The Torah portion of Mishpatim is chock-full of commandments. Moses is still up on Sinai after having heard the aseret hadibrot, the Ten Sayings – more commonly known as the Ten Commandments – and now God continues to let Moses know of more laws to help the community live in the future. Laws of indentured servitude are mentioned, as are laws concerning penalties for various crimes, laws regarding loans, laws regarding courts of law, laws regarding the mistreatment of foreigners, laws regarding festivals and so much more – traditionally, it is said that there are fifty-three commandments in this Torah portion alone!
The word mitzvah
means commandment. It comes from the root tzavav, meaning to command. But
what does it mean for God to command? Is God really the Metzaveh - the
Supernatural anthropomorphized Commander who barks unquestionable orders from
on high? That is surely the model presented in Torah, but is it how we view God
today? And if not, what does that mean for the concept of mitzvah, of
commandment, itself?
Freud believed
that the anthropomorphic God – the God who talks and acts like we do is a
projection “of man’s own emotional impulses … [so that he] meets his internal
mental processes again outside himself…”[1]
Rabbinic literature says that all anthropomorphic descriptions of God are just
Torah speaking in human language so that it could be comprehended. Whether that
supernatural God is an external projection of the self, or a linguistic
approximation… either way the concept of God as Commander immediately opens
itself up for scrutiny when we don’t text the Biblical text absolutely
literally. And if God is not compelling us, why would we keep any mitzvah,
any commandment? Do we only feel compelled because of a supernatural Commander,
or can there be another thing driving us?
For some Jews,
the compulsion to perform mitzvot comes from, to use Leslie Fiedler’s
term, the desire to not be “the terminal Jew, the last of a 4,000 year line.”
In other words, they perform mitzvot out of guilt. Ironically, it is
exactly that kind of reason which might lead them to be the terminal Jew in
their family, for doing things out of guilt is not something any of us wish to
pass down to our children. Similarly, ironically, resorting to the old trope of
“tradition!” no longer holds much appeal in current younger generations who
have been exposed to a wider variety of traditions than ever before, and so
find themselves at the luxury of being able to choose which traditions to
continue. That appeal to tradition worked when the Jewish community was responsible
for enforcing its own laws, but the price of assimilation into the larger secular
society, which of course brought with it great learning and opportunities, was
that the Rabbi and the community were no longer able to enforce commandments. For
the first time, there was no way to punish someone who did not follow a
commandment. What, then, is the point of a commandment if there are no
consequences for following it or not?
For many Jews
today, God is within us or within the world. If that’s the case, then, does mitzvah
no longer exist? Can we be commanded if the commander is within us or within
the world? Perhaps one answer to this can be found in Talmud, where we learn
(Eruvin 13b) that “for three years Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai debated each
other. These said that the halakhah follows their view, and these said that the
halakhah follows their view. A heavenly voice went forth and declared, “These
and these are the words of the living God”. But the halakhah follows Bet Hillel.”
Two schools of thought believed that the law followed their interpretation.
Although in the end a Divine Voice decrees in favor of one and not the other,
we cannot rely on heavenly voices – indeed, another famous text (Bava Metzia
59a-b) known as the Oven of Akhnai specifically puts the authority for halakhic
decisions on earth by saying lo bashamayim hi – it is not in heaven! It
is up to us to study together and to determine what we are commanded to do. The
law is in our hands, not in the hands of a Supreme Commander on High.
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan
translated mitzvot as “folkways designed to ensure the enhancement of
the value of Jewish life.” While I admire his interpretive effort, I don’t
think that is sufficient – indeed, it potential elevates human feelings of
enhancement over any sense of compulsion or duty. It is also extremely subjective
because what one person thinks enhances their Jewish life another might not, at
which point mitzvah becomes a meaningless term.
Talmud also
teaches us (Shabbat 88a) that at Sinai the Israelites “stood at the foot [lit.
in the bottom] of the mountain… and that ‘This teaches that the Holy One,
blessed is He, covered them with the mountain as an upturned vat. He said to
them, ‘If you accept the Torah, fine. But if not, your burial will be there!’’ When
the Israelites reply to Moses na’aseh v’nishma – we will do and we will
hear, as they say in this week’s Torah portion, that suddenly sounds like desperation
– “Okay, we’ll do it, now put down the mountain and we will hear what you want
us to do!” The reality is, though, that very few Jews today feel like there’s a
mountain held over their head. There is no compulsion from on high. But there
is a drive from within.
If it’s not
guilt, not tradition, not compulsion from a supernatural deity above… what is
that drive from within? Rabbi Elli Tikvah-Sarah, my teacher, translates mitzvah
as compelling commitment. That may be a commitment to becoming a better
self, to creating a better world, to maintaining or invigorating an ancient
practice. The commander is not personal, but something deep within, perhaps
tribal, perhaps personal, perhaps communal. It is elusive. Maybe we feel
compelled to perform a mitzvah because it enriches our life – maybe it
brings beauty, calmness, a memory of family long gone. Maybe, then, the
Metzaveh – the Commander – isn’t a supernatural general in the sky, it’s not in
the great supernatural displays. Maybe, instead, it’s the still, small voice
within us, the voice that gently whispers to us with a soft, murmuring sound
that stirs our soul. That’s not a voice that terrifies us into observance, it’s
one that lovingly invites us. After all, Talmud also teaches (Sotah 31a) that
the greater person is the one who acts out of love, not fear. And if that’s the
case, if love is the metzaveh, the guide that brings us to observing mitzvot,
then I believe that our task must be to instil love of Judaism in this generation
and in future generations. Together, we can lovingly pore over the texts of our
tradition and try to give shape to the compelling commitment in our generation.
And it is not any commitment, it is not a social commitment, or a personal one,
but a religious one. A shared religious commitment. Every day we stand together
again at Sinai, trying to understand how to make real our religious sense of
being. By bringing together study, logic, tradition, emotion, love and new readings
of our tradition to be held with traditional readings, we can give shape to the
voice that calls to us from on top of the mountain. It calls us to ascend, not
to meet God who waits on high for us… it calls us to truly find ourselves. May we
ascend in community, in love, and compelled to act together as one Jewish
community. And let us say, Amen.
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