Mitzvot of the Week: #2, #3 - Not to believe in other gods/To believe that God is one

Introduction:

The Rambam doesn't make things easy here.  By my reading, there is a "double-double" approach to the uniqueness of God.  First, as in Week 1, he seems to approach this mitzvah from two different angles, "belief" in vs. "knowledge" of God's oneness.  Second, the mitzvah is really two mitzvot, one positive, one negative.  So what we have here, at first blush, are four possible approaches -- (1) to believe in God's oneness and (2) not to believe in other gods (from Sefer HaMitzvot); and (3) to know that God is one and (4) not to consider that there are other gods (from Mishneh Torah).  I look at his arguments for all four of these positions, but I adhere to the Rambam's classification system by considering that these positions really constitute two mitzvot, opposite sides of the same coin.

In Sefer HaMitzvot (Negative Commandments - Mitzvah 1), "The exhortation against believing [מלהאמין] in the Divinity of aught beside Him" is stated as the first negative commandment.  The Rambam here cites Exodus 20:3:  "There shall not be unto you any other gods before my presence" (לֹא-יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים, עַל-פָּנָי).  As with the first mitzvah concerning belief/knowledge of God, he cites Makkot 23a as to the status of this "exhortation" as a negative commandment. 

On the positive side (Positive Commandments - Mitzvah 2), he writes that to believe in God's oneness means "to believe [להאמין] that the Maker of the creation and its First Cause is one, as the Exalted One has said (Deuteronomy 6:4): "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." "The intent here," Rambam continues, "is that He took us out of the house of bondage and bestowed upon us what He did out of lovingkindness and beneficence only, so that we believe in the Unity, as is our obligation." This mitzvah, he says, is also known as "mitzvath yichud" (i.e., the commandment of unity).

In the Mishneh Torah, however, these mitzvot are explained slightly differently.  In Chapter 1.6, he explains that "Anyone who presumes [המעלה על דעתו] that there is another god transgresses a negative commandment" [emphasis mine] while in Chapter 1.7, he writes "The knowledge of this concept [that God is one] fulfills a positive commandment, [as implied by Deuteronomy 6:4]..." [emphasis mine]. 

Some preliminary thoughts and questions:

Mitzvah of the Week: #1 - To know/believe there is a God

Okay, after a lot of work on this, I'm back on track!  Except doing so meant some re-jiggering of "week 1."

That post, now significantly reworked, is here.

Onward to Week 2: Not to believe in/consider the thought of a divinity other than God.

Mitzvah of the Week: Update

Not a very auspicious start to my Mitzvah of the Week project, is it?

In order to make it work, I need to devote more time to the ground work -- to knowing what the mitzvah in question, thinking about it before jumping in, then taking the time to write a thoughtful post-mortem.  The holidays have made this hard, not to mention that I've been a little intimidated by the literature.  You'd think it would be easy to find (a) an unambiguous list of the mitzvot themselves and (b) sufficient background material to make sense of what they actually ask one to do.  In reality, it isn't so easy.  I've already come to the realization that the Rambam's Sefer HaMitzvot is really only the tip of one iceberg.  The paragraph or two he offers by way of explaining each miztvah is one thing; his Mishnah Torah has many, many volumes, each of which takes a handful of mitzvot and treats them in much greater depth.  This is good, because it provides a lot more food for thought and much more explanation than in Sefer HaMitzvot alone.  The problem is that the order in which the mitzvot are treated in the Mishnah Torah isn't the same as in Sefer HaMitzvot.  So I either have to spend $600 to buy the entire set up front, or go with the flow and work through the volumes in their original order.  I'm going with the latter.

So I apologize for the delay, but it should be worth it...  Stay tuned!

Mitzvah of the Week: #1 - To know/believe there is a God

In light of what I have learned over the past couple weeks about this mitzvah, I felt some serious editing was in order.  Rather than publish this as an entirely new post, I decided instead to re-write it, retaining those parts from the original that made sense, adding new ideas where necessary.

The important change, which I discussed in this post, is that rather than relying on the Rambam's Sefer HaMitzvot (see here for Hebrew-only version), I am going to work my way through his Mishneh Torah ("MT"), tackling the mitzvot in the order in which they appear there.  There's a lot more commentary and discussion in the MT, so I think in the long run this will make the most sense.  (Chabad's English translation of the MT can be found here.  Hebrew can be found here and, in a slightly more readable format, here.  I am also relying on Rabbi Eliyahu Tougher's translation and commentary published by Moznaim.)

Introduction:

Interesting that what is arguably the most central, important mitzvah is described by the Rambam in two different ways.

In Sefer HaMitzvot, he explains that believing in God - this first positive commandment - means "to believe [להאמין] that there is a Cause and a Reason which is the Maker of all the creations..."  He cites Exodus 20:2, in which God says "I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" as well as Deut. 5:6, where Moses quotes God saying these same words.  Rambam also refers to Makkot  23a [53-54]:

R. Simlayi lectured: Six hundred and thirteen commands were said to Moses; three hundred and sixty-five of them negatives, corresponding to the number of days in a year counting according to sunrise; and two hundred and forty-eight positives, corresponding to the members of a man's body. Said R. Hamnunah: Where is there an allusion thereto in the Scripture? [Deut. xxxiii. 4]: "The Torah which Moses commanded us." The letters of the word Torah number six hundred and eleven (Tav is 400; Vov, 6; Reish, 200, and Hei, 5), and the two first commandments [i.e., Exodus 20:2], however, of the ten, we ourselves have heard from Heaven.

Concludes Rambam, "It is clear, then, that 'I am the Lord your God' is included in the 613 mitzvoth, and it is the commandment to believe, as we have explained."

However, in the MT (Sefer HaMada, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah, Chap.1), the Rambam says "The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know [לידע] that there is a Primary Being who rought into being all existence..." and that "the knowledge of this concept [וידיעת דבר זה מצות עשה] is a positive commandment..."  The basis of this comandment is the same as in Sefer HaMitzvot (i.e., Exodus 20:2), though there is more discussion in this chapter of MT about what this knowledge entails.

Some preliminary thoughts and questions:

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!

Mitzvah of the Week

Ah yes, mitzvot.

One of my plans for this blog -- something I have had in the back (and front) of my mind to do for quite some time -- is to take a long,  hard look at the "taryag mitzvot":  the 613 commandments that constitute the corpus of a Jew's obligation to God. 

(Having recently read some of BZ's posts on this subject over at Mah Rabu -- such as this one -- I'm aware that there are potential "framing" issues attendant to my formulation of the subject, in particular, the notion that there is some agreed-upon, bounded set of mitzvot and that their meaning, modes of implementation, etc. are unchanging and uncontested.  At least for right now, my intention is to keep these things in mind as I proceed with my own explorations.  I plan to take up BZ's framing arguments more generally in a later post.)

Why?

As a Reform Jew, my relationship to mitzvot has always been problematic. 

In the first place, RJs just don't study them.  This makes a certain amount of sense:  We have enough on our plate keeping up with the mitzvot that are perceived as relevant and worthy of observing, much less those that on their face have little or no relevance to the kinds of lives we lead.  So the emphasis on education is to "focus on the positives" -- those things RJs as a whole either do or might possibly do -- rather than "to know the laws."  I kind of blame my Jewish educators for this one.

Of course, blaming one's teachers is a pretty sorry reason for not knowing the laws (forget following them or not).  Until relatively recently, actually, within the last year, I had never even read a list of the 613.  There were some real surprises for me there...but I get ahead of myself.

The problematic aspect of the mitzvot for me has been that "mitzvas" are not "good deeds" -- they're not meant to me things that make one feel good, or things that any decent person should do.  They're ostensibly commandments or obligations -- expressions of God's will.  Kind of heavy, and no wonder RJs tend not to dwell on them.  To understand and appreciate that mitzvot are not just "principles to live by" but actually commandments from God...well, that makes them a different animal entirely.  Ah, but then one starts to see what's involved in the observance of mitzvot, and things get murky.  Some of them I think are plain wrong.  Others may not be "right" or "wrong," but their observance doesn't speak to me in any meaningful way.  Yet others make sense, but are so alien to the way I have lived my life, that I can't imagine observing them in any consistent way.  And then there are the mitzvot that, when you start to look at them closely, make no sense at all.  Well, they make sense, but when I go back to their textual bases -- where does a particular mitzvah "come from" -- they don't seem to be supported by the underlying words.

But, in the end, none of these are reasons not to know.

It's particularly troubling to me that the Reform movement's stand on mitzvot is so at odds with what seems to be the practice of RJs.  "A Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism" adopted by the CCAR in Pittsburgh in 1999 reads, in part

We are committed to the ongoing study of the whole array of [mitzvot] and to the fulfillment of those that address us as individuals and as a community. Some of these [mitzvot], sacred obligations, have long been observed by Reform Jews; others, both ancient and modern, demand renewed attention as the result of the unique context of our own times.

Now to be fair, I was "born and bred" as a Reform Jew prior to 1999, but I have to wonder out loud to what extent the commitment referred to here has actually been manifested, in study and action, in the collective behavior of Reform Jews.  If it has, I've certainly seen little evidence of it.

So...

I'm going to undertake a project I've long delayed, with the understanding that I have no idea where it will lead, what I will discover, or what it all means anyway:  I'm going to examine and, where applicable, observe all of the 613 mitzvot...one by one.  I'll read up as much as I can, including reading Rambam's Sefer Hamitzvot as a kind of companion guide (yes, I know he's not the first and last word on mitzvot, but I'll be reading other sources too).  I'll blog about my experiences here, warts and all.  To be sure, I'll probably end up grouping some of them together -- I can't imagine devoting weeks and weeks to the incest probibitions, for example.  And for obvious reasons I'll have to skip around here and there, particularly with the holiday-related ones.  Others may need more than one week -- Shabbat-related mitzvot are kind of big ones and should probably get more time, both in terms of studying them and observing them.  You get the idea.  Overall, by trying to stick to one a week, it will give me the opportunity to do my best to really observe it -- to focus on a single thing (or set of things) without being distracted.

I fear that I don't know enough to do this right.  I fear that if I don't do this, I never will.  I hope that I will be challenged, enlightened and wizened by doing it.  And, perhaps most of all, I hope that if anyone out there ever bothers to read any of this, that I will hear other people's thoughts, suggestions, etc.  If I could find a good RJ chevrusa to do this, I would, but most would find this a little crazy.

Wow.  It's out there now.  Let's see what happens...