A word of Torah:    
        In this week’s Torah portion, we have the story of the Golden Calf. After the revelation of the Ten Commandments, Moses goes up Mount Sinai for forty days to receive the rest of the Torah from God. Meanwhile, the people become concerned because of Moses’ prolonged absence and say to Aaron: “Make for us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses… we do not know what has happened to him.” Aaron casts the gold they bring him and makes a calf. The people exclaimed eleh elohiekha yisrael –"This is your god O Israel.” The next day the people celebrated a festival to god and they brought offerings and ate and drank and danced.
        I want to suggest that the Golden Calf is a problem inherent in religion. Idolatry is not worshipping a statue, or even about the “false” god it represents. Idolatry is about the worshipper. Idolatry is claiming to know who God is. The worshipper who says eleh elohiekha yisrael   --this and only this is God--is an idolater. Why? Because God is ultimately unknowable.  At the burning bush when asked by Moses: Who should I tell the Israelites is the God that will free you from Egypt? God answers ehyeh asher ehyeh --- I will be what I will be.  God is unfixed. God is changing and fluid. An idol is fixed, frozen in the moment of creation. Aaron takes solid gold and melts it into a fluid form. It is shaped into an image of a calf and solidifies in that image. The mistake of idolatry is to take that which is infinite and that which changes and freeze it in one moment and one image and proclaim this is God or the image of God. By limiting God in this way, that person denies the truth about God. The problem isn’t worshipping the statue or the wrong god—the problem is denying the limitless nature of God. The Jewish mystics have it right when they talk about the many aspects of the Divine.
        We might think that religion is essentially about knowing the truth about existence. Actually, religion understands that we can’t know the truth. As finite beings we cannot fully grasp that which is infinite. The mystics described God as ein sof—without end/limitless. We can get glimpses of the truth. We can suggest an understanding of God, knowing that understanding is limited by our very nature as human beings. But we cannot know the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is why idolatry is not some problem only in ancient times. Nor is it as some people suggest about worshipping money or fame. Rather idolatry is inextricably linked with religion. Religion suggests it has the answers to the ultimate questions. People then believe they know exactly what the truth is about god, about life and death, about suffering, or about any of the times that we are uncertain or afraid. Thinking you have the truth isn’t worshipping God; rather it is idolatry. Judaism is about asking questions, searching for insights, finding partial truths for ourselves. 
        On this journey we carry with us the ongoing conversation of the Jewish people. We are to continue unrolling that Torah seeking and finding new and old truths.