Rambam’s fifth mitsvah, le-`ovdo, to serve Him, raises a technical problem in its very definition. Rambam clearly sees his count of mitsvot as contrasting earlier ones, particularly that of the Halakhot Gedolot. To justify those differences, he opened the work with fourteen shorashim, principles, for how to count the 613. (These principles themselves, with Ramban’s lengthy glosses, can and have stimulated many shiurim, since they reveal the two scholars’ views of global issues regarding the nature of mitsvot and their codification; but that is for another time).

The fourth of those principles states that Rambam does not count mitsvot that include the whole Torah. Rambam does not include, for example, "Kedoshim tihyu, you shall be holy" despite its being phrased as a command and its stating an important principles of Jewish religious life. Rambam does not mean that these statements are not obligatory, just that they are not part of what the Talmud meant when it said that the Torah contains 613 mitsvot.

Before we investigate how that plays itself out in this particular mitsvah, we should consider how it affects our view of that Talmudic statement (Makkot 23b—Rabbi Samlai taught: 613 mitsvot were said to Moshe). It does not mean, apparently, that there are only 613 obligations in the Torah; there are many more than that. It only means that 613 obligations fit a series of standards for inclusion in the list. One of those standards is that the obligation not be too generally stated, since then it covers the entirety of Torah. Some have suggested, I believe, that it is this view of inclusion that led Rambam to leave the obligation to settle the Land of Israel out of his count, since it, too, really covers the whole Torah.

The mitsvah of avodah merits inclusion here, however, because a specific obligatory act qualifies as an expression of avodat Hashem, service of God. That a certain act can turn a mitsvah hakolelet kol haTorah into a mitsvah that makes it onto the list might also explain the mitsvot we have seen so far, such as ahavat Hashem, love of God. Those mitsvot were also ones that in some sense included the entire Torah. Rambam would, however, say that the contemplation of the world and the focusing of one’s attention on God constitute obligatory acts that therefore render them ripe for inclusion.

Rambam notes that Hazal refer to prayer as the definition of avodah, although they also, elsewhere, call study the definition of avodah. By considering how both of these qualify as service, we can deepen our appreciation of what we are meant to do in serving God generally, as well as how prayer is supposed to take its place in that picture. In the first chapter of Rambam’s Laws of Tefillah, he defines prayer as being mithanen, pleading, with God at least once a day. The structure of that pleading is to open with some words of praise, to formulate some kind of request referring to his personal needs, and then close with thanks and praise for the blessings God already provides in our lives.

Fundamentally, then, prayer consists of petition; how does that constitute service? Petition is as important for the petitioner as the result—by daily considering our needs and turning to God for assistance, we (without absolving ourselves of any responsibility to work to achieve those ends ourselves) articulate our dependence on God. That dependence, I would maintain, is what Rambam means by `avodah. In a life where we can too easily come to believe that our efforts are what bring us our wants, the conscious insistence that all comes from God is an act of worship of the highest order.

Study, the other example of `avodah Rambam mentions, works slightly differently; there, the worship stems from investing oneself in the understanding of God’s word and the religious system that Word set up. Similarly, though, it involves making sure that our lives, which can too easily be free of God, are instead filled with thoughts of God and attempts to maintain His centrality in our existence.

The view that the mitsvah of tefillah focuses on asserting our dependence on God supports a famous idea articulated by the Rov, ztllh"h. It is well-known that Ramban disagreed with Rambam about whether prayer was obligatory, believing that the Torah only required prayer in times of particular distress. The Rov suggested that Rambam and Ramban don’t disagree in principle, but that Rambam was meant to assert that the Jew must daily experience himself as being in sufficient distress to call out to God. That would make particular sense if Rambam saw the mitsvah of `avodah as increasing one’s sense of the presence of God—part of that endeavor would be to pay careful attention to our needs, and to experience them all as situations where God’s involvement is essential.

This is pretty heady stuff, particularly coming from a man who stresses so often elsewhere our inability to make any positive statements about God. Academics tend to take that to mean that Rambam saw God as completely uninvolved in the world, since any involvement would imply change in a perfect God. The mitsvah of tefillah, however, suggests that the academics are only half-right (as, sadly, is so often true). Rambam indeed sees God as fully Other, fully perfect and unchanging. At the same time, in a way he would not dare define since he believed it was impossible for humans to make fully accurate positive statements about God, he also thought God was immanent in this world, involved, and the source of our salvation from every distress.