Child sacrifice seems like a dreadful pre-historical nightmare from savage civilizations that preceded our own. If only. Pro-Life evanglicals and anti Marijuana activists have appropriate the trope to scare away progressive values that consume young lives for decades. Rev. Robert James Devine published several vehement tracts in the 1960’s with parallels between marijuana and Moloch- false idols killing the youth. There’s plenty of anti-masturbation propaganda with smilier links and threats. Nations continue to give weapons to young people on the altars of national survival and pride. It’s not the same, but Moloch, dreaded god, does not seem to be starving.
There among the laws of Leviticus is the original prohibition to offer one’s seed to Molech, in its original pronunciation, supposedly a fearsome local blood loving deity. The punishment is both execution and excommunication, in that puzzling order.
“Say further to the Israelites: Anyone among you, or among the strangers residing in Israel, who gives any offspring to Molech, shall be put to death; the people of the land shall pelt the person with stones.” (Va.20:2)
When laws show up it is presumably because people need legislation to prevent them from what is already popular. Scholars have come up with literary and archaeological evidence for the practice of child sacrifice in Semitic and Hebraic contexts. Abraham’s binding of Isaac is seen as a literary form of updating the religion - offering rams instead of firstborn sons - but it still means that whoever deity our fathers worshiped - handing over a kid was part of the deal: I’ll give you my best and in return you give me yours.
Who’s Molech? Maybe related to Melech - King, likely a Cannanite deity or possibly the actual act of sacrificing children. King Solomon built him an altar in Jerusalem, and prophets have railed against the horrors through the Bible. Why the allure? In 1903 Bertrand Russel wrote this in ‘A Free Man’s Worship’: “The savage, like ourselves, feels the oppression of his impotence before the powers of Nature; but having in himself nothing that he respects more than Power, he is willing to prostrate himself before his gods, without inquiring whether they are worthy of his worship. Pathetic and very terrible is the long history of cruelty and torture, of degradation and human sacrifice, endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods: surely, the trembling believer thinks, when what is most precious has been freely given, their lust for blood must be appeased, and more will not be required. The religion of Moloch – as such creeds may be generically called – is in essence the cringing submission of the slave, who dare not, even in his heart, allow the thought that his master deserves no adulation.” Not just for atheists, though, by the early 20th century, Moloch was becoming a modern symbol of the machine - the city and the industrial, the military and the ideological. French author Gustave Flaubert’s fiction based on the Moloch cult was the inspiration for Italian director Giovanni Pastrone’s 1914 silent film Cabiria with this creepy clip. When it was time to howl at the machine, Allen Ginsberg dedicated an entire stanza of his famous poem to this deity of dread: “Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!”
What sort of Moloch are we offering our children and the best part of ourselves, still, shockingly, today?
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#hebrewmyth #929 #torah #bible #hiddenbible #sefaria #929english #labshul #929project #myth #belowthebiblebelt
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Michael - this nugget is for you and for all of you who take time away from ongoing work and life matters to engage in this daily Torah probe:
Heschel makes the following observation:
A Christian scholar who visited Warsaw during the First World War, wrote of a remarkable experience he had there: "Once I noticed a great many coaches on a parking-place, but with no drivers in sight. In my own country I would have known where to look for them. A young Jewish boy showed me the way: in a courtyard, on the second floor, was the shtibl of the Jewish drivers. It consisted of two rooms: one filled with Talmud-volumes, the other a room for prayer. All the drivers were engaged in fervent study and religious discussion...It was then that I found out...that all professions, the bakers, the butchers, the shoemakers, etc., have their own shtibl in the Jewish district; and every free moment which can be taken off from their work is given to the study of the Torah. And when they get together in intimate groups, one urges the other: 'Sog mir a shtickl Torah -- Tell me a little Torah.'"
A.J. Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1950), pp. 46-47.
Excellent quote from Rabbi Ginsberg. He read that in 1994 at the Knitting Factory.