Religion

In our mouths and in our hearts: Day 1

Chag sameach! The omer begins tonight! This means that for the next 7 weeks we’ll be counting up to Shavuot, the time of the giving of Torah.
Here at Jewschool, we argue a lot about Israeli politics and who is and isn’t contributing to the destruction of the Jewish people, but alongside these topics, this seems like an opportune time to argue about Torah. We all have an opinion about it.
According to the traditional count, there are 613 commandments in the Torah. (Contrary to propaganda, nobody observes all of them. A substantial portion of them relate to sacrificial worship, which is not in effect at the present time. And even if it were, I don’t know of anyone who has both given birth and been circumcised.)
Excluding Shabbat and yom tov, there are 41 days in the omer. 613 divided by 41 is about 15. Therefore, each day (other than Shabbat and yom tov) from now until Shavuot, I’m going to post about 15 mitzvot from the Torah. I’ll post them with minimal commentary, and then we can duke it out in the comments. Feel free to post any thoughts on any of the commandments; e.g., interesting ways of observing a given mitzvah, why you think a given mitzvah has no place in modern Judaism, a new interpretation of what a given mitzvah means today, etc.
There are several different enumerations of the 613 mitzvot. I’ll be using the list from Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah (1180), which lists them by subject matter (not by the order they appear in the Torah), starting with Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah (The Foundations of Torah) and ending with Hilchot Melachim uMilchamot (Kings and Wars). Thus we’ll start with basic theological foundations, end with the overarching structure of society, and everything else is in between. (Feel free to argue with Maimonides’ understanding of what the mitzvot are.)
And don’t worry, I’ll still count the omer in a more frivolous way over at Mah Rabu.
So here it goes. Comment away.
1. The First Commandment — “I am Adonai your God” (Exodus 20:2). According to the Rambam, the actual “commandment” here is to know that God exists.
2. The Second Commandment — “You shall have no other gods besides me” (Exodus 20:2)
3. “Listen, Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4) = to acknowledge God’s oneness
4. “You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your strength, and with all your being.” (Deuteronomy 6:5)
5. “You shall fear Adonai your God” (Deuteronomy 10:20)
6. “I will be sanctified among the children of Israel” (Leviticus 22:32) = to sanctify God’s name
7. “Do not profane my holy name” (Leviticus 22:32)
8. “Do not do this to Adonai your God” (Deuteronomy 12:4) = do not destroy things with God’s name
9. “God will raise up a prophet for you … listen to him/her.” (Deuteronomy 18:15)
10. “Do not try Adonai your God.” (Deuteronomy 6:16)
11. “Walk in God’s ways” (Deuteronomy 28:9)
12. “Cling to God” (Deuteronomy 10:20)
13. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)
14. “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19)
15. “Do not hate your fellow in your heart.” (Leviticus 19:17)

49 thoughts on “In our mouths and in our hearts: Day 1

  1. “Do not do this to Adonai your God” (Deuteronomy 12:4) = do not destroy things with God’s name”
    The “things” with his name on them are him himself? sounds like the trip about every representation of the Buddha being like unto him himself— except our G-d is in words, not pictures?

  2. This is WAY too many concepts in one posting. We could spend a month on each one!
    Some thoughts on the first five:
    #1 – inexpressible – all or nothing ever written is about this *anyway* no?
    #2 – in other words: what is avodah zara? … ?
    #3 – again …. “how? what does that mean?” could (and does) fill libraries!
    #4 – love of God & #5 – fear of God …. “how? what does that mean?” …
    I’ll stop there… like a good Jew(ess), I answered each one with a question : )

  3. BZ a wonderful idea! And now for my few cents…
    4. “You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your strength, and with all your being.” (Deuteronomy 6:5)
    5. “You shall fear Adonai your God” (Deuteronomy 10:20)
    I for one tend not to love and fear people or ideas. But I suppose this is the internal struggle of the idea of God. That we can fear and love an entity such as God, we prove that God is bigger–and more adaptable–than anything else or that the Torah had a pretty bad editor who forgot to make sure all of the ideas about the most important being ever were inline.
    Either way I believe we learn a lot from these contradictions in our history.
    Thanks again BZ. This is really great.

  4. 11. “Walk in God’s ways” (Deuteronomy 28:9)

    Oh boy, does this ever need commentary! Do we love the stranger or kill the Sodomites? Do we support the poor and the widow or do we stone or kill or excommunicate the less observant among us? Are her ways, ways of peace and pleasantness and yet we are to kill Amalekites on sight? WWGD? WWYHWHD?
    I submit that to properly walk in God’s ways we must try to live by our ideals to help people while acknowledging that we can’t help or change everybody.

  5. 10. “Do not try Adonai your God.” (Deuteronomy 6:16)
    In response to POLJ and OJ – I’d interpret this one as god’s way of saying “Don’t be difficult and try to make sense of My contradictions. Don’t be annoyingly obsessive about who to allow in your shul. It’s possible to be a study in contradictions and to be divine at the same time. If I have allowed everyone on earth to exist, then follow My example and do the same.”
    This is a fantastic idea – I’m looking forward to the next 40 posts!

  6. “I submit that to properly walk in God’s ways we must try to live by our ideals to help people while acknowledging that we can’t help or change everybody.”
    Oj,
    I totally agree. To me, I have seen too many folks get frustrated that they cannot help everyone. Basically, we have to admit that we are human.

  7. By the way, just in case… by “In response to POLJ and OJ,” I mean I completely agree with you! I just realized that it might be unclear from what I wrote.

  8. OJ – I’m glad you highlighted the ambiguity of what “walking” in God’s ways might really mean. But I think you came to a seemingly happy conclusion a bit too quickly. As you noted, some of God’s actions in the Torah seem problematic or harsh from our modern eyes. In some cases, most of us would actively repudiate some of God’s actions. So to emulate God becomes a complicated thing to understand. But I’m not sure that “living by our ideals” and “helping people” is any less ambiguous. It might seem all sweetness and light from your perspective (or mine), but what about the perspective of someone who thinks throwing stones at people driving on Shabbat is actually a way to live one’s ideals and to help the non-observant realize the error of their ways? Or how about someone who accepts that Leviticus 18:22 absolutely condemns homosexuality, rejecting the arguments of Elliot Dorff or Steve Greenberg as contrary to Halacha? If that person then urges gay men to go through “reparative therapy” to try to change their sexual orientation, are they not just trying to help people? Are they not walking in God’s ways, at least from their perspective? I think people on both the left and the right (politically or religiously) generally assume that their values are based on empathy for others, even if we might argue otherwise based on their actions.

  9. “According to the traditional count, there are 613 commandments in the Torah. (Contrary to propaganda, nobody observes all of them. A substantial portion of them relate to sacrificial worship, which is not in effect at the present time. And even if it were, I don’t know of anyone who has both given birth and been circumcised.)”
    1. What propaganda? Anti-Semitic drivel on the web, and also in print?
    2. More to the point, as to those that relate to `sacrifial worship,’ it’s my understanding that the issue for most of these and possibly some others is that some of the mitzvot of the 613 are only applicable if there is a functioning Temple [capital T] in Jerusalem, as well as the accompanying adminsitrative infrastructure. Notwithstanding the efforts of small extremist groups and individuals [mostoly Jews, but also a few Christians] to create the conditions such that it would be possible to build a new Temple on the site of the first two, there is little likelihood that this will occur.
    3. Some of the mitzvot, I believe, even those not dealing with sacrifice, are only applicable to Jews living within the Land of Israel. It would be good if you delineated these as you itemize.
    4. Somewhere else on the web, I read that
    “at the heart of halakhah is the unchangeable 613 mitzvot that G-d gave …”
    Another website noted that “The Talmud tells us (Tractate Makkot 23b) that there are 613 commandments in the Torah; 248 Positive Commandments (`do’s’) and 365 Negative Commandments (`do not’s’). However, the Talmud does not provide us with a list of these commandments.”
    Then we read that Maimonides lists them in his magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah.
    My question is, are we in an age that is sufficently different than that of the era when Tractate Makkot was compiled, and when the Mishneh Torah was compiled, that not only the number but the content and significance of these 613 mitzvot should be re-examined? Of course, this has a different significance for Jews who consider halacha as binding upon them, Jews who consider halacha part of their heritage and culture and faith, but not necessarily binding, and the overwhelming majority of Jews who do not consider halacha in general or the 613 mitzvot per se as binding upon them or of any special significance per se …

  10. Arieh- 613 goes back to the Talmud and is based on the Torah. There are so many lists of Mitzvot, that, just like the 10 commandments, if the Torah didn’t say there were ten we might not divide them up like we do.
    Likewise, *which* listing of 613 commandments is somewhat arbitrary. BZ may or may not have had a compelling reason for picking Rambam. If you have a list by someone else you’d like to read, by all means, bring that into the discussion.
    I can also assure you that the only people I have heard speak of “observing all 613 commandments” are Jews outreaching to Jews (such as at Aish) which is likely what BZ was referring to.

  11. A simply fascinating idea for communicating the structure and content of the mitzvot via the counting of the Omer. Kudos!

  12. Good timing! #6 and #7 were in the Torah reading for the 2nd day of Pesach, the day this was posted. (Leviticus 22-23 is read on the 2nd day of Pesach regardless of whether that day is considered yom tov, because it contains the part about counting the omer, which begins on that day.)

  13. #10 “You shall not try the LORD your God, as you tried Him in Massah.”
    What is meant here by the word translated “try”? In Hebrew it’s “t’nasu,” a root normally translated as “test.” For example, we speak of the command to Avraham to sacrifice his son as a “test” for him. Meanwhile, the context of Massah seems to refer to rebelling against G!d.
    You shall not try/test/rebel against/challenge the L!rd your G!d.
    How does this fit with the story of the Talmud which declares that “The Torah is not in Heaven” and when the Rabbis determine the law based on their own understanding rather than miracles or divine voices, G!d joyfully laughs? “My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me” G!d says with a smile, like the chess mentor who loses to the protege for the first time.
    It seems we are encouraged to challenge G!d, at least in terms of playing the game that G!d taught us. Our success is in turn G!d’s success, for teaching us well.
    Does “t’nasu” mean something different here? A rebellious, untrusting sort of test? A refusal to play the game?

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