Why We Kill Their gods Every Day

Today, we live in a Greek world – either God doesn’t exist or He isn’t here. That’s what Potiphar’s wife said to Joseph when she was seducing him. 

Ancient Egypt didn’t have a god that said adultery was wrong. Their gods weren’t so preoccupied with people’s conduct. You could do what you could get away with, and that was everything.  

What did Yosef do in this situation? He killed the gods of Egypt by invoking the God of Israel: How could I commit such a great wrong and sin against God? (Bereishit 39:9) 

In a single sentence, Yosef declared: 

1. There is One God.  
2. No deed is “too small” for Him. For everything we do, big or small, He rewards good and punishes bad.  
3.  Adultery is wrong because God says it’s wrong.  

What’s the first thing she did after Yoseph invalidated every excuse she had to do whatever felt good? She called him a dirty Jew. See! My husband brought us this Jew to mock us! (Genesis 39:14) 

The precedent was set. Our existence kills their gods, so they kill our existence.  

Killing the Greeks 

It was the same with the Greeks.  Why shouldn’t it be? All their philosophy came from the same Egypt.  

Thales, the father of Greek philosophy, visited Egypt throughout his life. He even used what he learned to measure the pyramids.  

The great libraries of Egypt, filled with thousands of years of Egyptian knowledge, were conquered by Alexander the Great, and pillaged by the Greek thinkers of the day – Aristotle being among them.  

But the Greeks were clever.  They didn’t try to tell us that God “didn’t exist,” They simply tried to imply that He wasn’t here.  

They stated that the world has no creator, it simply exists forever. By postulating that there is no Creator, they imply that His rules don’t apply. It implies that our deeds only matter to each other and are not monitored by One above.  

Existence is about our senses, what we can perceive, and the logic with which we use to perceive it.  But logic is dictated by desire. As the old sales adage goes: Buyers never use logic. It’s all based on desire. They only use logic to justify getting what they desire.  

There was no logic in legalizing sodomy when Greece was surrounded by enemies and a growing population was a matter of national security. But ancient Greece allowed sodomy. Consequently, due to their rapidly shrinking population, they were easily conquered by Rome. 

Rome, who inherited this “logic of the senses” philosophy, didn’t seem to learn from the Greeks’ tragedy. They legalized the same abominations and saw their empire collapse due to the same implosion of the local population. 

Still, to this very day, laws are based on logic and our senses that are dictated not by God, but by our hearts and our eyes. 

Hashem makes clear: and it shall constitute tzitzit for you, that you may see it and remember all the commandments of Hashem and perform them and not explore after your heart and after your eyes which you sinfully follow. (Bamidbar 15:39) 

God is telling us to use our senses to serve Him. If we don’t, our desires will hijack them to do things that are not logical! 

When the Hellenists told us to follow logic to worship their idols of adultery, sodomy, and idolatry, we stood up to them.  

Hashem blessed the forces of light over the forces of might.  Ancient Greece is no more because we killed their gods.  

The Final Assault on God 

When Ya’akov returned to Israel with his family, Esau was the first to meet him. He came with 400 of his finest warriors. Filled with hatred, he was out to fulfill a personal mission of vengeance to wipe out his brother.  

Ya’akov dispatched angels to attack Esau and soften up his forces. Esau dispatched his angel to finish off Ya’akov, which Ya’akov handily defeated.  

Realizing that his vendetta was futile, when Esau saw his brother, he embraced him with open arms.  On the surface, it looks like a happy ending. Our Sages warn us that this was the fatal move Esau was planning. If he couldn’t destroy us with hate, he would cunningly tear us apart through love.  

We have fallen to Esau’s descendants throughout the generations by becoming Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, Germans, Soviets, and Americans. Esau conquers us with intermarriage, where our children aren’t Jewish. He conquers us with assimilation, where we abandon the mitzvot to be like everyone else. Esau conquers us by convincing us that “Messianic Judaism” makes us “fulfilled Jews”, “completed Jews”, “redeemed Jews”.

Like the Satan himself, the moment we fall into Esau’s seductive trap, he reveals his true colors: He was never our friend. He was just waiting for the right moment.  

• The Greeks put idols in our Temple. 
• The Romans destroyed our Temple and exiled us.  
• The Spaniards took everything from us before throwing us out.  
• The Germans committed genocide against us, killing millions. 
• The Soviets tried to steal our soul. 

In each case, we often do not realize what Esau’s seduction is all about. They aren’t inviting us to join them, they are trying to kill our God by wiping out His nation.   

The War of Gog and Magog

In our generation, we are all under the whip of Esau.  

In America, intermarriage rates are over 60%. 

In Israel, a 76-year war on Judaism has been raging by the powers that be.  

While we have defeated Ishmael in every war, we have yet to win a battle against Esau – who puts the leash around our necks after every small triumph. Why does Esau feel the need to rein us in every time we defeat terrorists, making the world a bit safer? Doesn’t that negate the very logic these people idolize? 

The halacha is clear: Esau hates Ya’akov. (Rebbe Shimon bar Yochai) 

There isn’t much logic to that. But why do they hate us? Why do they prevent us from advancing, even at a cost to their own well-being?  

• We remind them that there is a higher power than personal desire.  
• We remind them that they cannot do what they want, when they want.  
• We remind them that this world wasn’t made for man to be strong. It was made for man to realize his weakness, even helplessness before God.  
• We remind them that technology, science, or modernity does not render God obsolete 

God is the ancient God of Avraham. He is the current God of Israel. He is the future God of Mashiach and His kingdom.  

Time erodes empires. It kills people. It makes almost everything obsolete at some point. But it never impacts God. His world, His laws, and His customs are as relevant today as they were when He first established them.  

Serving God isn’t ancient because He is the same God today as the One Who created Adam. What’s outdated and obsolete is using logic and desire to set right and wrong knowing how many powerful empires succumbed to this disease.  

There is no such thing as equality of race, sex, or nationality. God judges us based on what we do in this world, and not the outside trappings. The god of equality is dead because some people choose right and some choose wrong. Those who choose God are far superior to those that do not.  

There is no concept of “eat, drink, and be merry” because we have lots of work to do in this world and there isn’t a moment to spare. The god of idleness and leisure has no place among the living.  

We don’t call the shots because we are all servants of the King, and the King is here. He is watching over us, and everything we do matters to Him.  

This December 25, as we light our first candle, we celebrate the light of God, the light of mitzvot, and the light of those who follow Him even into the darkness of today’s Esau-dominated world.  

In doing so, we follow in the path of Yosef, of the Jews who resisted the allure of Egypt and received the Torah, of our forefathers who stood up to Greece to defend the Torah God gave us.  

By clinging to God’s light, once again we will kill their gods and reaffirm what the One True God put us on this earth for: 

All the world’s inhabitants will recognize and know that to You every knee should bend, every tongue should swear. (The Alienu prayer) 

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, millions of sunflowers, and Matilda, our local camel. David‘s Israeli startup, 300 Marketing Solutions, is a lean marketing agency for startups and small businesses that creates and promotes SEO-optimized ROI-driven to the right audience on LinkedIn to make your business the star of the show.