Hinduism and Judaism alliance? Pretty weird because jews supposedly hate idolators. What a bunch of hypocrites.
Idolatry in Judaism is prohibited. Judaism holds that idolatry is not limited to the worship of an idol itself, but also worship involving any artistic representations of God. In addition it is forbidden to derive benefit (hana'ah) from anything dedicated to idolatry. However, aniconism in Judaism has not prevented traditions of Jewish art at various periods.
Worship of persons is considered idolatry in Judaism. See Sanhedrin 93a: "Daniel said: Let me go away from here, so that he shall not perform on me [the ruling] 'You shall burn in fire the images of their idols' (Deuteronomy 7:25)". Rashi explains that Nebuchadnezzar worshiped Daniel, as in Daniel 2:46.
According to the Midrash, a few people made themselves deities: Pharaoh Kings of Egypt (see Ezekiel 29:3: "The Nile is mine and I have made myself", understood by the Midrash as a claim that he created himself); Hiram King of Tyre (see Ezekiel 28:2); Haman the Aggagite (see Esther 3:2).
The Talmud states [Yoma 69b] that the Men of the Great Assembly, a group of 120 Sages that directed Israel after the return of Ezra from Babylonia and the end of the period of prophecy, managed to remove the idolatry component of the "Evil Inclination" from Jewish life, and it ceased to be a problem. The Talmud also records [Sanhedrin 102b] that Rav Ashi, the 4th-century Talmudic scholar, had a debate on Jewish law with idolatrous King Menashe of Judah (7th century BCE), and lost. When asked by King Menashe in a dream what the halacha is when eating bread, Rav Ashi responded that he did not know. When Menashe responded with the well-done part (crust) first, Rav Ashi, surprised at his knowledge, responded, "Since you are so learned, why did you worship idols?". Menashe replied: "The drive for idolatry was so strong in my time that, had you been there, you yourself would have run after me and done the same!" This is taken to mean by later rabbinical commentary that the ancient idols had some special power to grant requests made to them, and were quick in responding.
Any beliefs or practices which significantly interferes with a Jew's relationship with God may, in some way, be termed "idolatry". Examples might include:
- a very strong desire to gain money and wealth; greed could be considered a form of idolatry;
- a very strong desire to gain fame or recognition; egocentrism could be considered a form of idolatry (a view expressed by the Vilna Gaon).
However, Some Jews practice Judeo-Paganism, which is a mixture of Jewish and polytheistic practices. Some of those practices involve honoring (or remembering) divinities that were among those rejected by the prophets of the Tanakh (for example, Ba'al and Asherah).
Why is Judaism so intolerant of idolatry? I don't mean massive temples with human sacrifices. What about a civilized idolater, in the privacy of his own home. With a job, a family, a mortgage, donates to the World Hunger Fund and Greenpeace — and instead of one G‑d, he just happens to have two or three or even several dozen, all lined up on the dashboard of his car. Why does Judaism make a cardinal sin of it, demanding total eradication of idolatry in every corner the world? As long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, what's so terrible?
There are many ways to answer this, but let's take a historical perspective. Historians agree that our current standard of ethics stems from the Jewish ethic. Yes, the Greeks gave us the natural sciences, philosophy and art; the Romans gave us governmental structure and engineering; from the Persians we have poetry and astronomy; from the Chinese, paper, printing, gunpowder, acupuncture and more philosophy, and so on. But the historical fact is that all those cultures (and all the other unmentioned cultures) sustained and even glorified attitudes and behaviors that today we universally find abhorrent. Today, if you dispose of your unwanted infants, practice pederasty, set humans to kill each other for sport, ignore the rights of those lower than you on the social ladder and refuse to acknowledge any social responsibility to the poor and the unhealthy, and can't wait to run to war against the nation next door, you are a barbarian. You may have made a wonderful citizen of Athens or Rome, but today, no club will take you.
Where did those values come from? There's only one source historians can point to: Torah. And the same for universal education and the ideal of world peace.
Now, this gives any scholar a meaty problem to solve. History is generally seen as something of a wild and diverse forest, where one thing grows from another. Seeds fall and sprout. Trees branch out and flourish, then fall and nurture mushrooms off their rotting wood. All the vegetation and creatures of the forest share the same air, water and soil and no creature exists alone. So, too, one civilization arises out of the mud, branches out, and falls to become the breeding ground of the next. Ideas move about, in perpetual metamorphosis as they pass through the filters of variant cultures. Whatever is, was — and will eventually pass.
All except for the Jews. Entirely out of context, with an ethic that had every nation calling them crazy and absurd, ever-radical, always out of step. Definitely not part of this forest. And in the end, their ethic wins.
There's got to be some explanation. First of all, where did they get these weird ideas? And telling me that the Almighty G‑d snatched them out of slavery and dictated it all to them doesn't work. It's true, but it's not enough. Because human beings can only hear that which they know already. There had to be something there from before.
The classic answer is that once there was a man named Abraham, from Ur of the Chaldees — the original seat of civilization. He came up with this standard through his own maverick genius. Of course, being ingenious, brave and dissident wasn't enough. His task also demanded the tenacity and conviction to raise up a generation that would carry on this idea, swimming upstream against all odds of the dominant society. And then, over many ages, this ethic proved itself as the most effective backbone of a sustainable society.
Now, tell me, does any rational scholar really believe such a scenario?
In fact, the version supported by the Talmud and described in detail by the Rambam (Maimonides) is far more believable:
The ethic that Abraham presented to the world had been there from the beginning. Humankind had originally known that each person bore the Divine image. That life was with purpose. That the world was the work of a supernal entity that desired we take care of it and judged us accordingly. Even in Abraham's time, there endured lone individuals who preached this to their disciples, as a tradition from Adam, through Methuselah and Noah.
But we're talking about human beings. Precisely due to that Divine spark within, the human is also the wild and crazy creature that seeks out the most bizarre approach to life, ready and capable to do anything. So, human society in general abandoned the original standard of Adam for "that which feels good." Law became no more than a way for a king to govern his people. Ethics became no more than the custom that felt most comfortable to the most people. The only measure of the value of a human life was the degree of power a human held. And the natural world was understood as a worthless place, not worth any investment beyond that which produced food and power over others.
Abraham didn't have to begin from scratch with humanity. He only had to rescue that original ethic. But he also re-discovered — and this he did do on his own — the base that made that ethic sustainable: Monotheism. More specifically: monotheistic providence. Simply put: Every adult and child must know there is a single Creator of all things, who cares about what you are doing with His world.
Why are monotheism and providence so essential? Again, back to history, according to the traditional Jewish sources:
Abraham's predecessors had also known of the one G‑d, creator of heaven and earth. But they understood G‑d as far too sublime and transcendent to be occupied with this mundane world and its creatures. They began to chip away at His providence, asserting that lesser powers, of His appointment, had been granted a share of dominion. They went so far as to build temples where they focused their minds upon the dynamics of these forces, attaining spiritual heights and mystic power. Eventually, wisdom gave way to charlatanism, as priests told the masses that a certain star or god or goddess had spoken to them, commanding them to serve him or her in a certain fashion. Rulers found that a good mix of secret knowledge and convenient mythology could be an instrument of power over the populace; that by controlling the flow of knowledge they were able to hold the people in awe and obedience.
This is where Abraham dissented. He saw through the established order with its hierarchy of knowledge and power, and reasoned it to be the source of all evil. And he saw to the root of it: As long as G‑d was "up there" and everything else was seen as lying on a descending plane further and further removed from His domain, this evil would continue.
Within such a paradigm, human life loses its essential value. You as an individual no longer count. All that matters is how high you are up on the scale. Not only human rights, but also the advance of technology is hindered — by the need of the ruling class to keep the masses working. All progress is to further empower the powerful. Public health, welfare and education are absurdities. So Abraham challenged that hierarchy. He taught each person to call upon the name of the One G‑d of the heavens and the earth, who judges the deeds of all men equally, from the highest king to the most lowly serf. By putting the original G‑d back into the world, Abraham recreated the "person" — a human who is of value just by being there.
Within the old paradigm, ethics have no base to stand on. If you don't like what one god demands of you, you go find another god more to your taste. Or you work around these gods, tricking or bribing them, as they themselves are wont to do with one another. After all, none of them is supreme, none is all-powerful. Therefore, anything could be justified. So Abraham smashed the idols. Once there is only one G‑d, who supervises all things, morality is no longer relative. All ethics are determined not by the flux of social convenience, but by His intransient standard.
Without Abraham's base to ethics, society has no stability. Any institution could be shaken to the ground by changing circumstance and the whims of human desire. In Ancient Greece, the institution of marriage bordered on collapse due to their gender-preference, while in Rome, the family unit was gradually dismantled by promiscuity. The institutions that should have nurtured human spirituality in many societies became corrupted into bloody orgies and worship of the senses. In many instances, such as in the Far East, poverty was allowed to grow to unmanageable proportions while a select few amassed an immense concentration of power—all due to the void of a sense of social responsibility. In our day and age, with the origin of species attributed to the mystical gods of chance and natural law, the most horrid crimes against humanity were committed and the very biosphere is now threatened. Only once the building blocks of society stand upon the solid ground of the One Who Created Everything in the First Place, can a sustainable society develop.
Truth be told, Abraham's message also began to perish with time. It wasn't until monotheistic providence transcended the realm of ideas and became the real-life experience of a people that it was truly able to stick. And that is just what happened at Mount Sinai, when Abraham's descendants came face-to-face with marching orders directly from Above. The concept of a "mitzvah" entered the world — something you do because G‑d wants it done. And that basis has proven eternally resilient.
As for the rest of the nations, as the Rambam writes, they were also commanded at Mount Sinai — to keep the seven mitzvahs of Adam and Noah, which include the prohibition against polytheism.
Today, we are witnessing the most dramatic results of Abraham's strategy in action: Our progress in the last 500 years, to the point of the current empowerment of the consumer with technology and information, only became possible through the rise of this ethic. In a polytheistic world, this could never have occurred. It was only once the people of Europe began actually reading the Bible and discussing what it had to say to them, that the concepts of human rights, social responsibility, the value of life, and eventually the ideal of world peace took a front seat in civilization's progress. And it is only such a world that could have developed public education and health care, old age pension, telephones, fax machines, personal computers, the Internet, environmental design and nuclear disarmament.
We are too much a part of the flow to recognize this; the blanket of darkness that endures, fighting to its last breath, preoccupies our minds. But if we could travel back in time and describe to the Jew of past ages the world we have today — a world that values life, world peace, individual rights, freedom of expression, literacy, knowledge and compassion for those who have less — that Jew would undoubtedly respond, wide-eyed, "You mean, it is the days of Moshiach?"
In the rabbinic doctrine of the Noahide laws [the seven laws Judaism expects non-Jews to follow]–the for all mankind so to speak–idolatry is as serious an offense for Gentiles as it is for Jews,
The History of Idol Worship In India
They worshipped gods through
prayers, chants, songs, rituals and sacrificial ceremonies. They
envisioned them as divine entities who manifested upon earth as forces
of Nature. However, it is also true that they envisioned them with
specific names and forms, who in many respects behaved like humans and
possessed the same strengths and weaknesses. While they possessed
enormous strength and powers, they also depended upon humans for
nourishment.
The Puranas suggest that Gods and humans supported each other and often fought battles together. Gods helped worshippers who propitiated them win victories against their enemies, while kings often ascended to the heaven and helped gods win celestial wars against demons. Gods lusted for mortal women and humans sought the company of celestial nymphs.
Often it resulted in curses, conflicts, miracles and even the birth of divine children who possessed the qualities of both gods and humans. Besides ritually worshipping gods, Vedic people held certain symbols and geometric patterns as sacred and used them in ritual worship. Thus, although they did not worship images of gods the seeds of image worship were latent in their tradition.
The practice of worshipping images or idols of gods and goddesses might have become a part of ancient Vedic religion through non-Vedic traditions such as tribal practices, Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism. Ancient humans and the early settlers who lived in the Indian subcontinent erected monoliths and believed in their magical powers. They buried their dead and probably believed in some form of afterlife. They might have worshipped their ancestors or elder spirits.
The Indus Valley people seemed to have a tradition of honoring their deities in image form with ritual worship. They also probably worshipped animals, mythical creatures, plants, kings and gods who resembled humans. According to historians, the practice of worshipping fertility gods and goddesses, ritual bathing, and the use of stone symbols, icons and images in their worship was probably prevalent in the Indus Valley urban communities.
Vedic people did not build any temples to house their gods. For them the sky itself was their abode. However, there are some indications that a few communities in the South erected temples in honor of their gods, whom they equated with king (Koor) and called the temple Koil, or God’s house. The temples were originally built with wood.
The practice of using stone in the building of temples came much later. The earliest temples were probably built in honor of the local deities who were subsequently identified with Shiva or Vishnu as their aspects or manifestations. The tradition of building temples to house gods probably emerged from the early cave temples which are found in several parts of India.
The puja ceremony, or the rituals associated with domestic worship, in which gods are treated like houseguests and worshipped with flowers, incense, fruit, water, sandal paste, etc., also seem to have its origin in the South. Pu is a Dravidian word meaning flower. Puja was a devotional service with the offering of flowers just as Homa which was originally a Vedic sacrificial ceremony with the offerings of ritual food.
Rural people in in remote parts of India traditionally worshipped for a long time idols, statues, symbols or images of village deities (grama devatas), snakes, rivers, mountains and trees to appease them and seek their blessings for a good harvest or protection against calamities and diseases. The deities were mostly left in open, without a shelter, and worshipped on specific occasions. Sometimes, instead of images, they simply worshipped stones or mounds, which were probably remnants of ancient monoliths. The worship of villages deities, serpents and trees still continues in many villages of India.
It is possible that in some parts of Western India, near the mountainous regions, people might have picked up the practice of image worship from Bactrian Greeks, Persians or from the Shamanic traditions of Central Asia. R.C.Majumdar, in An Advanced History of India, stated the following.
Whatever
may be the reason, by the time Buddhism became popular and the Mauryan
Empire was firmly established, image worship was a universal practice in
the Indian subcontinent. Megasthanese, the Greek Ambassador to the
court of Chandragupta Mauyra, mentioned people carrying images in
procession in his extant work, the Indica. The emergence of Tantra in
both Hinduism and Buddhism and the popularity of Bhakti in Shaivism and
Vaishnavism must have also contributed to the growing acceptance of
image worship among the Vedic communities.
Image worship became central to Hinduism and the tradition of large scale temple construction under royal patronage began in the post Mauryan period and picked momentum during the Gupta Period. It continued for at least a 1000 years during which great temples were built not only in the Indian subcontinent but also abroad as far as Malaysia and Thailand.
While only a few people from the higher castes could afford to host Vedic ceremonies, image worship offered a convenient, inexpensive and easier alternative. Besides, it helped common people directly worship their gods without the need for caste based, expensive priestly intervention. Today, image worship is the most distinguished form of devotional worship in Hinduism. Hindus have carried it to various parts of the world. Huge temple and statues of gods and goddesses sprung up in varoius parts of India. Carrying the images in large public processions is now part of many Hindu festivals. The practice helps devotees bond with their deities and hold them in high esteem. People carry the images of their gods not only mentally or spiritually in their minds and hearts but also physically in their vehicles, purses, bags, lockets and chains, tattoos or digitally in their mobile phones, computers and laptops.
Meanwhile
The Puranas suggest that Gods and humans supported each other and often fought battles together. Gods helped worshippers who propitiated them win victories against their enemies, while kings often ascended to the heaven and helped gods win celestial wars against demons. Gods lusted for mortal women and humans sought the company of celestial nymphs.
Often it resulted in curses, conflicts, miracles and even the birth of divine children who possessed the qualities of both gods and humans. Besides ritually worshipping gods, Vedic people held certain symbols and geometric patterns as sacred and used them in ritual worship. Thus, although they did not worship images of gods the seeds of image worship were latent in their tradition.
The practice of worshipping images or idols of gods and goddesses might have become a part of ancient Vedic religion through non-Vedic traditions such as tribal practices, Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism. Ancient humans and the early settlers who lived in the Indian subcontinent erected monoliths and believed in their magical powers. They buried their dead and probably believed in some form of afterlife. They might have worshipped their ancestors or elder spirits.
The Indus Valley people seemed to have a tradition of honoring their deities in image form with ritual worship. They also probably worshipped animals, mythical creatures, plants, kings and gods who resembled humans. According to historians, the practice of worshipping fertility gods and goddesses, ritual bathing, and the use of stone symbols, icons and images in their worship was probably prevalent in the Indus Valley urban communities.
Vedic people did not build any temples to house their gods. For them the sky itself was their abode. However, there are some indications that a few communities in the South erected temples in honor of their gods, whom they equated with king (Koor) and called the temple Koil, or God’s house. The temples were originally built with wood.
The practice of using stone in the building of temples came much later. The earliest temples were probably built in honor of the local deities who were subsequently identified with Shiva or Vishnu as their aspects or manifestations. The tradition of building temples to house gods probably emerged from the early cave temples which are found in several parts of India.
The puja ceremony, or the rituals associated with domestic worship, in which gods are treated like houseguests and worshipped with flowers, incense, fruit, water, sandal paste, etc., also seem to have its origin in the South. Pu is a Dravidian word meaning flower. Puja was a devotional service with the offering of flowers just as Homa which was originally a Vedic sacrificial ceremony with the offerings of ritual food.
Rural people in in remote parts of India traditionally worshipped for a long time idols, statues, symbols or images of village deities (grama devatas), snakes, rivers, mountains and trees to appease them and seek their blessings for a good harvest or protection against calamities and diseases. The deities were mostly left in open, without a shelter, and worshipped on specific occasions. Sometimes, instead of images, they simply worshipped stones or mounds, which were probably remnants of ancient monoliths. The worship of villages deities, serpents and trees still continues in many villages of India.
It is possible that in some parts of Western India, near the mountainous regions, people might have picked up the practice of image worship from Bactrian Greeks, Persians or from the Shamanic traditions of Central Asia. R.C.Majumdar, in An Advanced History of India, stated the following.
“With the growth of anthropomorphism came
the increased use of images and the construction of temples for daily
services. Icons were known to the ancient people of the lower Indus
Valley, and stray allusions to images have been traced in some Vedic
texts. But the first undoubted historical reference to image worship by
an Aryan tribe occurs in a passage of Curtius, who states that an image
of Heracles was carried in front of the Paurava army as it advanced
against Alexander. Patanjali refers to the exhibition and sale of images
of Siva, Skanda, and Visakha by the Mauryas who rose to power at the
end our period. Temples of a primitive kind are mentioned already in the
Satapatha Brahmana, but these were not meant for iconic worship. In the
epic, however, we have clear references to temples sacred to deities."
Image worship became central to Hinduism and the tradition of large scale temple construction under royal patronage began in the post Mauryan period and picked momentum during the Gupta Period. It continued for at least a 1000 years during which great temples were built not only in the Indian subcontinent but also abroad as far as Malaysia and Thailand.
While only a few people from the higher castes could afford to host Vedic ceremonies, image worship offered a convenient, inexpensive and easier alternative. Besides, it helped common people directly worship their gods without the need for caste based, expensive priestly intervention. Today, image worship is the most distinguished form of devotional worship in Hinduism. Hindus have carried it to various parts of the world. Huge temple and statues of gods and goddesses sprung up in varoius parts of India. Carrying the images in large public processions is now part of many Hindu festivals. The practice helps devotees bond with their deities and hold them in high esteem. People carry the images of their gods not only mentally or spiritually in their minds and hearts but also physically in their vehicles, purses, bags, lockets and chains, tattoos or digitally in their mobile phones, computers and laptops.
Meanwhile
