“Pagans were not stupid.” With these rousing words, Rabbi Pesach Wolicki claims that our usual assumption that pagans were merely silly and foolish prevents us from understanding the real polemic against them in the Bible. If we understand what they were actually thinking, many seemingly innocuous verses in Scripture come alive with meaning. Along with David Nekrutman, Rabbi Wolicki examines Psalms 115:5, and it’s emphasis on an idol’s inability to see or speak (no, these terms are not random). Along the way, Rabbi Wolicki tells a story about an umpire who broke his glasses on the second pitch of a softball game in Virginia… and whether saying that “He’s being punished” is a religious or a pagan attitude.
