What Is a Commandment? – Lesson 1

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But what? It’s not defined as a divine entity. If I do something… no, they say no: “accepting it as a god” means you obey it; that’s called accepting it as a god. The proof, they say, is that if you do it out of fear, then you’re doing it so you won’t get hurt—that’s why you’re doing it—and that’s called accepting it as a god. As opposed to love and fear, which are love and fear of a person, because love and fear of an idol is, in their view, accepting it as a god. The contrast between love and fear and accepting it as a god, according to the other medieval authorities (Rishonim), not Maimonides, is all about who the addressee of the love and fear is. If the addressee is the idol, that’s accepting it as a god. If the addressee is another person, then there’s no accepting it as a god here. And that’s the dispute between Abaye and Rava. Maimonides basically wants to say this: accepting it as a god—what is a god? What is a god in general? A god—in the beginning of tractate Sanhedrin, the Talmud learns where we know that a religious court of three is required. It says “elohim” three times in the passage, so you need three judges. “Elohim” means a judge. Why? Why is a judge called “elohim”? Because he has authority. Right, he has authority; you have to obey him. Why? Not because he’s right, not even because he’ll punish you. You have to obey him because he is the judge. His authority is institutional authority; by virtue of the fact that he is who he is, I am obligated to obey him. And conversely—not because he’ll punish me if I don’t obey him, and not because I love him, and not because I think he’s right. All those things are side considerations for why to obey him. You’re supposed to obey a judge because he is the judge. If you ask me why, the only answer is: that’s just how it is. There is no answer—just because. Because he is the judge. And that’s why he’s called “elohim.” A god is someone whose authority—the obligation to obey him—derives from who he is, not from some other consideration: because I love him, fear him, am afraid of what will happen, want to make the world better, all kinds of things like that. No, none of those. Rather: because he is a god. That is the reason one must obey him. If there is such a factor, that I obey only because he is who he is, that is called a god. If there is someone… and that is called accepting it as a god. I accept him upon myself as that kind of authority, so that whatever he says, I do. Why? Because he said it. Not because he’s right, and not because I have some consideration—I love, fear, am afraid, want to gain something, nothing. A god is someone whose words I follow because he is who he is. That is called a god. And that’s why a judge is called “elohim.” As for the fact that he can punish and all that—well, the Holy One, blessed be He, also punishes. But He punishes in order to help me fulfill my obligation. I don’t do it because He punishes. He punishes because I am supposed to do it, and if I didn’t do it, then I deserve punishment. There are people who think I have to do it because otherwise I’ll be punished—that’s service out of fear. But service out of fear is not really service. You’re supposed to serve Him because He is the Holy One, blessed be He. He punishes because for some people that isn’t enough in order for them to do the service, so He also gives them punishment to help them do the right thing. But in essence that shouldn’t be the reason at all. We’ll see that later too. So what does this actually mean? That accepting it as a god, according to Maimonides, really is not love and fear of an idol. Love and fear of an idol is not accepting it as a god. If you love or fear the idol and therefore obey it, then it’s not a god at all. You obey it because of your own interests or desires, not because of who it is. Both love and fear are like that. If you do it because you love it, then at the end of the day you’re doing it in order to sustain the feeling of love within yourself. If you do it because you fear it, then obviously you’re doing it so you won’t get whatever you think you’ll get hit with. All these considerations are side considerations for why to obey it. Therefore this is not accepting it as a god. A god is someone whose words I obey because he said them. Thomas Mallory was a well-known British mountain climber. They once asked him why he climbed Everest, and he said: because it’s there. He doesn’t understand why explanations are needed. Someone who knows the experience understands; explanations aren’t needed. You see Everest—what, you’re not going to climb? I think there is a very beautiful expression here of this concept of accepting as a god. They ask me why one should obey the Holy One, blessed be He, and the answer is: just because. There is no answer to “why.” If there were an answer to “why,” then it wouldn’t be obeying the Holy One, blessed be He—it would be gaining that “why.” I obey the Holy One, blessed be He, because that way the world will be better—a noble motive; I’m not even talking about reward and punishment. That too is service not for its own sake. I also sweep the street so that the world will be better. What does that have to do with anything? I need to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, because He said so, not because the world will be better. Maybe besides that the world will also be better—that’s another question, you can discuss it—but that is not the reason I am supposed to obey Him. I am supposed to obey Him because He commanded. It’s like people—many times people ask me, and I assume you too: let’s say the Holy One, blessed be He, exists, and Sinai happened, and the giving of the Torah—why obey Him? And very often people skip over the question. What do you mean—there was Sinai, God created the world, discussion over. But the more sophisticated atheists—not atheists, the more sophisticated noncommitted people—say: fine, there is a God, and Sinai happened, and He gave the Torah, okay—so what? Why should I still obey Him? And here people generally start making up all kinds of not very convincing excuses: gratitude and this and that. None of these things is really convincing. And I think the people themselves don’t really mean it; they just can’t understand it—they were caught with their pants down. They can’t explain to themselves why they do it. But the reason they themselves do it is not gratitude and not in order for the world to be better, but because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so—because He is a god. If someone is a god, then what he says must be done. What explanation do you want? If I give you an explanation—because of X, therefore I fulfill it—and then I ask, and why X? Because of Y. And why Y? Turtles all the way down, the famous joke. At some point it has to stop. Where will it stop? It will stop at the point that is self-evident, that is evident, that has clarity from within, inherently. That’s where it stops. An axiom is a principle that does not need further explanations from outside itself in order for us to recognize its truth. That is called an axiom. Contrary to what people often think—that an axiom is something arbitrary—an axiom is the least arbitrary thing there is. I once asked students: what is more true in geometry, the theorems or the axioms? Theorems or axioms. The theorems have proofs and the axioms don’t, so which is more true? The proof of the theorems is to ground them in the axioms, right? That’s called a proof. Really, if you’re not committed to the axioms, then all your theorems and proofs are worth nothing. Even though the theorems have proofs and the axioms don’t, it’s obvious that the most solid thing in geometry is the axioms. And it is not true that axioms are arbitrary, as many people think. The axioms are self-evident, and therefore there’s no need to prove them or ground them in something else. You can take a set of axioms that is arbitrary and play with them and see whether it is fruitful and useful; then that too will interest mathematicians. But it is not true that an axiom, by virtue of being an axiom, is arbitrary. There are axioms that were chosen as axioms because they are self-evident. They do not require justification from outside themselves in order to adopt them. Understand that if you do not accept this idea, then you cannot accept anything. Because every thing for which I bring reasoning, or an argument, or a proof, or something like that—the reasoning itself is built on foundational assumptions. And the foundational assumptions themselves—how do you know them? At some point you will have to stop and say: just because. Simply because it is true. If you are not willing to stop, and you always see axioms as arbitrary, that basically means that every claim you hold is arbitrary. Because if the axioms are arbitrary, then everything built on them is arbitrary too. So what is not arbitrary? And in order to accept things as true in a non-arbitrary way, you must—and a lot of people don’t notice this—you must assume that there are things for which you have no reason, justification, or whatever, but it is clear to you that they are true. And the concept of obeying a god is one of those concepts. Meaning: someone who understands what a god is does not need explanations for why one should obey what He commands. That is what “god” means. It’s like asking why it has three corners if it’s a triangle. So it’s a triangle—so what, why does it have three corners? My hat! What? Because a triangle, by definition, has three corners. Because a god, by virtue of being such, imposes an obligation to obey him. That is the meaning of the concept “god.” If someone tells me, look, I believe there is a God, but I don’t think one has to obey Him, then he doesn’t believe there is a God. That’s not God. It could be that he believes there is some entity that created the world—possibly. But if he doesn’t understand that this is God, then he doesn’t really—meaning, if he doesn’t understand that one has to obey Him, then he doesn’t really understand that this is “elohim.” What? I didn’t understand. No, because his power is from the Holy One, blessed be He. And because—because his authority draws from the Holy One, blessed be He; otherwise it’s idolatry. Meaning, suppose someone obeys the law, and you ask him: why do you obey the law? He says: just because, because it’s the law. He is practicing idolatry. Not practicing—he is a heretic. It’s not that there is practical worship here, but it is idolatry in partnership. You are accepting another source of authority as divine, unconditional. Meaning, whatever it says, you have to do. Either because God said so, or because I have reasons—out of love or fear. Doesn’t matter, but external reasons. You cannot say that it has unconditional authority simply by virtue of being the law. Because if you say that, and it is not by force of the Holy One, blessed be He, that is idolatry. Someone who obeys a moral command

[Speaker I] independently—same thing, idolatry.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Therefore when Leibowitz said that morality is an atheistic category, he was absolutely right. Where he was not right was that if it is an atheistic category, then you still have to obey it. He thought it was an atheistic category, but you still have to obey it as well. But that’s not true. If it’s an atheistic category, that means you have another source of authority, and in fact you are practicing idolatry in partnership. And the answer, I think, to why one should obey moral principles is because the Holy One, blessed be He, also expects us to do them. It’s just not part of Jewish law. There is morality and there is Jewish law, and these two systems are systems that the Holy One, blessed be He, imposes upon us. Right. No, it’s by force of God, not without God. If it’s an axiom without God, then once again, that is an additional source of authority. That is idolatry in partnership. Whose view? Leibowitz’s. Ah, yes. Yes, he also apparently understands an axiom—or at least that is how he often speaks—as something arbitrary. That is simply a mistake. An axiom is something self-evident, not something arbitrary. What?

[Speaker B] Also “atheistic” as something arbitrary?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. In my opinion he simply either didn’t formulate himself correctly or didn’t understand himself. I once wrote an article about it: Why Leibowitz Didn’t Understand Himself. They didn’t accept it for publication.

[Speaker K] What? Did he explain why he thought that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, and that’s what I’m saying. I think that his commitment to those axioms shows that he did not see them as something arbitrary. He saw them as something binding. It’s just that since he had no explanation for them, he didn’t know how to convey to me that I am obligated even though there is no explanation. So then it becomes arbitrary: I decided. Just because. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. So it’s simply a positivist mode of expression. Positivists have limitations, intellectual limitations. They locked themselves into those limitations: whatever cannot be grounded is not true. But that is self-contradictory; it is empty of… if. If you accept only grounded things, every grounding rests on axioms that cannot themselves be grounded. So that’s it—there is no such thing as grounding. It’s simply a baseless thesis. So I return to our point here, and I am basically saying this: if someone says to me, look, I know morality says this, but why do I have to do it?—he simply doesn’t understand that morality says this. He’s just playing with words. Because if you understand that morality says this, there is no room for the question, so why do I have to behave this way, because morality says so. What do you mean? And likewise, if God commanded thus and so, why do I have to obey? Because God commanded. That’s all. And if you say, I believe in God but why obey, then you don’t believe in God. You believe in some other entity, but that’s not God. God, by definition, is something that by virtue of what He is, one must obey—must obey Him. Yes, maybe in parentheses I’ll open this up, because it’s important for our discussion: I have more than once made a distinction between two types of authority—formal authority and substantive authority. Substantive authority is the authority of an expert. Say you are sick, you go to a doctor, the doctor prescribes medicine for you, tells you to have this or that surgery. Fine, so I’ll do what he tells me because I assume he is a professional and I don’t understand this and he is probably right. Okay? That I call substantive authority. I do what he says because he is probably right. He has convinced me that this is what should be done. You understand that this is not really authority? I was simply convinced that this is what should be done. The fact that I don’t understand—fine, because I didn’t study medicine. But I was convinced this is what should be done, therefore I do it. That is not called authority. Authority is when I do something even without being convinced. That is called authority. What is the authority of a commander in the army? That you obey him not because you concluded that he is right, but because he is the commander. That is called authority. Therefore “substantive authority” is just a word; it is not really authority. So what is formal authority? Formal authority is authority like that of the Knesset. Why obey the Knesset? Because it is always right? Especially these days, when we can joke—at least about that, in these grim days. So the obligation to obey the Knesset is because it is the Knesset, not because it is right. That is called formal or institutional authority. The authority of the Knesset because it is the Knesset, even if it is not right. That is called formal authority. Like the judge—it’s the same thing—the authority of the law, or of the Holy One, blessed be He, or of morality. Why obey morality? Because that is what morality says. Here it’s a little delicate because it is also right by virtue of being morality. But yes, it’s a more delicate matter. But when I speak of authority in this context, I mean formal authority, not substantive authority. By the way, for example, when it says “do not deviate,” that is the source of authority in the Torah. It says “do not deviate.” What kind of authority does it give? Formal, right? The reason one must obey the Sanhedrin is not because they are always right. There is also the bull-offering for a communal error when they err, and yet there is still a commandment to heed the words of the sages. But setting aside those extreme cases, you are supposed to obey the Sanhedrin not because they are necessarily right, but because they are the Sanhedrin. “Do not deviate” gives formal authority, not substantive authority. Therefore, in my opinion, this flawed education that tries to persuade people that the Talmud has authority because everyone there revived the dead and had divine inspiration—just nonsense. I don’t know where they invented that from. Rubbish. It’s just that from childhood people don’t understand that authority can exist not because the authority figure is right, but because it is formal authority—because it is the law. We accepted upon ourselves that the Talmud is the law, that this is the binding framework of Jewish law, and therefore one must obey it—not because they are right. There are quite a few errors in the Talmud in matters of fact. So I assume that in matters of Jewish law too there is no reason to assume there are no errors; it’s just that there I have no way to check it, because I have no access to what the correct Jewish law actually is. But in factual matters sometimes I can see that the Talmud was mistaken.

[Speaker B] Both the Knesset and the Talmud—someone

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] gave or received authority, but after the authority was given, that authority is formal. Okay? It’s like a community that accepts a rabbi upon itself. After it accepted the rabbi, he has formal authority—not because he is right. He decides what will be there because he is the rabbi. But true, they accepted him; the same mouth that forbade is the mouth that permits—they can also replace him. All right? So I’m not saying there is no difference between these institutions or these authorities, but the character of the authority in all these cases is formal rather than substantive. Substantive authority. Could it have been something else? Yes. Because he said so. If I don’t agree, I won’t do it.

[Speaker L] What makes the authority of the Talmud formal authority?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that we accepted it upon ourselves. The fact that we accepted it upon ourselves. Like the Knesset. What gives the Knesset its authority? The public. Don’t accept it and you’ll get hit, okay? The public accepted the authority of the Knesset, so now it is binding, and therefore it binds all the citizens. The public accepted the authority of the Talmud, so it binds all the citizens. Yes, yes, you are part of the public. So the claim is that in Yoreh De’ah they bring a responsum of the Rosh. What do they bring from the Rosh’s responsum? That ordinarily it is prohibited—you cannot swear or vow in the name of someone else. There is a Samson vow involving parents, but ordinary vows and oaths are only a person upon himself. You cannot swear or impose a vow on someone else concerning him, not from your property. But with a community it is not so, says the Rosh. If a community accepts something upon itself under a ban—that was once the custom regarding communal regulations, to place a ban on anyone who violated them—then it binds others too, and even after the whole community has already died, after two hundred, three hundred, four hundred years, it still exists. Why? How can they suddenly impose vows and oaths or bans on me—it’s a kind of vow? So the Rosh says that when a community vows, the one who vowed is not the collection of individuals who made up the community at that moment, but the institution called the community, the public. And a public, as the Rogatchover says, does not die. A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever—Tosafot in Me’ilah there on page 9. Why is there no such thing as a communal offering whose owners died? Even if the entire public that designated it died. So Tosafot brings the verse in Ecclesiastes: a generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever. What does that mean? A public does not die. The fact that the individuals comprising it are replaced—and even if all of them are replaced—yes, like the ship of Theseus. You know the ship of Theseus? There were storms, they replaced some planks, then more storms, they replaced more planks, and in the end not a single plank from the original ship remained. Is it still the ship of Theseus? Like the human body, right, whose cells are replaced—exactly. Same thing. And so too with a community, and so too with a public. When a public accepts something upon itself, it binds the public, not the collection of people who were there then. And who are the people that are the public? Whoever will continue to be part of it. And therefore all those kindergarten stories about how we all stood at Mount Sinai and said “we will do and we will hear”—bubbe meises. I don’t remember standing there, and even if I did stand there, that doesn’t obligate me; it was before I was born. I don’t know what it means that souls swear. My soul swore that it would fulfill—why should that interest me? Clearly that is not what is being spoken about there; it is a metaphorical description. That description basically means that the one who obligated himself there was the public, the people of Israel. And whoever belongs to the people of Israel stands obligated, as if we all stood at Sinai. As Maimonides writes in the introduction to the chapter Helek, there, that there are three groups in relation to aggadic literature. The foolish group are those who take every aggadah literally. If it says there that we stood in threes at Mount Sinai, then we stood in threes at Mount Sinai. They don’t understand that some things are written as metaphor, illustration, aggadah, allegory, all kinds of things like that. Remind me of the Brisker Rav—not pleasant to mention one after another. The Brisker Rav says that if it says the messiah will come on a white donkey, then he will come neither in a Mercedes nor on a black horse—he will come on a white donkey, that’s it. Now draw your own conclusions from Maimonides. In any case, I don’t believe he himself believed that; I assume. In any case, back to us. So the claim is that here we are speaking about “do not deviate,” and generally we are speaking about formal authority. And formal authority that someone has can belong either to the Holy One, blessed be He, or to someone upon whom the Holy One, blessed be He, has delegated that authority. If you accept some other factor and give it formal authority, that is basically a kind of idolatry in partnership. There is no such thing. There is no other formal authority besides the Holy One, blessed be He, and His derivatives or delegates, okay?

[Speaker H] And that’s the dispute between Abaye and Rava. Yes, you said earlier that the dispute between Abaye and Rava is connected to this.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I’m saying that Maimonides explains that this dispute between Abaye and Rava concerns one who worships idols out of love or fear of the idol—not of another person—literally. So I asked, then what is idolatry really? So he says: what is there no dispute about, that it is idolatry? The answer is: accepting it as a god. What does that mean? If you decide that this idol is a god, what does that mean? It means: whatever it says, I do. Not because it inspires fear in me, not because I love it—not out of love and not out of fear. There is no side reason for why I obey it. I obey it because it is a god. The moment I accept someone else upon myself as a god, that is idolatry. As I said before, any other authority that is formal, that you accept upon yourself as formal authority—not instrumentally, as a way to achieve something, or for some side reason—that is idolatry.

[Speaker M] But if I listen to someone because of his authority, it’s always out of love or fear.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you… what do you mean? If you are not doing it absentmindedly, you do it without any reason—not love and fear of a person and not love and fear of the idol. Did you do it incidentally? Or—you know what—you can even discuss fear. These are questions asked on Maimonides. What happens if someone threatens him with a gun to worship idols? In principle, one must be killed rather than transgress, right? Why? If I worship it, it’s because of fear of a person, so really it’s not even the prohibition of idolatry—so why must one be killed? Well, never mind, interesting question, think about it. But why be killed? Am I obligated to be killed? Exempt—that’s a dispute between Maimonides and Tosafot, but initially I am supposed to be killed. Right? Why? There is no prohibition of idolatry here; only for idolatry must one be killed. Right. Well, maybe it’s an accessory of idolatry, and that already brings us into the dispute whether there is “be killed rather than transgress” for accessories. But okay, I think there are other explanations too. In any case, the claim is: what do we actually learn from here? What do I want to achieve from here? I want to achieve from here that when can I relate to a certain act as an act of commandment or transgression? Only when it is done out of commitment to the formal authority of the Holy One, blessed be He. Just as we’re talking about idolatry, so too in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He. Just as in idolatry, only if I accepted it upon myself as a god is it considered that I worshiped it, so too with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He: only if I accepted Him upon myself as a god is it considered that I worship Him. If I worship Him out of love or fear of the Holy One, blessed be He, I am exempt. What does “exempt” mean? It is not really a commandment, or at least not a full commandment. Someone who performs commandments out of love or fear—that is not a commandment for its own sake.

[Speaker B] The way Maimonides defines serving out of love toward the Holy One, blessed be He, it sounds like he is actually detailing what the concept of accepting Him as a god means.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that in a moment. He defines it in chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance, and he doesn’t say it there—we’ll get to it shortly. So the claim is—contrary to what the initial intuition might say—you’re supposed to serve the Holy One, blessed be He, out of love or fear? No! You’re supposed to serve the Holy One, blessed be He, because He said so. You are also supposed to love and fear the Holy One, blessed be He, but not that love and fear should be the reasons because of which I serve Him. By the way, service out of love, for example, that concept he raises and that is generally considered exalted—that is service while loving, not service because of love. In general, service out of love toward the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Speaker B] There’s a line here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. To do the truth because it is truth.

[Speaker B] That is service out of love.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly.

[Speaker B] Because He is God, and therefore I obey Him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, exactly.

[Speaker B] Therefore the concept of love equals accepting as God.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I said that in chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance it is exactly what I’m saying, not what you said earlier. What he calls love there is not what he calls love in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. In the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah he talks about the way to love the Holy One, blessed be He—to contemplate His creations and His deeds, and so on. In chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance he says: to do the truth because it is truth. That is his definition, and that is exactly what I said here: accepting as a god. Wait, I’ll get there; when we reach that Maimonides I’ll explain more, okay? We just jumped ahead a bit. Now here there is another important point. This does not mean that one should not love or fear the Holy One, blessed be He. It also does not mean that when I serve Him, love and fear cannot be motivations for doing it. It does mean that they cannot be the fundamental motivations for doing it. An example of this—where is it here? Here: Eglei Tal. See it? Yes. “And while speaking…” Eglei Tal of Sochatchov. He was a Hasidic rabbi, but even so he knew how to learn. There are some like that too. In any case, Eglei Tal says this in his introduction. Eglei Tal is a work on the thirty-nine primary categories of labor. Tal has the numerical value thirty-nine. “While speaking I recall”… it’s not really on everything, but that’s what he calls it. “While speaking I recall what I heard: some people err from the path of reason regarding the study of our holy Torah, and say that one who studies and develops novel insights and rejoices and delights in his learning—this is not study so much for its own sake as if he were studying simply, with no enjoyment from the study, and only for the sake of the commandment. But one who studies and delights in his learning—well, his own pleasure is mixed into his study.” Yes, many say that someone who studies because he enjoys it—that is a flaw; one must not enjoy learning, one must study for its own sake. Okay? That is seemingly an obvious conclusion from what I said before. So he says: “In truth this is a well-known mistake. On the contrary, this is the essence of the commandment of Torah study”—essence, I’m not sure, but it is certainly part of the commandment of Torah study—“to be joyful and happy and delighted in one’s learning.” Yes, that’s it. Here, after all, you probably can’t get the man out of Hasidism, though not the Hasidism out of the man. “And to delight in his learning, and then words of Torah are absorbed into his blood. And since he enjoys the words of Torah, he becomes attached to the Torah”—see Rashi’s commentary, etc. “And if you say that by the joy he has from learning it is called not for its own sake, or at least both for its own sake and not for its own sake, then this joy actually stimulates the power of the commandment and does not dim its light. And how could this increase the good inclination? And since the good inclination grows from this, certainly this is the essence of the commandment.” I also don’t agree with that. His proof is also a Hasidic proof, but the claim itself is correct. Many times people make this mistake. You can bring an incorrect proof for a correct claim. This is what— you talked about it several times as well—what is the difference between homiletics and pilpul. Do you know the difference? Homiletics is where you stitch together midrashim, raise difficulties, and in the end the conclusion is: one must be humble and God-fearing and punctilious in the commandments, and so on. Yasher koach, blessings upon you—the whole argument is nonsense of course, but the conclusion is correct. So what, are we now going to start arguing with you? So that’s homiletics. Homiletics is just a waste of time. But pilpul is the opposite: there the argument is correct and the conclusion is false. Yes, come, I’ll show you that a four-cornered garment needs a mezuzah. If a doorpost, which is not obligated in fringes, is obligated in mezuzah, then a four-cornered garment, which is obligated in fringes—is it not logical that it should be obligated in mezuzah? Now this is very funny and very easy to laugh at, but I’m not sure you can actually put your finger on what is wrong with that a fortiori argument. The conclusion is not correct, but the argument sounds right. Fine, so clearly that is pilpul. Homiletics is just a waste of time; pilpul is a challenge. Pilpul is enjoyable, meaning: you understand that the conclusion is wrong, and you have to look for where the problem is in the argument. Okay? So that’s a challenge. Pilpul was a hobby of many great Torah scholars—to sharpen the students, to give you riddles. Homiletics is a waste of time, it’s like little Torah quips for a wedding celebration. What? Yes, that’s homiletics.

[Speaker N] What? Exactly, yes, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Only here the claim is not trivial, so this is homiletics with value. Meaning, leave aside the proofs, but the claim is a correct and nontrivial claim. So what is he actually saying? He is basically saying that there are those who think that if I enjoy learning, that reduces the value of the learning because it is learning not for its own sake. And that is a mistake; it is not true. But there is a continuation that is less well known. “And we admit that one who studies not for the sake of the commandment of learning, but only because he has pleasure in his learning—this is called learning not for its own sake, as in one who eats matzah not for the sake of the commandment but only for the pleasure of eating. And about this they said: a person should always engage even not for its own sake, because from not for its own sake he comes to for its own sake. But one who studies for the sake of the commandment and delights in his learning—this is study for its own sake and wholly holy, for even the delight is a commandment.” “Also”—I don’t know, but it is certainly excellent learning. Do you understand what he adds here? He says: true, it is obvious—this earlier passage of Eglei Tal is very well known. It is obvious that there is no prohibition whatsoever against enjoying learning. On the contrary, that enjoyment adds to the learning and becomes absorbed into you more, you understand it better, everything is better, you become more attached to it. But if you study because of the pleasure, then it really is study not for its own sake.

[Speaker B] Like those people who study on the Sabbath while smoking a cigarette.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, exactly. I once met someone like that. My wife and I were on Allenby—decades ago already. We were walking on Allenby and there was a watch shop there; I had a watch to fix, I happened to go in. And this older Jew is sitting there, looking at me, sees some religious guy with fringes, and says, so, where are you up to? And I—I didn’t even understand what he wanted. We’re on Allenby—what? I didn’t understand what he wanted. “I see you study, right? What? Where are you learning? Where?” So I said to him, Sanhedrin, I think we were learning there, I don’t even remember anymore what. So he says, what do you say about the Tosafot here and the Tosafot there? We started talking; the man was so immersed in the passage that he put me to shame. The guy—yes? He could have been my great-grandfather. But he was really amazingly immersed in the topic. He told me: listen, I can’t do without a page of Talmud and a cigarette on the Sabbath—I can’t live without it. And those are the old Litvaks; would that they left me alone but kept My Torah, as the saying goes. In any case, Eglei Tal says: if you study because of the pleasure, then it really is study not for its own sake. There is a subtle distinction. It’s not that it’s forbidden to enjoy, but the enjoyment is not the reason why you study. If it is, then it is study not for its own sake. The same is true in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He. It is not that it is forbidden to love or fear the Holy One, blessed be He—on the contrary, these are two commandments. Love of God and fear of God are two enumerated commandments. Of course one must. But that cannot be the reason why you observe commandments. Because if that is the reason why you observe commandments, then you have not accepted Him as a god. It is not a commandment for its own sake. Now more than that: suppose you observe because of love and fear, but you would still observe even without love and fear? If you were to wake up one morning after troubles and suffering and you would rebel against the afflictions and say: I no longer love Him, I no longer fear Him, and He no longer interests me, but there is an obligation to do what He says, so I keep observing—then that means that even when you observed it out of love and fear, the love and fear were not the necessary and sufficient condition. Okay? They were in fact not even sufficient and not necessary. They accompanied it, but together with that there was also unconditional commitment. That certainly exists there. If together with that there is also love and fear, fine. A very common mistake in this context, for example, is what happens with commandments between man and his fellow man. There are later authorities (Acharonim) who wrote this too, and I think it is a mistake. They write that there you don’t need intention. You don’t need to do it for the sake of the commandment. Not true. Obviously you need to do it for the sake of the commandment. Ah, many times we don’t do it that way—we do it because we pity the poor person or the friend or whatever. We love our parents, so we fulfill that commandment, but not for the reasons any secular person does it. So where is that measured? It is measured at the point where, if one day we no longer have that feeling, will we still do it? If yes, then there is no problem at all. You are also allowed to love, as the song says. So yes, one is allowed to love, and one is also allowed to do it out of love—that too is permitted. As long as it is not a necessary condition. Meaning, as long as I would do it even without that. That is enough. It is not that all the time I have to be some technocrat who cancels all emotions, love, fear—cancels everything and does it only like some frozen-demon Litvak. Meaning, that is not required. What is required is that the basic and sufficient motivation be commitment to the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. Okay? If on top of that other things are added, there is no problem whatsoever, as long as you would do it even without them. And that is the point I want to make. So basically this is the concept of accepting as a god. The concept of accepting as a god basically teaches us what fulfillment of a commandment is. Fulfillment of a commandment means responding to the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is fulfillment of a commandment. Out in the street people often say, “you did a mitzvah”—what do you mean you did a mitzvah? Because it was a good deed, you helped someone or something like that. That is a colloquial use of the concept of mitzvah. A commandment is tied at the navel to the concept of command. There is no such thing as fulfillment of a commandment if you are not doing it out of commitment to a command. If you are not doing it out of commitment to a command, it is not a commandment. Therefore, for example, there is no value at all in putting tefillin on people in the street—the way Chabad people do—absolutely no value, assuming the person putting on the tefillin does not believe in it. If he does believe in it, and he was just lax, or he is traditional, or whatever, then fine—you helped him fulfill a commandment he would not have fulfilled otherwise. But if you take an atheist or someone who does not believe in Sinai, even if he believes in some philosophical god, and you put tefillin on him—if he becomes religious that afternoon, he has to put on tefillin again. He is still a “head that did not put on tefillin.” That was not the commandment of tefillin. It is somewhat connected to what I spoke about at the beginning: did the person fail to fulfill tefillin, or was the commandment of tefillin simply not fulfilled? But let’s leave that aside for now. Fine, the point is that the condition for an act to be a commandment is that the act be done out of commitment to a command. That is the meaning of commandment. Not a good deed, not a bad deed, not a neutral deed—but a deed done out of commitment to a command.

[Speaker B] Yes—so for that matter, if a person who does not believe did some commandment between man and his fellow man out of commitment to a command?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So then it isn’t commitment to a command; it’s just that he wanted to do Hannah’leh a kindness. That’s a person’s love and fear. Yes, fine—so that’s not a commandment, right. For example, I think I spoke about this in the morning classes on intention: if, say, you can’t count a secular person toward a prayer quorum. Nonsense. That’s like counting a flowerpot toward a prayer quorum. He isn’t praying; he doesn’t recognize this concept called prayer. A traditional Jew, by the way, in my view is much worse than an atheist, because he knows his Master and rebels against Him—that is, he doesn’t do what he is obligated to do. But as far as counting him for prayer, of course you can, because he recognizes the Holy One, blessed be He; he understands that there is obligation toward Him; he prays when he’s there. The fact that he cuts corners in other areas—fine, that’s another matter. This isn’t some sanction through whether you count him or don’t count him toward a prayer quorum; it’s simply that you can’t count flowerpots toward a prayer quorum. The traditional Jew in this context is not a flowerpot, okay? The secular Jew in this context is a flowerpot. What does it help that he’s standing there? Okay? It has no value. Meaning, you have to do things out of commitment to the commandment or to the command. If you don’t do it that way, it’s not a commandment. Maybe we’ll talk about this at the end of the series on intention in commandments—I’ll say a bit there about how commandments require faith. According to all views—even though there’s a dispute whether commandments require intention—there is no dispute that commandments require faith. So someone who doesn’t believe cannot fulfill a commandment even if he wants to. And if he puts on tefillin with the Chabad people, he has not fulfilled a commandment. What? Because commandments require faith. Because without faith it isn’t a commandment, exactly what I just explained. A commandment is responding to a command, commitment to a command. If, from your perspective, there is no command, then in what sense is your act a commandment? The act itself is not a commandment; the act itself is an act. If you did it under hypnosis, in your sleep, would that also be a commandment? No. If that act is not an expression of your being obligated to the commandment or to the command, then it isn’t a commandment. Just conceptual analysis—not that I have sources. Maimonides writes this, but even if he hadn’t written it, I would have written it too. The Rosh there is puzzled about Maimonides’ source at the end of chapter 10 of Laws of Kings. Maybe we’ll get to that too. Anyway, for our purposes, the claim is that the fulfillment of a commandment exists only if you do it out of commitment to the command. Okay? That is basically the meaning of accepting God as God. Now I come to this Maimonides in chapter 10 of Laws of Repentance. Maimonides writes as follows: A person should not say: I will do the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom so that I will receive all the blessings written in it, or so that I will merit the life of the world to come; and I will separate myself from the transgressions against which the Torah warned us, so that I will be saved from the curses written in the Torah or so that I will not lose the life of the world to come. It is not fitting to serve God in this way. Good thing there are no women here. For one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And only the ignorant, women, and children serve God in this way; they are trained to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love. There’s some optimism there—women too can increase in knowledge at some stage. So Maimonides says that someone who serves in order to receive reward or to avoid punishment—that is not called service out of love or for its own sake. That is called service out of fear, not out of love. But in a moment I’ll show that service out of love in this context means service for its own sake, okay? One who serves out of love, halakhah 2: One who serves out of love occupies himself with Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world. Notice—not any side motive. This is accepting God as God. Not because of anything in the world, including love and fear of the Holy One, blessed be He. And not because of fear of evil, nor in order to inherit good, but he does the truth because it is truth, and in the end the good comes because of it. So what is the antithesis of service not for its own sake? To do the truth because it is truth. Because it is truth. That is the meaning of service for its own sake. And this level is a very great level, and not every sage attains it, and it is the level of Abraham our father, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, called “His beloved”—and this is why he calls it love here; yes, I’ll come back to that in a moment—because he served only out of love. And this is the level that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us through Moses, as it is said: “And you shall love the Lord your God.” And when a person loves God with the proper love, he immediately performs all the commandments out of love. Why the concept—why does he connect here to the concept of love? Yes, he calls it “doing the truth because it is truth”; that’s not what we usually call love. Also in Laws of Foundations of the Torah, as I mentioned, Maimonides speaks there about love of God, and there it seems he means love in the ordinary sense. Okay, so there is some emotional bond to the Holy One, blessed be He. So why does he define the concept of love differently here? Here he is talking about love as the basis for why I serve God. In Laws of Foundations of the Torah he is talking about the commandment to love God—how one fulfills the commandment to love God. That’s a different discussion. Here he is asking: what should our motivation be when we fulfill commandments? What is called service out of love? So the concept of love here in Maimonides is not the concept of love that appears in Laws of Foundations of the Torah, but rather doing the truth because it is truth. Why do I serve God this way? Because He is God. That is the concept of love here. Why is the expression love, as distinct from fear? It seems to me—I once saw a book by Don Yehuda Abravanel, the son of Rabbi Yitzhak Abravanel; there are claims that maybe he converted to Christianity, there are debates about it—called Dialogues on Love. It was published by Bialik Institute. There’s a long introduction there—who this Jew was—because for a very long time they didn’t know who wrote the book; for centuries they didn’t know who wrote it. The book was widespread, but they didn’t know who the author was. And there he makes a distinction, and I also saw this in some Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset—a philosopher, journalist, Spanish politician—he also makes the same distinction. He basically distinguishes between love and fear—no, not love and fear, between love and desire. What is the difference between love and desire? As Sforno, I think, comments about Jacob our father: “And they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” Which is seemingly the opposite of what we’re used to, right? If we love someone, then every moment we’re waiting seems like eternity. But with Jacob it worked the other way. He had seven years, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her. So Sforno says there—I think it’s Sforno—he says: we love ourselves; Jacob loved Rachel. When you love yourself and you want to attain something, you can’t wait until you attain it. Every second you wait before you attain it seems like eternity. Jacob loved Rachel, not himself. So from his standpoint, if he has to work seven years, no problem—like a few days. He’ll work seven years. In the end he’s doing it for her, not for himself. He doesn’t need to satisfy some need of his own. That is called desire. In desire, you are at the center. Everything is really directed toward you. Desire is centripetal; love is centrifugal—from the center outward. Okay? Love turns toward the beloved; desire takes the beloved toward me. In Greek mythology, the symbol of falling in love is Cupid, right? Cupid shoots an arrow at you and then suddenly you fall in love. What do you mean, fall in love? You want to get something. Meaning, you suddenly—it’s a kind of possessiveness. Suddenly you want—it’s not—something happens to you there. In ordinary love, you act; you are not acted upon. You decide that this is what you want. Okay?

[Speaker J] So many times—why here “a few days”?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because he loved her, not himself.

[Speaker J] Why does that sound like one day?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: the moment I don’t need it to be mine, it’s not an interest of mine that absolutely has to be satisfied, then I have no problem waiting as long as necessary. Fine, I need to wait, I’ll wait—as long as it happens in the end. If I want to attain something and I can’t attain it, then it seems like eternity to me. Meaning, if I’m at the center. And that’s why—what does it mean, “Any love that depends on something, when the thing ceases, the love ceases”? Real love is love that does not depend on anything. What does that mean? If you love someone because he’s beautiful, or even because he’s kindhearted, or whatever—for all kinds of better and worse reasons—that’s not called loving. In the end, something in you is drawn to him because of something he has. Sometimes it’s something genuinely positive; sometimes it’s just something it isn’t right to be drawn to—it doesn’t matter—but I am drawn to him. Real love is love that doesn’t depend on anything, on none of the characteristics of the beloved. So, for example, you can love someone, and somehow he has an accident—I don’t know exactly what—and everything changes in him, even his personality, not just his appearance, everything, and you still continue to love him. Why? Because the love is not conditioned on characteristics—on his characteristics. The characteristics are the way through which you encounter the person, but after you’ve encountered him, your bond is to him, not to his characteristics. And so that is really the difference between love and desire. Desire is the wish to attain something. Something finds favor in my eyes; I want to attain it. What finds favor in my eyes? That he’s rich, that he’s handsome, even that he’s kindhearted—it doesn’t matter. But love is something else: I don’t want to attain something; there is simply something there to which I feel a genuine bond—not a desire to control, not a desire to satisfy some need in me or something like that. Therefore the concept of love is used here by Maimonides for doing the truth because it is truth. Just as any love that depends on something—when the thing ceases, the love ceases—because love is something that does not depend on any external factor. It is toward the thing itself. That is exactly doing the truth because it is truth, or accepting God as God, what I said earlier: that I serve the Holy One, blessed be He, not because He is good to me, not because He is all-powerful, not because He is—I don’t know what—because He knows everything. I serve Him because He is God. Not because of attributes, nothing external, including love and fear toward the Holy One, blessed be He, which are positive things—but not because of that do I serve Him. That is why Maimonides uses here the concept of love to describe this, because in love too it really is something that does not depend on any external factor. It is the thing itself, by virtue of itself. I think that’s why he uses it. Now look at the next halakhah in Maimonides. Ah, I didn’t bring it here. This is the most amusing part. One second, I’ll open it in Maimonides himself. Okay, so we read halakhah 1, we read halakhah 2, now halakhah 3. We’ll stop at halakhah 3, don’t worry, we won’t get to 109. And what is the proper love? It is that one should love God with a great, exceeding, mighty love, until his soul is bound up in the love of God, and he is continually obsessed with it, as though lovesick, whose mind is not free from love of that woman and he is obsessed with her always, whether sitting, whether rising, and even when eating and drinking. More than this should the love of God be in the hearts of His lovers, obsessed with Him always, as He commanded us, “with all your heart and with all your soul.” And this is what Solomon said metaphorically: “For I am sick with love.” And the entire Song of Songs is a parable for this matter. That seemingly smashes everything I’ve said until now, right? You don’t have a more emotional description than this one. Right? Some feeling of love toward the Holy One, blessed be He—that’s not doing the truth because it is truth. Doing the truth because it is truth sounds very cold and intellectual.

[Speaker B] To devote yourself with all your strength—that’s devotion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With all your strength, yes, but not emotional; rather, it’s commitment. But what about the description from Song of Songs, being obsessed with her always, and so on? So here I think—it seems to me—it’s hard to assume there is such a blatant contradiction between halakhah 2 and halakhah 3. It’s not that Maimonides forgot halakhah 2 when he wrote halakhah 3. It seems to me that here one must be careful not to make the common mistake of taking a parable too far. When someone gives a parable, people say to him, “Wait a second, but in the parable it’s such-and-such, so it’s not like the thing being illustrated.” Of course not. He’s bringing you a certain aspect in the parable in order to illustrate the thing being illustrated. There are other things in the parable that are specific to the parable—from those, do not learn to the thing being illustrated. Yes, that always drives me crazy in classes. You give some parable and someone says, “Wait, but in the parable it’s different because of this and that.” Right—but it’s that particular aspect of the parable that I want you to project onto the thing being illustrated. There are other aspects that are not similar. Okay? Here too, same thing. Maimonides is coming to say how strong this commitment has to be—that “in all your ways know Him,” that you always have to be in unconditional commitment that accompanies you at every moment. “I have set the Lord before me always.” The parable for that is like love for a woman, where he is always obsessed with her. That doesn’t mean that… right, love for a woman is also emotional, but that doesn’t mean that love of God also has to be emotional. It can be—I’m not ruling it out—but I don’t think that’s the requirement. Love of God in this context is doing the truth because it is truth. And this obligation to do the truth, to obey the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, has to accompany you every moment like someone who is in love and dizzy all day because he is constantly occupied with his love. So, as I said, the concept of love in this context is used by Maimonides in a different sense; it has two senses: first, that it turns to the thing itself and not to anything external—“when the thing ceases, the love that depends on the thing ceases”; and second, something that in this sense is like love. But this is not the concept of love in Laws of Foundations of the Torah. And even there I’m not sure how emotional it is, but let’s leave that for another time. Okay? He defines here the concept of love as doing the truth because it is truth. That is not the concept of love we are used to. Here I argue that the expression love here, in the context of serving out of love as opposed to serving out of fear—serving out of love as something positive. In Laws of Idolatry, serving out of love is something negative. If you worship out of love or fear, then you are not really worshipping. But when you speak about serving out of love as something positive, it means unconditional service. Serving the Holy One, blessed be He, because He is the Holy One, blessed be He—not for any other reason. Not because that’s how I was educated, not because I love Him, not because I fear Him, not because I think this will fix the world, and not because I want to keep the Jewish people alive. No—but because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so. Because He is there, like Everest. Okay? That is called serving out of love in the context of serving out of love. The commandment to love God may perhaps be something else. By the way, that’s why it’s divided between Laws of Repentance and Laws of Foundations of the Torah. In Laws of Foundations of the Torah, Maimonides speaks about the commandment to love God. Why does he return to it in Laws of Repentance? In Laws of Repentance he is not speaking about the commandment to love God. He is not speaking here about how one fulfills the commandment to love God; that is not even hinted at here. He is talking here about motivations—why one should serve God. The motivation of love as a motivation for serving God is not the commandment to love God, which is one of the 613 commandments. Here he is speaking about something meta-halakhic at the foundation of the commandments: why do commandments? That is what is called serving out of love, and not the commandment to love God. Serving out of love is a type of service across all commandments. Okay? And that is the topic in Laws of Repentance—not the commandment to love God. So, as I said, you mustn’t take this parable too far. Just the devotion—the devotion, that’s what is true. But not in the emotional sense, not the emotions that accompany the matter. Okay? There’s—you know—I spoke at my eldest son’s wedding, and I said there that people wonder why the ketubah is read between betrothal and marriage. It’s some custom—it doesn’t matter—to separate between the marriage stages. But why choose specifically the ketubah? Why not do two circles of dancing instead? People say: the ketubah? What is this—“to be collected from the cloak upon his shoulder,” and such-and-such number of zuz, and movable and immovable property, and what will happen if this or that—what are you doing reading a legal contract in the middle of this exalted ceremony with all the angels and fluttering wings flying overhead and all the romance in the air? It was not for nothing that they chose to read the ketubah. It is to tell you that marriage is not romance. There’s a song like that—“the main thing is romance,” you know it? So no, the main thing is not romance. The main thing is the contract. First of all there is a contract. And that contract has to be upheld. On top of that, like love of God, of course it’s good to build also a psychological, experiential, emotional bond, and whatever else you want—second floor, third floor, fourth floor. But someone who bases his bond with his spouse on feelings—we see the results today in many places. And not because feelings aren’t necessary. Feelings are necessary. But they are not the reason for the obligation. I do not serve my wife out of love. That doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I do not serve her out of love; I serve her because of the contract, because of the commitment. Besides that, I also love her—two different things. And it is not for nothing that they compared the relationship of the Jewish people to the Holy One, blessed be He, to the relationship of a married couple. Because there too it is the same thing. Obligation to the Holy One, blessed be He, is not love and fear. There is an obligation to love and fear Him—two commandments. But that is not why one should serve Him. One should serve Him because one accepts God as God, because He is God. That’s all. Why am I obligated to my wife? Because she is my wife. That’s it. Besides that, of course I also love and fear, everything. But those are not the reasons because of which I do what I do—not the fundamental reasons. I would do it even without that. Okay? I think that is the comparison. In that sense I think this comparison to love is an excellent comparison. Even though it is not the ordinary concept of love, the concept of love is a very successful choice for describing what Maimonides, at least in my opinion, is speaking about here. Okay, so that brings us to the next source in Maimonides. Laws of Kings—I mentioned it before—chapter 8, halakhah 11. There Maimonides writes: Anyone who accepts the seven commandments—yes, he is speaking about a resident alien, that’s the context, at the end of chapter 8 of Laws of Kings—and is careful to observe them, is one of the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the world to come. But only if he accepts them and performs them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the descendants of Noah had already been commanded concerning them. But if he does them because reason compels it, he is not a resident alien and not one of the pious of the nations of the world, but one of their wise men. There are versions that read “and not one of their wise men,” but the more well-founded version is apparently “but one of their wise men.” What is Maimonides saying? A resident alien is someone who accepts upon himself the seven Noahide commandments. Now the question is why he… What?

[Speaker B] He recognizes the commandment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Maimonides says: if he accepts the seven Noahide commandments because reason compels it—because he thinks that’s the moral way to act, because that’s the right way to act, because it will fix the world, because I don’t know exactly what—then he is not one of the pious of the nations of the world, but one of their wise men. What does that mean? In free translation: his act has no religious value. It is not a commandment. But it is a good act. He is a moral person, he behaves properly, everything is fine. But there is no commandment here. “Piety” means service of God, something religious, something of religious value. You are among the wise of the nations of the world, but not among their pious. You are doing the right thing, but it has no religious value; it is not a commandment. Why not? Because you did it because reason compelled it, because you thought it made sense that way, or was moral that way, or whatever it may be. Okay? When is it a commandment? If you did it because of prophecy. That’s what he says: because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the descendants of Noah had already been commanded concerning them. If you believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, but do not believe in the revelation at Sinai, it is still not a commandment. Even someone who is not an atheist is not capable of fulfilling commandments. Someone who is a deist, who thinks there is a God but He did not give commandments—there is no… he cannot fulfill commandments; his commandments have no value. Only if he does the commandment because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it at Sinai to Moses and he gave it to us. What does that mean? That a commandment is only something done out of commitment to a command and to a commandment. If you do it for another reason, it is not a commandment. Right—this continues everything we saw in the previous sources in Maimonides. Exactly the same thing.

[Speaker P] It’s a matter of—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Level. I’m not saying it has no significance, because it does have significance—religious significance. It has significance: “one of their wise men”; their wise men are certainly something meaningful, something of value. He is a good person. But it has no religious value. It is not a commandment. And that is exactly why I’m using all this. Again, I remind you, our topic is: what is a commandment? And the closer I get to a commandment—you know, in order to distinguish—there is… Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner writes, in the Mishnah in Yoma they say that the two goats have to be alike in height, in weight, in value, and so on. It’s not indispensable, but they are supposed to be alike. Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner asked: why? Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, in Pachad Yitzhak on Purim. Because we say there: “A person is obligated to become intoxicated on Purim until he does not know the difference between ‘Cursed is Haman’ and ‘Blessed is Mordechai.’” Why? The whole service of the day is to distinguish between “Cursed is Haman” and “Blessed is Mordechai.” So why do you need to drink in order to blur for yourself the difference between “Cursed is Haman” and “Blessed is Mordechai”? So he says: because if you would do it as in children’s books—Haman is some wicked guy, hairy, ugly, disgusting, repulsive, and Jacob is—Mordechai—has the face of an angel—then that’s a mistake. That is not the difference between Mordechai and Haman. You need to depict them exactly the same. The difference is that one chose good and one chose evil. That’s all. If you latch onto external differences, then you haven’t really made the correct distinction. On the contrary, you need to blur all the irrelevant differences in order to sharpen the real distinction. That’s what he says: the deeper the similarity, the deeper the distinction. And therefore he says also with the two goats: you need to understand that the difference between them is that one goes into the innermost sanctuary and one goes to Azazel. Therefore they need to be alike in height, in weight, and in value. The difference between them is not how they look and how much they are worth—that’s not the point—but rather that this one was chosen by lot. The lot, of course, is an expression of choice. One chose good and one chose evil. One was chosen to enter the innermost sanctuary and one was chosen to go to Azazel. That is the difference between them. And in order to understand the difference between them, you have to blur all the other things. And I say: when I want to define the concept of commandment, the best way is not to distinguish it from a transgression, or from a merely neutral act. I want to distinguish it from a good act. That will sharpen for me more what the concept of commandment is. The concept of commandment is not a good act. There can be good acts that are not a commandment. Here, for example: a person who does it because reason compels him—it is a good act, but it is not a commandment. Why? Because a commandment… a commandment is when you do that act out of commitment to the commandment or to the command. That is the definition of commandment. The content of the act does not define the act as a commandment; rather, the motivation for why you do it does. Or why it obligates—it obligates because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so. Not because it is a good act. Maybe it is also a good act, but that is not why it is a commandment. It is a commandment because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. And therefore this also defines the concept of commandment, and it also defines the action. I said there were two planes with which I opened. How do you define the object of the commandment? It is what the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded. How do you define the action as performing a commandment? It is an action that responds to a command, or is obligated to a command, that is done out of commitment to a command. That is an action considered a commandment. Okay? That’s enough for today.