Choosing What’s Right
The prophet Yermiyahu’s (Jeremiah’s) messages oscillate between despair and hope. In this week’s haftarah, he stands unmistakably as the harbinger of impending destruction, striving with all his might to avert it. His task, as he sees it, is to awaken the people to their disloyalty to God, to the covenant, and to the moral foundations of their society. Religious betrayal and social decay are, for Yermiyahu, inseparable, and together they threaten to unravel the nation from within.
His imagery conveys the depth of his anguish. The people’s attachment to idolatry is expressed in a striking and somewhat obscure verse:
While their children remember their altars and sacred posts by verdant trees upon lofty hills. (Jeremiah 17:2, NJPS)
This translation, following the Targum Yonatan, reads the verse as a description of generational continuity. Yet the rabbinic tradition hears something more psychologically charged in these words. Rashi explains:
Like the memory of their children, so is their memory of their altars” – like a parent who yearns for a child.
Rabbi David Kimhi elaborates:
Recounting stories about these altars is as pleasant to them as recounting stories about their children, for they loved the altars so.
These interpretations draw on a Talmudic discussion. Rav Yehuda, citing Rav, asserts that Israel knew the idols were nothing, but pursued idolatry to gratify their desires. Rabbi Mesharshiah objects, citing our verse as interpreted by Rabbi Elazar: ‘Just as one longs for a child, so they longed for their altars.’ The Talmud resolves the tension by suggesting a progression: Initially, the attraction was opportunistic; only later did it become emotional attachment (See Sanhedrin 63b).
The history of the Jewish people bears this out. Across generations, Jews have encountered many forms of “idolatry”; not only the worship of foreign gods, but also the seductions of cultural, intellectual, material rewards, promise of opportunity and belonging. Often, these begin as external engagements, entered with the confidence that one’s core commitments will remain intact. Yet gradually, almost imperceptibly, the values themselves begin to shift.
And so, Yermiyahu’s warning can be understood as dealing not only with idolatry in its ancient form, but also about the inner process by which alien values take root. The danger lies not merely in what we choose, but in what those choices, over time, make of us.
And this is where the haftarah turns, characteristically, toward hope:
Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord… He shall be like a tree planted by water. (Jeremiah 17:7–8)
Against the image of attachment to false objects of devotion stands a counter-image: a life rooted in something enduring, nourished by a steady and reliable source.
The challenge Yermiyahu places before his audience, and before us, then, is not only to avoid what is wrong, but to cultivate deep attachments to what is right. For in the end, it is not enough to know that certain “idols” are empty. The question is what we love, what we return to instinctively, what we speak about with the affection we reserve for what matters most.
If misplaced devotion can grow gradually, so, too, can faithful commitment. The task is to ensure that what takes root in us is worthy of that kind of love.
