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Are there any good deeds that are not rewarded?

שו”תCategory: philosophyAre there any good deeds that are not rewarded?
asked 5 years ago

Are there any good deeds that are not rewarded?
For example, there is a positive commandment from the Torah to divorce a woman by divorce. Does the one who fulfills this commandment receive a reward in the same way that a person who takes a lulav on Sukkot receives a reward?

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מיכי Staff answered 5 years ago

There are positive commandments that are procedural commandments. For example, Ase Tza (breaking vows) and Tzo and beyond (the commandments of impurity). Maimonides himself writes there that there is neither a commandment nor a prohibition here, but only a definition, and yet it is defined by him as a positive commandment. It is clear that a man who broke a vow to his wife does not receive a reward for it because he did not do something positive. The commandment only defines what the one who wants to break it should do. If he does not do this, he simply did not break it and that is it.
Regarding the commandment to divorce a wife by divorce, it is commonly thought that this is a procedural commandment. If so, then my words above apply to this as well. But in the education at the end of the commandment of divorce, it is written that there is a punishment for those who do not divorce in this manner, and his words prove that it is truly a mitzvah. In an article I once explained that he meant to say that he who divorces his wife, that is, removes her from his house (divorce in the everyday sense, not the halakhic sense), must also permit her to sell, that is, give her a legal divorce. And if he does not do so, he is punished. I doubt whether when he does so, he has a reward. There are positive commandments that are not the following from the general rule of positive, that is, a mitzvah that if you abrogate it, you have a punishment, and if it exists, you have no reward. For example, the commandment of eating fruits on the seventh day, which the Sages require “to eat” – and not to trade. Interpretation: He who eats does not have a mitzvah, but he who trades in them has abrogated the act of “to eat”.

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