Q&A: Performing Commandments Not for Their Own Sake
Performing Commandments Not for Their Own Sake
Question
Is there any point in observing commandments not for their own sake? (Without addressing the possibility that doing them not for their own sake can eventually lead to doing them for their own sake.) I’d be glad if you would address: 1) converts out of fear, and 2) someone who keeps the commandments for the wrong reasons because he is mistaken. For example, a person who thinks one must keep the Torah because his rebbe said so (and if one really should keep commandments if and only if the rebbe said so, then a person who keeps commandments even though the rebbe did not say so).
And if you think there is no “point” in keeping commandments in this way, is there still something good about it in the religious sense?
Thank you
Answer
It depends on what you mean by not for their own sake. In order to find favor in someone’s eyes? In order to boast? Are we talking about someone who does not believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, at all?
Discussion on Answer
I meant a Jew who observes the commandments not because God commanded them, but for any other reason—even if he does not believe in the Holy One, blessed be He.
Let me sharpen the question. A person who lives a moral life not because he is moral, but for some other reason, is preferable to a person who lives an immoral life, because moral actions have significance beyond intentions.
Is that also true לגבי a Jew who observes commandments? Is there anything good about the fact that I put on tefillin, simply by virtue of the fact that I was commanded and I fulfilled it?
If he does not believe, then in my opinion his actions have no religious value. There may perhaps be value in preserving the framework, or in the possibility that his children will truly observe commandments. But his actions in themselves have no value. That is also the view of Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings.
Very simple.
One who studies (or observes) in order to provoke—better had he not been created, and his Torah becomes for him a potion of death.
One who studies (or observes) for the sake of honor and the like—from doing it not for its own sake, one comes to do it for its own sake.
One who studies (or observes) for its own sake—this is the highest level, about which Antigonus of Sokho wrote in Pirkei Avot, chapter 1, mishnah 3.
See Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishnah, in the introduction to the chapter “Helek,” tractate Sanhedrin.