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Podcast: The Great Sources with Rabbi Shnayor Burton
Episode: S1, E9 The Interdependence of Prophecy and Idolatry, according to Reb Tzadok
Description: At the same point in history, both prophecy and the impulse for idolatry ceased, changing the face of Judaism and its struggles. Can these two things – one of the greatest godliness, the other of the greatest wickedness – somehow be related?
Yes, says Reb Tzadok, prophecy and idolatry have the same root: God's immanence and visibility. In the era that God made Himself known through prophetic image, there was a concomitant passion to concretize Him, to represent the divine with physical form and direct our worship to that. Prophecy ended and now God is hidden, to be approached thro...