Q&A: Commandments at Different Levels
Commandments at Different Levels
Question
Question: Are there commandments / transgressions that are more important and less important?
Common sense says yes. With transgressions, we find greater and lesser punishments. And with commandments, there is greater and lesser reward. And there are sayings of the Sages: Torah study is equal to all of them. “Be as careful with a minor commandment as with a major one, for you do not know…” (which implies that if we did know, we could act according to importance). And there is the midrash of the Sages that God did not reveal the reward for the commandments so that people would not neglect the lesser ones, etc. etc.
But one can ask: granted, with a human being it makes sense to say that some things are more important to him and some less so. But can this be said with respect to Heaven? Every commandment He gave is a law on an equal level, both from His side, since He has no “wants” or gradations of importance, and from our side, since we are obligated to fulfill His words as an absolute duty without priorities.
We also saw among the medieval authorities that they were careful not to make the Ten Commandments into more central commandments, lest people say that there are commandments of greater importance (and they prohibited standing during their Torah reading). And there is also opposition among the medieval authorities (Radbaz, Abarbanel) to saying that “Habakkuk came and based them on one” — and the rest of the sayings of the Sages — is speaking about commandments, because there are no commandments that are more central; rather, they explained it as referring to beliefs (and I also do not understand from them what would count as more central beliefs).
Also, all these sayings of the Sages are in the world of reward and punishment, but for someone who serves for its own sake, seemingly there cannot be anything more or less important. But on the other hand, the ranking of reward and punishment does seem to indicate and require some instruction of difference on the part of the Giver.
Maybe the Rabbi could write a post about this on the site at length. I’ve been interested in this topic for a long time.
Thank you very, very much.
Answer
Hello.
First, the medieval authorities are apparently divided on whether the severity of the punishment necessarily indicates the severity of the transgression. See my article here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%9F-%D7%9C%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%A2-%D7%A8%D7%A2-%D7%9B%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%A2%D7%AA%D7%95-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%9D/
But beyond that, it is clear that there are more severe and less severe ones. I don’t see any problem with that, since the question is how important it is to us and to the world, not to Him. Beyond that, even from His perspective I don’t understand why there should be a problem saying that some things are more important to Him and some less. After all, there are things that are worthy in His eyes and yet He did not command them. Apparently that is because they are less important from His standpoint.
As for central beliefs, that is a different question. Seemingly, a belief is judged by whether it is true or false, so what difference does it make whether it is central? But apparently the intention is that a central belief is one whose denial is considered severe and removes the denier from the fold. And that may be based either on how fundamental it is or on the implications of denying it.