The king, in Rabbi Jehudah ha-levi’s Cuzari, anxious to lead a good and
religious life, was told by an angel who appeared to him in a dream
that his heart was good, but his deeds were not acceptable. The purity
and goodness of our heart certainly ennobles our deeds and gives them
the stamp of sincerity and holiness, though they may not be marked by
absolute perfection. But an inner voice, our conscience, does not allow
us to be content with the goodness of the heart; we feel the necessity
of seeking also perfection of words and deeds. We wish not only our
heart but also our entire self to be good, so that our inner life and
outer life, our feeling and thinking, our speaking and doing, may
combine into one harmonious whole, which comes as near perfection as
possible.
It has been shown above that one of the principles of faith which we
confess is our belief in the Divine origin of the Torah, and in the
obligatory character of its precepts. When we pray to God to make us
understand the Torah we are not content with the mere knowledge of the
words of the Law; we also seek God’s assistance to enable us “to obey,
to observe, and to perform” all that He has commanded us. Man’s nature
is not the same in all individuals; one person finds special delight in
the performance of this duty, another in the performance of that. Every
one likes to devote his energies to that work for which he considers
himself best qualified, and which promises to yield the best fruit. But
this individual liking or aptitude must not mislead us into thinking
that the Law is divided into important and unimportant precepts. So far
as they represent the Will of the Almighty they are all alike, and
equally demand our attention and our obedience. Thus the קבלת עול
שמים, [30] our unconditional submission to the Will of the Almighty as
our King, is followed in our Service by קבלת עול מצות,[30] the
acknowledgment of the binding force of His precepts.
There are persons who question the wisdom and usefulness of the
precepts; they call it legalism, and are opposed to the tendency of
subjecting every act of ours to the control of the Law. They argue that
legalism tends to weaken our regard for the Law, and trains hypocrites
rather than true servants of the Lord. It is a bold assertion, but one
that rests on imagination and prejudice. Is it possible that such a
constant reminder of God’s presence as the Divine precepts supply
should not have a beneficent influence over us, by making us feel
encouraged by His presence when we are engaged in a good cause, and
discouraged when we are about to do wrong? If persons are found who are
devout worshippers at one time and criminals at another, it only shows
human weakness in the moment of trial in spite of good resolves and
genuine devotion; and were it not for the effect of such devotion, the
number of crimes would probably be far greater.
A truly pious man will never imagine that he may freely transgress one
set of the precepts, if he strictly obeys another set; that he may,
e.g., wrong his neighbour, and compensate for his sins by regular
attendance at the place of worship, or by a strict observance of the
dietary laws, or the laws of Sabbath and Festivals; or that he may
freely break the latter, if only he is honest, just, and charitable.
The precepts have all the same Divine origin; the all-wise and all-kind
God, who has commanded us to walk in the way of justice and
righteousness, has also ordained the Sabbath, given the dietary laws,
and established the sacrificial service. He who selects some of the
precepts and rejects the rest substitutes his own authority for that of
the Almighty, and places his own wisdom above the wisdom of Him who
gave us the Law.
“Be as zealous in the performance of an unimportant precept as of an
important one,” is one of the maxims taught in the “Sayings of the
Fathers.” A difference between precept and precept is here admitted,
but only in so far as they seem to us more or less important, with
regard to the good which their observance produces or the evil which is
caused by their neglect. In case of a conflict of two duties we give
the preference to that which seems to us more important. In times of
religious persecution the question frequently arose how far resistance
was necessary, and how far religious practice might yield to physical
force. The rule has been laid down, that when our life is threatened we
may transgress any precept; but we must not allow ourselves, under any
circumstances, to be forced to idolatry, murder, or adultery (עבודה
זרה גלוי עריות ושפיכות דמים); we must prefer death to committing any
of these sins. But in times of trouble and persecution the spirit of
resistance is as a rule too strong to be kept within the strict lines
of demarcation, and life is willingly and heroically sacrificed for any
religious duty. This is not surprising, for every religious act which
is chosen by the enemy as a test to prove the faithfulness or the
faithlessness of the persecuted sect to its own religion, receives
thereby the stamp of great importance.
Similar questions are also asked in times of peace, when some of our
brethren reject the authority of the Oral Law, while others refuse even
to recognise the authority of the Written Law, when some set aside the
Divine precepts out of convenience, and others from principle, and
still others from ignorance; when some limit their Judaism to the
nominal membership of the Jewish race, and others to a negation of
other creeds. Are all these Jews? Whatever the answer to this question
may be from a practical, political, social, and communal point of view,
the fact is that they are Jews. They may have forfeited certain
privileges, they may be disqualified for certain religious offices,
they may be dangerous to the religious peace of our family or
community: they are notwithstanding Jews, and are bound to live in
accordance with the Law which the Almighty has given to the Jews and
for the Jews. Our Sages say: אף על פי שחטא ישראל הוא, “Although a man
may have sinned, he is an Israelite still.” No theologian, Rabbi, or
teacher, or Beth-din, or Sanhedrin, has the power of granting
absolution, or telling those who break or reject any portion of the
Divine precepts that they are not doing wrong. No human being has the
authority to abrogate laws revealed by God. Why then, some may ask, do
prophets and moralists, the Rabbis of the Talmud not excluded, single
out ethical principles for special recommendation to their fellow-men,
generally observing silence about the rest of the Divine commands? The
answer is simple. The ethical principles and the Divine commandments
embodying them are different in kind from the rest of the commandments.
The latter are distinct, well defined, and the punishment for their
transgression is fixed; they are unchangeable, and not capable of
expansion.
The dietary laws, e.g., are exactly the same now as they were in the
days of Moses. So also the laws concerning Sabbath. What was then
prohibited by the Sabbath is prohibited still. The ethical principles,
however, are capable of development, and the moral standard rises with
the progress of civilisation. Hence the constant dissatisfaction of
prophets, preachers, and teachers with the moral principles of their
followers. They have a higher standard of morality, and strive to raise
the moral consciousness of their generations to their own height.
It is, therefore, no wonder that the prophet Isaiah exhorts his
brethren: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings
from before mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well: seek
judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the
widow” (i. 16, 17). “He that walketh righteously, and speaketh
uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his
hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of
blood, and shutteth his eyes from looking upon evil, he shall dwell on
high,” &c. (Ibid. xxxiii. 15, 16). In the same sense the virtuous man
is described by all prophets; also in Ps. xv. and Ps. xxiv.
R. Akiba says: “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Lev. xix.
18) is an important principle in the Torah,” but at the same time he
shows what importance he ascribes to all other principles and precepts
of the Law by most carefully examining the details of every one of them
alike. The great Hillel told the Gentile who desired to become a Jew:
“‘Do not to thy neighbour what is hateful to you;’ this is our whole
religion;” but that he did not ignore the remainder of the Torah, or
consider it as not essential, is proved by the additional words: “The
rest is its explanation; go and learn” (Babyl. Talmud, Sabbath, 31a).
Hillel only gave the proselyte a lesson which would lead him to obey
all the words of the Almighty.
Rabbi Simlai (Yalkut on Micah vi. 8) said: “Six hundred and thirteen
commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai; David reduced them to
eleven (Ps. xv.); Isaiah reduced them to six (xxxiii. 16, 17); Micah
(vi. 8) to three; then Isaiah reduced them again to two (lvi. 1); and
Habakkuk to one—Faith (ii. 4).” This Rabbi does certainly not mean to
say that Isaiah cancelled some of the eleven virtues mentioned by
David, or that Habakkuk only demanded Faith, and did not consider it
essential that man should be righteous, truthful, &c. Rabbi Simlai
intended only to point out that by training ourselves in the practice
of certain virtues, the fulfilment of all Divine precepts will be
greatly facilitated.
All the commandments of the holy Torah are equally Divine. Laws
concerning justice and humanity, and laws concerning Sabbath and
Holydays, are equally introduced by the declaration, “And the Lord
spake unto Moses, saying.” The commandments, “Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself,” and “A garment of diverse kinds, of linen and
wool, shall not come upon thee,” stand side by side in the same
paragraph. The equality of all the precepts as the expression of the
Will of the Almighty is clearly set forth in the Law, in the frequent
exhortations that the Israelites should obey all the precepts, whatever
their nature may be, whether they be of the class of “statutes” or of
“judgments,” or of any other class of Divine commands. (Comp. Exod. xv.
25, 26; Lev. xxvi. 15, 43; Num. xv. 39, 40; Deut. iv. 1, 5, 8, &c.)
As to the various terms employed in the Pentateuch to designate the
Divine precepts: words (דברים), commandments (מצוות), statutes
(חקים), judgments (משפטים), and laws (תורות), they may be
considered as synonyms signifying similar things. But even synonyms are
as a rule distinguished from each other by a certain variation in their
meaning, especially when the terms occur in one and the same sentence.
A definition of these terms is not given in the Pentateuch or in the
Bible; from the context, however, in which they occur the following
distinction may be drawn:—
חק or חקה, “statute,” is applied to those laws which are absolute
and do not depend on certain conditions, whilst mishpat, “judgment,” is
a law the performance of which varies according to circumstances. Thus
the Paschal sacrifice is called chukkah, and must absolutely be
performed, whilst the civil laws concerning slaves, damages, &c., are
mishpatim, because cases of slavery or damages need not occur, and the
respective precepts are then not carried into effect. In a similar
manner Jewish theologians divide the Divine precepts into מצות שמעיות
and מצות שכליות precepts which our duty of obedience to God makes us
perform, and precepts which, without distinct Divine command, our own
reason would impel us to do.—The other terms, mitsvah, “commandment,”
and mishmereth, “charge,” are used in a general sense, the former in
reference to the Giver of the law, and the latter in reference to those
to whom it is addressed.
The division of the precepts into שמעיות and שכליות is a vague one,
and the line of demarcation will be moved farther to the one side or
the other, according to the judgment exercised by the interpreter. Of
greater importance is the division into positive and negative precepts,
commandments, and prohibitions, מצות עשה and מצות לא תעשה. The
prohibitions are of two kinds: such as admit of amends being made for
their transgression and such as do not admit: שיש בה קום עשה and
שאין בה קום עשה.
The number of the commandments is, according to Rabbi Simlai, 613
(תר״יג), and in some editions of the Pentateuch the number of each
commandment has been noted in the margin. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, in
the introduction to his Mishneh-torah, enumerates the 613 mitsvoth.
They are also contained in liturgical compositions, called אזהרות
“exhortations,” or “precepts,” such as are met with in the Machzor for
the Feast of Weeks.
Maimonides, in “The Guide” as well as in Mishneh-torah, treats of the
precepts of the Torah under the following fourteen heads: (1)
Fundamental principles of our faith; [31] (2) Divine worship; (3)
Sabbath and festivals; (4) Marriages; (5) Forbidden food and forbidden
relations of the sexes; (6) Vows; (7) Agriculture; (8) The Temple and
the regular sacrificial service; (9) Occasional sacrifices; (10)
Cleanness and uncleanness; (11) Compensation for damages; (12) Transfer
of property; (13) Contracts; (14) Administration of the law.
Another theologian, Rabbenu Jakob, divided the code of laws into four
sections: (1) Divine worship, Sabbath, festivals, and fasts; (2) Things
forbidden and things permitted in satisfying our bodily desires; (3)
Marriages; (4) Civil laws.
The latter work was recast by Rabbi Joseph Caro, and in the new form,
with the new title Shulchan Aruch, it has become the standard work of
Jewish law and life, and its authority has been recognised and upheld
by Jews in the East and the West. Annotations (הגהות) were added by
Rabbi Moses Isserles, but his opinion, when differing from that of
Rabbi Joseph Caro, was only accepted by the Polish and German
Congregations, not by the Sephardim.
Rabbi Joseph Caro, Rabbenu Jakob, and Maimonides appear, in their
respective codes, not as legislators but as compilers. The Torah and
the Talmud were the sources from which they all drew their laws. But
laws, minhagim or customs, and institutions (תקנות) of a
post-Talmudic date were not neglected. Questions arising in the course
of time, through new and changed conditions of life, are, as a rule,
discussed and decided in notes and commentaries on the Shulchan Aruch.
There are also numerous special works on such occasional questions;
they are called “Responsa” (תשובות “Answers,” or שאלות ותשובות
“Questions and Answers”), and the importance attributed to them varies
according to the reputation of the respective authors.
What is the object of the Divine laws? This is a question that
naturally rises in the minds of those to whom they are addressed. But
the question has been anticipated by Him “who knoweth the thoughts of
the sons of man,” and the answer is found in clear and distinct words
in the fountain of living waters, the Torah, that never fails to
satisfy our thirst for truth: “Thou shalt keep his statutes and his
commandments which I command thee this day, that it may be well with
thee and thy children after thee” (Deut. iv. 40). “And now, O Israel,
what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy
God, to walk in all his ways and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul: to keep the commandments
of the Lord and his statutes which I command thee this day, for thy
good” (ibid. x. 12, 13). It is for our benefit, for our well-being,
that the laws were revealed to us; they serve to make us good and
happy; they train us in the mastery over our appetites and desires, in
the practice of charity and justice, and in the conception of noble,
pure, and lofty ideas, and bring us nearer and nearer in perfection the
Being in whose image and likeness we have been created.
What share each individual precept has in the attainment of this end we
cannot state with certainty, because in the Torah the reason and
purpose of each precept is, with very few exceptions, withheld from us.
In many cases our reflection on the nature of a special law, or on the
context in which it occurs in the Pentateuch, leads to a discovery of
some reason for it. But, whatever reason we may thus discover, we must
not lose sight of the fact that it is we who have found it, we whose
knowledge is imperfect, and that we or others might in future discover
a better reason. If we, e.g., find that certain dietary laws serve to
train us in temperance, and see that the virtue of temperance is
frequently recommended in the Bible, we may well obey these dietary
laws, and strive to be temperate in every respect in accordance with
the spirit we detect in them. It would, however, be a gross error if,
believing the training in temperance to be their only object, we
assumed that we could neglect them, and attain the same object by
substituting our own insufficient knowledge and imperfect reason for
the Will and Wisdom of the most perfect Being. Moralists, our teachers
and preachers of ancient and modern times, have found in these precepts
an inexhaustible treasure of lessons exhorting to virtue and warning
against vice, and the great variety of inferences thus drawn from the
same source proves the error of those who imagine that their own
exposition is the only right one. Whatever reason we assign to a
religious precept, and whatever wholesome lesson we derive from it, our
first duty towards the commandment, and towards Him who commanded it,
is strict and unconditional obedience.
Maimonides, who may be considered as the representative of the school
which seeks to establish a rational explanation for all precepts,
admits that the reason we may assign to any of the commandments cannot
affect their validity and immutability, and we are bound to obey them,
although the supposed reason may be of a local or temporary character.
According to Maimonides, the object of the Law is to promote the
well-being of our body and the well-being of our soul; and every
commandment has therefore some bearing upon one of the following three
things: the regulation of our opinions, the removal of sin, or the
teaching of good morals. He does not except the “statutes” from this
rule, but confesses that in a few cases he is unable to show clearly
the relation of the commandment to any of these objects. He also
restricts the principle of rational interpretation to the main element
in each commandment, and does not apply it to its details; the latter,
as a rule, do not demand an explanation. He says:—
“The general object of the Law is twofold: the well-being of the soul
and the well-being of the body” (Guide, iii. 27). “I am prepared to
tell you my explanations of all these commandments (the so-called
chukkim or “statutes”), and to assign for them a true reason supported
by proof, with the exception of some minor rules and of a few
commandments. I will show that all these and similar laws must have
some bearing upon one of the following three things, viz., the
regulation of our opinions or the improvement of our social relations,
which implies two things: the removal of wrong-doing and the teaching
of good morals” (ibid. xxviii.). “The repeated assertion of our Sages
that there are reasons for all commandments, and the tradition that
Solomon knew them, refer to the general purpose of the commandments,
and not to the object of every detail. This being the case, I find it
convenient to divide the six hundred and thirteen precepts into
classes; each class to include many precepts of the same kind. I will
first explain the reason of each class of precepts, and show their
common object, and then I shall discuss the individual commandments and
expound their reasons. Only very few will be left unexplained, the
reason for which I have been unable to trace unto this day. I have also
been able to comprehend in some cases even the object of many of the
conditions and details of the laws as far as it can be discovered”
(ibid. xxvi.).
“It is also important to note that the Law does not take into account
exceptional circumstances; it is not based on conditions which rarely
occur.” “We must therefore not be surprised when we find that the
object of the Law does not fully appear in every individual case.”
“From this consideration it follows that the Law cannot, like medicine,
vary according to the different conditions of persons and times. Whilst
the cure of a person depends on his particular constitution at the
particular time, the Divine guidance contained in the Law must be
certain and general, although it may be effective in some cases and
ineffective in others. If the Law depended on the varying conditions of
man, it would be imperfect in its totality, each precept being left
indefinite. For this reason, it would not be right to make the
fundamental principles of the Law dependent on a certain time or a
certain place. On the contrary, the statutes and the judgments must be
definite, unconditional, and general, in accordance with the Divine
words: ‘As for the congregation, one ordinance shall be for you and for
the stranger’ (Num. xv. 15). They are intended, as has been stated
before, for all persons and for all times” (ibid. xxxiv.).
In the present treatise our religious duties will be expounded under
the following seven heads:—
1. Exposition of the Decalogue.
2. General ethical principles—
(a.) Duties towards God.
(b.) ,, ,, our fellow-men.
(c.) ,, ,, ourselves.
3. Outward reminders of God’s Presence.
4. Sabbath, Festivals, and Fasts.
5. Divine Worship.
6. Dietary Laws.
7. Jewish Life.