The subject of Tractate Avoda Zara, which Daf Yomi readers have been studying for the last few weeks, is idol worship. But the Talmud was written in a time and place where virtually everyone who wasn't Jewish was, by the rabbis' definition, an idol-worshipper. Ancient Romans and Persians alike practiced religions that involved offering sacrifices to statues that represented their gods. This would change over the centuries, as Christianity and Islam, the other Abrahamic faiths, evolved out of Judaism and spread around the world. Jewish relations with Christians and Muslims were far from happy, as we know from history, but Jewish authorities considered them to be fellow monotheists, bound by an ethical code. Not so with the ancient pagans, who were considered to be something between atheists and demon-worshipers, capable of any iniquity.
As a result, Tracate Avoda Zara is really less about idol-worship than it is about how Jews should relate to pagans in general. Idol-worship is one of the worst sins in Judaism, but in this section of the Talmud, the rabbis don't seem much disturbed by the possibility that a Jew might be tempted to commit it. Rather, they are concerned with patrolling the boundaries between Jewish and pagan society, using idol-worship as a kind of all-purpose excuse to enforce Jewish self-segregation. At moments, however, the excuse wears thin and the rabbis' real concerns can be glimpsed: not just idol-worship, but what we now call “assimilation,” the possibility that a Jew would become so well-integrated into gentile society that he would stop being Jewish.
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