Idol worship and the trouble with 'normal'

(JNS) — Are you into the TV show “American Idols?” Do you enjoy watching all that talent on television? What about other “idols?”

In last week’s Torah reading, Re’eh, Moses warns the Jewish people not to follow the pagan ways of the Canaanite nations when they inherit the Land of Israel. There is to be zero tolerance for idolatry and paganism. Those nations practiced the most outrageous forms of idolatry, including child sacrifice and other depravities. The great Torah scholar Rashi quotes Rabbi Akiva as saying he’d witnessed a pagan man tie up his own father and then unleash a pack of wild do...