RAV KOOK ON Re'eih Part 2: Uprooting Idolatry in the Land of Israel

As a condition for inheriting the Land of Israel, the Torah demands that all forms of idolatry be destroyed: “You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations whom you are driving out worship their gods.... You must tear down their altars, break up their sacred pillars, burn their Asheirah trees, and chop down the statues of their gods. You must obliterate their names from that place.” (Deut. 12:2-3) The Torah stresses that this obligation to destroy idolatrous artifacts is primarily binding in the Land of Israel. As the Sages commented, “'You will obliterate their names from that place’ — in the land of Israel you are commanded to pursue idolatry [until it is totally eradicated], but not outside the land.” (Sifri; see Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry 7:2) Idolatry is clearly the antithesis of Judaism’s message of monotheism. The imperative to fight idolatry should not be limited to a particular location. So why does the Torah confine the eradication of idolatry to the Land of Israel?