In this week’s Torah portion, we read the single worst example of idolatry: the golden calf. The irony is that the Israelites did this just after hearing the 10 Commandments and while Moses was on his way down the mountain with the tablets in hand. They were probably scared that Moses wasn’t coming back especially as he was their conduit to God. They might have been thinking that they could create a god based on the gods they saw people worshiping in Egypt, so they gave up their jewelry and were ready to bow down to the calf that came out of the flames.

Nowadays, we think that idolatry is so “back then.” But is it? It depends on how you define idolatry. If idolatry is a focus of energy and attention, prioritizing over other things even including one’s own values and over God, then yes, it is alive and well.

Let us take one example: sports. We could start as simply as how much we “idolize” a particular sports figure, or we could picture the statues and life-sized cutouts and bobble heads of favorite players. From there, we could go to how it could be that one could win an Olympic gold medal in figure skating even though doping was proven – and being allowed to continue to compete to the detriment of those skaters who got to the top by playing by the rules. Seven million dollars for a 30 second ad during the Superbowl could be spent not on enticing us to buy that brand of beer or luxurious item but on lifting up those who suffer from lacking their most basic needs. Recognizing that we are equally created in God’s image, how could it be that ours is the only coach of color in all of major league football and there are no owners of color? And what of the physicians and coaches who were known pedophiles allowed to run rampant for decades? When we allow something to take hold which doesn’t let go and skews our values in a way that we would not otherwise tolerate, that is idolatry.

Rabbi Ted Falcon writes: idolatry is “the moments when we forget who we really are and instead of remembering that we are sparks of the Divine, we start giving up our power to a guru, an ideology, a romantic obsession, a stressful job that begins to define us, or an unhealthy habit we think we can’t live without. Even if we no longer build or worship physical idols like in ancient times, we have modern-day addictions and pressures that cause us to forget that our purpose here is to be a vehicle for Divine energies.”

Let us spend our time, energy, resources, creativity to be vehicles for Divine energies.