Parashat Emor – 5786

The Meaning of a Mitzvah

A D’var Torah for Parashat Emor
By Rabbi Wendy Love Anderson

What’s the point of a mitzvah? For most people, a mitzvah is fundamentally something you do, whether you are visiting the sick or donating tzedakah, praying the Shema or eating matzah on Pesah. When you hear about a twelve-year-old’s “mitzvah project” or celebrate “Mitzvah Day” at a local synagogue or refer to Chabad’s “mitzvah tanks,” the presumption is that a mitzvah is a clearly defined action, which can be encouraged through donation drives, activity fairs, or vehicles equipped with ritual accessories.  You can decide to “do” a mitzvah; you can finish it; you can make lists of mitzvot and check them off. In fact, a number of distinctively Jewish practices, such as wearing a tallit or conducting a Passover Seder, offer us opportunities to perform a mitzvah (in this case, putting fringes on our four-cornered garments or remembering the Exodus from Egypt) which we would otherwise struggle to accomplish. This active understanding of mitzvah continues to produce countless good deeds and acts of loving-kindness every day. At the same time, it tends to reduce every divine commandment to a series of actions, and to minimize any mitzvot which are either inaccessible or ethically problematic.

For a select few, mitzvot are fundamentally expressions of a higher purpose, often a particular philosophical or theological ideal: obligation, or worship, or elevating sparks of divinity, or forming a virtuous character. The performance of any particular mitzvah might be justified by revealing its seemingly hidden rationale, or the performance of any particular mitzvah might matter less than the intellectual or mystical project of observing all the mitzvot. In his Special Laws (II.48), the first-century Hellenistic thinker Philo of Alexandria praised the mitzvah of Shabbat observance for enabling a greater philosophical appreciation for God; thousands of years later, the twentieth-century Israeli thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz argued that all the mitzvot should be observed only in order to obey God. Countless Jewish thinkers in the centuries between tried to identify either reasons behind specific mitzvot (often the ones that seemed least rational) or tried to classify mitzvah performance in general as a path toward enlightenment, self-improvement, or healing the world. And these philosophies inspired many generations of thoughtful and questioning Jews to engage deeply with mitzvot and to value their Judaism. It’s inspirational to frame mitzvot – especially the seemingly minor ones – as part of a greater purpose. But these philosophies also had their limits: if one came to distrust a particular rationale, or stopped believing in the overall project, it was difficult to justify any mitzvot except on grounds of self-evident rationality. Establishing justice systems could be explained even without a divine commandment; observing Shabbat, especially with its elaborate web of rabbinic requirements and prohibitions, could not.

The early rabbinic tradition offered a third option, one that resonates with many Jewish learners: perhaps a mitzvah is, fundamentally, something to learn and study. Torah study is its own higher purpose, and actually doing the mitzvah is almost beside the point – or, at least, that’s the message one can take from classical rabbinic literature, where engagement in Torah study could potentially justify delaying the mitzvah of procreation (Kiddushin 29b) or even the time-specific mitzvah of reciting the Shema (Y. Berakhot 1:2:9). This way of understanding mitzvot encompassed even mitzvot that would be impossible for anyone to perform: for instance, in a world without a Temple, studying Torah was equivalent to sacrificing a series of Temple offerings (Menahot 110a). And it offered a possible solution to ethically problematic mitzvot: perhaps the reward for study was the only reason the Torah had ever included passages about stoning a rebellious son or killing every inhabitant of an idolatrous city (Sanhedrin 71a). But the same rabbinic texts that preserve these suggestions preserve equally vigorous counterarguments: surely there is more to mitzvot than studying them! And what about the vast majority of Jews, who are not engaged in nonstop Torah study – how are they to appreciate the mitzvot if Torah scholars avoid them? It would not be much of a Jewish life if the performance of every mitzvah were actually, and not just theoretically, abandoned in favor of Torah study.

This week’s parashah, Emor, offers a smorgasbord of mitzvot, ranging from the rational to the ritual, from the pleasant to the problematic. (Almost all of us look forward to the next Jewish holiday, but very few of us mourn our inability to execute a wayward priest’s daughter.) What’s most compelling about this parashah is its hint that we may not have to choose between different understandings of mitzvot – we can have them all. The early halakhic midrash on the book of Leviticus, Sifra (Emor 9:3), interprets the seemingly isolated verse “You shall observe My commandments [mitzvot] and do them: I am the Lord” (Lev. 22:31) as a three-part description of mitzvot. Observing the mitzvot refers to mishnah, repeating or learning or studying, while doing the mitzvot refers to ma’aseh, action, and the final phrase, “I am the Lord,” refers to a God who is trustworthy to reward. “Observe My commandments and do them” combines both learning and action, each of which is necessary, and the Sifra explains that it is that combination which leads to reward.

The most effective way to understand mitzvot might be exactly this: a combination of learning, action, and the promise that what you have learned and done is part of some greater purpose. After all, study before action makes sense: even a seemingly straightforward good deed, like visiting the sick or donating tzedakah, may be ineffective or harmful if we lack training or don’t understand where to direct our efforts. At the same time, learning should not be the end of our mitzvah journey: we can also act on most of the mitzvot we study, changing not only ourselves but the world around us in meaningful ways. Finally, we can trust that our engagement with mitzvot will be rewarding – in fact, Sifra understands this as the meaning behind every “I am the Lord” in Leviticus, which covers a dizzying range of mitzvot. However, Sifra also leaves its definition of “reward” relatively open, allowing each of us to read our own philosophy or theology into it. Perhaps the mitzvot you learn and do will get you a first-class suite in the World to Come. Perhaps the mitzvot you learn and do will repair the world. Perhaps the mitzvot you learn and do will simply make you feel happier and more fulfilled. This week, the Torah is asking you to explore the way of engaging with mitzvot that you find most rewarding – and then, act on it.