Q&A: The Commandment of Belief in God
The Commandment of Belief in God
Question
Hello Rabbi,
The first commandment that Maimonides lists in Sefer HaMitzvot is the obligation to believe in God. And I heard that in some of your lectures you said that it is impossible to command or obligate a person to think something if he does not actually think and believe it, and that a command can apply only to the actions a person performs, even if he thinks they are not correct; but you cannot command him to think they are correct, because that simply makes no sense. Based on that, I wanted to ask the Rabbi: how can belief in God be a commandment? After all, even if belief in the Holy One, blessed be He, is the basis of the entire Torah, it is still impossible to command a person what to think, for the reasons I wrote above. (And from what I checked, there is no one among those who enumerate the commandments who does not count belief in God as a commandment.) If so, is this the same case here as well, or with regard to the commandment of belief does this principle not apply, and the command here is actually more complex?
Answer
Clearly, you cannot command belief, because it is a fact. It is quite clear that the commentators were not aware of this. Even those who raise difficulties do not raise this one. You can offer interpretations that would rescue the enumeration of the commandments; you can decide whatever you like. I do not see a way to decide.
Discussion on Answer
You're taking me into the realm of psychology. I have neither interest nor expertise in that area.
Sefer HaMitzvot was originally written in Arabic, and in the Hebrew translation, in the first commandment, the word "belief" is a bit misleading, because in the original Arabic its translation is "to be convinced," and not necessarily to believe in the religious sense.
It is בהחלט possible that this is what Maimonides meant. You cannot command someone to believe facts, but you certainly can command him to investigate those beliefs in order to reach conviction.
What Maimonides would say about someone who investigated and was not convinced is a different discussion.
I think belief is a choice. Usually not a conscious one, but it is still a choice. Someone who understands NLP and knows how to control the subconscious through various actions might perhaps understand this better. For example, why do I say that belief is a choice? When I meet someone on the street and ask his name, and he answers "Yossi," then when I say to myself, "Ah, that's not Yossi, he's lying," I chose not to believe; and likewise the opposite. That too is basically belief—the choice to be convinced that it is true.
But we're dealing here with something very logical, so how is it possible that none of the commentators noticed this question? (And in general, that no one in the broader religious public noticed this question?) Maybe it's because they were afraid that this question would arouse heresy, since it would imply that one can keep Torah and commandments even without believing in God. Does that sound reasonable to you, or is that a far-fetched argument?
(Though that is more of a direction for explaining why no one asked this question, not why belief is a commandment.)