Maimonides] in no way set out to teach us a history lesson, and certainly
he did not intend to tell us an entertaining story. Rather, this is part of a book whose sole purpose is to codify
Torah law, as the author himself writes in his Preface. Therefore, it is a great wonder that the Rambam goes to
such trouble to detail such a lengthy account of the history of idolatry, for how does this story relate to Torah
law?!
The answer to this question is
that this first chapter serves as a general introduction to the entire section of "Laws Concerning Idolatry,"
as it forewarns us of the original mistake of foreign worship.
The sin of idolatry is connected primarily with the faulty thinking of man, the false belief that a created being,
an angel, or a constellation, etc., is a deity - a being that exists in its own right - or an agent between man
and G-d.
In order to properly fulfill the prohibition of foreign worship, it is not enough to know which acts are prohibited
and considered idolatrous, but we must - first and foremost - safeguard our thoughts to the utmost extreme. It
must also be firmly established in our minds that all created beings in the world have no existence in and of themselves,
and thus, there is no rational grounds to suppose that any created being should be worshipped.
To this end, the Rambam illustrates the central role that faulty thinking played in the history of idolatry as
a preface to the particular laws and prohibitions concerning idolatry. He first tells us about the original faulty
thinking of mankind: "Near the very beginning of time, the children of man - and even the wisest among them
- made a big mistake." They reasoned that "it is the will of G-d" that they should praise and glorify
His most exalted creations, the heavenly bodies. Next, he writes about the further descent of the children of man,
until their thinking process became totally incongruent with reason: "false prophets...claimed that G-d was
commanding mankind to serve the stars... Everyone believed that there was no G-d other than the idols they worshipped."
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