Mitzvah of the Week - Intro Post #2

Today, my MOTW project officially begins! 

Having given this some thought since posting last week about this, there are a few other things I should probably say here by way of procedure before jumping in.

• As I mentioned in that post, my main guide will be Rambam's Sefer Hamitzvot (with the Jewfaq.org list as an online backup/companion guide).  Rambam's list of the mitzvot divides the 613 into 248 "positive" commandments ("corresponding to the organs of the human body") and 365 "negative" commandments ("corresponding to the days of the solar year").  You can find that list here.  Obviously any list has advantages and disadvantages.  In this case, it means doing all the positive commandments before the negative ones.  It can't be helped.  I hope I don't run out of steam!
  
• Where needed, I will show Tanakh references using the excellent Mechon Mamre site.  (While I don't love it's English translation, it does give the Hebrew.  I will also be consulting the most recent JPS translation to make sure I'm getting the right meanings.)  Talmud references, unfortunately, are a bit trickier.  The weakness of my Aramaic is only superceded by my lack of Talmud knowledge.  I could provide online references to specific pages, but (a) this doesn't help me too much and (b) it isn't likely to be of help to the kinds of people who might ever read this.  So instead I'll provide references to the relevant Babylonian Talmud English-language translation at the Internet Sacred Text Archive. 
  
• Organization of the posts is going to be a little tricky, because there's going to be "before," "during," and "after" components of each mitzvah:  "before" is my reading up of what the mitzvah actually requires, existence of alternative readings/interpretations, if any, and what my own thoughts are before juming in; "during" would be my thoughts and comments while the week is going on; and "after," of course, would be the post-game round-up.  I think the only way to do this properly, without causing confusion for all 2 people who will ever read this, is to put each mitzvah (or group of mitzvot) into one post, containing the before, during and after analysis.  Otherwise there would be too many posts, and too much jumping around.  So, check back here in one week's time for the post on positive mitzvah #1, to believe in God.

Stay tuned!