Q&A: Why is it forbidden to make use of idolatry?
Why is it forbidden to make use of idolatry?
Question
Why is it forbidden to use things connected with idolatry? I don’t believe in that idolatry anyway. Just because some fools bow down to it, does it become set aside in and of itself? What exactly is wrong with it?
Answer
First, the prohibition on using it is because of the prohibition against deriving benefit from idolatry, not necessarily out of concern that you yourself might come to worship it. Just as there is a prohibition against deriving benefit from orlah or from leavened food on Passover. Second, in the past there was a real impulse toward idolatry, and then apparently such a concern really did exist.
Discussion on Answer
I understood that that was what you were asking, and I answered you: do you understand why there is a prohibition against deriving benefit from orlah? Some tree happened to produce fruit while still young, so that’s your fault? Why is it forbidden for you to benefit from its fruit?
It’s hard for me to define exactly what the difference is, but I feel an intuitive difference. Maybe because the tree has nothing to do with human action. Orlah is some objective state of the tree that for some reason is forbidden. But idolatry is not an objective reality; it’s just meaningless muttering by people. It’s hard for me to see this as some substantive object-status of an entity that could become forbidden. But I’ll think about it. Thanks for the answer. I’ll try to formulate the issue more clearly for myself.
The Talmud really does say that idol worshipers are not capable of rendering the mountains themselves forbidden. And maybe based on that one can distinguish between things that exist anyway and things that receive their reality from human reality. So for example, a sukkah higher than 20 cubits can be filled with straw and brushwood, which are considered nullified to the ground, but it cannot be filled with cushions and pillows, which are not nullified to the ground, since cushions and pillows belong to the human world (because one assigns them significance). Similarly, with leavened food on Passover, according to Rashi’s view, we nullify it and regard it as the dust of the earth, and still we search for leavened food lest one find an especially nice loaf on Passover and assign significance to it.
Ordinary idolatry is part of the human world, and therefore it is forbidden as long as it is considered part of the human world. Only when its worshipers nullify it from its role in their human world is it nullified and permitted.
A good article I read about the transformation of design into art when it is placed in a museum:
I don’t understand. I’m asking why, because there are people who decided they worship a flowerpot, it should become forbidden for me to use it. If someone decides that “refrigerator” is a curse word, would that make it forbidden for me to say “refrigerator”?! Idolatry is nonsense. So because of their nonsense, I have to suffer?!