|
|
|
|
The Great Principle What does the word ‘mitzvah’ mean? Well, it depends on the context: It’s a mitzvah to visit a sick person; it’s a mitzvah to be called up to the Torah. In the first example, mitzvah might be translated as ‘good deed’ - in the second, as ‘honour’. Alternatively, when we use the word mitzvah in the plural, ‘mitzvot’ – in any context – we tend to think in terms of ‘commandments’. And, indeed, this is the essence of the meaning: Not ‘good deed’ or ‘honour’; a mitzvah is a ‘commandment’. We now have an accurate translation. But what are the implications? The word mitzvah implies a Metzaveh, a Commander. According to the Torah, God is the Metazaveh who commands the People Israel to obey Him: God is the Master, Israel, the servant. ‘Let My people go, that they may serve Me’: The Eternal One liberated our ancestors from servitude in Egypt to enter the service of God. That is why the Exodus from Egypt involved a journey to Sinai. Pesach leads, inevitably, to Shavuot. The logic is indisputable. But many Jews today feel completely alienated from such an authoritarian image of God. And then there’s the problem of the ‘small print’: reward for obedient compliance - and punishment if we fail to submit. We live in a democratic age – and what is more, painful experience has taught us that the system doesn’t work: we have seen the righteous suffer; the wicked flourish again and again. So
what do we do? We can walk away
from Judaism or we can re-examine our tradition and find other ways of
expressing our commitment to God – and to one another.
At Pesach, we turn to the Song of Songs for an allegory of the love
between God and Israel. At
Shavuot, we read the Book of Ruth, and find, in Ruth’s declaration to her
mother-in-law, Naomi, a moving testimony to the power of commitment, which is
at the heart of Jewish life: ‘Wherever
you will go, I will go; wherever you will lodge, I will lodge; your people
shall be my people, and your God, my God.’ (1: 16).
We don’t need to be frightened into submission; we need to receive
love, guidance and support. Humanity
is capable of terrible evil, but each human being is also, as we read in the
Torah, tzelem Elohim, an image of God (Genesis 1: 27), with a deep
capacity for love, goodness and commitment.
Our sacred task is to nourish and nurture that capacity in ourselves
and in one another, so that each person is able to fulfil what Rabbi Akiva
called, not a ‘commandment’, but rather, the ‘great principle’ of the
Torah: You shall your neighbour
as yourself’ (Leviticus 19: 18). |
