As I announced last Friday night in the RJC, I have decided to shift the focus of my Friday night divrei Torah, and of these sheets, in a way that I think will be both stimulating and productive (at the very least for myself). At the end of his presentation of the positive commandments in the Sefer haMitsvot, Rambam points out that many of the positive commandments only apply in certain times, places, or to certain people. However, he says, there are 60 (for men, 46 for women, as I mentioned this past Friday night) that apply to all men everywhere, assuming only that they live an ordinary human life. For the next while, it seems useful to study those mitsvot, to see the positive elements of Judaism that are universal, that apply to any Jew anywhere. In this way, perhaps, we can broaden and deepen our understanding of what it fundamentally means to be an observant Jew. This sheet will present the major issues involved in a mitsvah, with the Friday night presentation taking up a small piece that can be discussed briefly.

The first mitsvah in Rambam’s list (Rambam lists the mitsvot according to a conceptual order that scholars ever since have been attempting to fully decipher), is the mitsvah to believe in God. As Rambam notes, when God led off the Ten Commandments with the words "I am the Lord your God," that was an order, not a statement of fact. In the Sefer haMitsvot, Rambam expresses it as a requirement to believe that there is a cause and a reason for all (God) and that He moves all that exists. That expression of the issue—and this aspect is echoed in the Mishneh Torah, Rambam’s halakhic work—seems satisfied with a fairly removed vision of God. We are required to believe that there is a cause underlying all that exists (in Aristotelian terms, a First Cause or Prime Mover), and that that cause is called God.

We will discuss Ramban’s different expression of this idea in a moment, but before leaving Rambam we should note a striking departure in the Mishneh Torah from the perspective advanced in the Sefer haMitsvot. While here, the commandment is seen as being "to believe," Rambam there uses the term leda, to know, both in his summary of the mitsvot incorporated in that section (the koteret) as well as in the actual laws themselves, which he introduces with the words "The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdoms is to know that there is a First Existent…" There are several possible explanations for the switch, and the minimal version of God that Rambam presents, and scholars will differ depending on their attitude towards Rambam generally. I personally suspect that Rambam struggled with how the Torah could command belief. He originally codified it in that way, but eventually came to believe that the Torah could only command something that humans can attain, and only the minimal (and logically provable) fact of God’s existence was obligatory.

That perspective clashes with Ramban’s (in the Commentary to those verses in Shemot) and the Hinukh in Mitsvah 25. As the Hinukh phrases it, the balance between belief and knowledge is a question of personal training. The obligation is to believe in God’s existence to enough of an extent that I will not verbally entertain any other possibility (even on pain of death), and that if asked I will always answer as if God certainly exists. If I do that for long enough, and grow sufficiently in my wisdom, I will come to know of His existence fully, and fulfill this obligation in the most desirable way. Knowing of God’s existence thus involves internalizing that fact so fully that it affects one’s perspective on the world. By building upon the basic requirement to verbalize and not deny, one achieves knowledge, the standard Rambam lay down.

One other important element of Ramban and Hinukh’s presentation affects the nature of the mitsvah. Rambam leaves out of the mitsvah any mention of God’s having taken the Jewish people out of Egypt, despite the verse’s clearly referring the principle of God’s existence (I am the Lord Your God) to the fact of the Exodus (that I have taken you out of the Land of Egypt). For the Hinukh, this points out that our belief in God must include the notion that He affects matters on this Eartyh, is Eternal (and Omniscient, etc.), and that He took us out of Egypt and gave us the Torah. Possibly for complicated philosophical reasons having to do with his vision of God’s interaction with this world (or lack of it), Rambam does not mention these elements, either in the Sefer haMitsvot or in the beginning of the Mishneh Torah.

As we close this first week’s presentation, we should remember that most mitsvot `aseh are seen by halakhah as having equal standard and importance. Taking a lulav on Sukkot is, in technical terms, as important as placing a mezuzah on one’s door. Ordinarily I would stress that equality of mitsvot `aseh to strengthen our commitment to, and interest in, observing mitsvot that seem ill-defined. If that were true here, I would mean that we might not often think of the act of reminding ourselves of God’s existence (and all that extends from that fact) as a mitsvah. This mitsvah, however, is so fundamental (the Hinukh, a couple of times, points out that someone who does not fulfill this mitsvah is a heretic and loses much of his right to membership in the Jewish people) and so all-pervasive (there is no proper time for the fulfillment of the mitsvah, it is always applicable and needs to be worked on) that it seems almost to denigrate it to say that it is as important as taking a lulav. It is, rather, a fundamental foundation, without which a true Jewish life is unthinkable.

Shabbat Shalom.