Thinking about Mitzvot - all 613 of them
Judaism, like all religions, is about being a good person. Of course, it's also about faith and God and belief and ritual, etc. But much is tied up with how we treat each other.
As a secular Jew, this good deeds part - doing a Mitzvah - is how I really define my Judaism. Thinking about 2011 made me wonder about the "official" list of Mitzvot (the plural of Mitvah).
A quick bit of Googling clarified that there are 613 of them. But what are they? Where did they come from? Are the 613 Mitzvot still relevant today?
Here's what I've found out so far. Feel free to correct me.
- There are 613 good deeds.
- A tallis has 613 fringes on it. That must be hard to do.
- The list was put together by the great sage Maimonides in the 1100's. He had a lot of pseudonyms, like Rambam. In fact, Sherwin Nulad's short biography of him confirms that he was a super Jew - he codified the Talmud, he was a great physician, and community leader.
- The list is clear but a little fuzzy. Everyone appears to agree on the number. However, there's no universal numbering scheme like, for instance, the ten commandments.
- Some of the lists separate out positive mitzvot from negative ones (do this, don't do this). Others sort by type of mitzvah. Some leave out the stuff that's no longer relevant since the end of animal sacrifice. Some sort by the passage in the Torah, but since there's some disagreement about passages or multiple passages involves, this can get gory.
- While I'm a little concerned about using a Wikipedia list of Mitzvot, since the page looks like it's updated frequently, it seems like the most reasonable place to start. The Aish.com list is the same but doesn't have links to the text.
So is the list still relevant? It's been much harder to sort through this than I expected. I know more about the list of Mitzvot than I did before but not enough to apply any specifics.
But so far so good! The lesson to date? It's hard work being a good person. It takes effort to sort it out. And I'm still curious about the list...
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David Levy
Jamaica Plain, MA
January 04, 2011
There are two problems with thinking about mitzvot as "good deeds" -- one is that the "negative commandments" (I like their Hebrew name better - they're known as the "don't do" commandments) are the opposite of deeds -- they are refraining from deeds (like "don't kill" or "don't curse the deaf"); the other is that there's nothing inherently good about many of the mitzvot -- something like keeping kosher is value neutral. We can ascribe all sorts of meaning to it that might make us feel good, but from a Biblical perspective, it's just something we're told to do.
(I think part of the appeal of Kabbalah and other mystical approaches to Judaism is the idea that fulfilling mitzvot like kashrut, that don't have measurable "goodness" to them, bring a spiritual goodness in the form of tikun olam in the pre-social-justice sense (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam#The_role_of_ritual_mitzvot).
And don't even get me started on the number 613... that's like a bad pun that someone took seriously two thousand years ago, leading to all sorts of ridiculousness. I wrote more about there over at Jewschool, but watch out, it's a long and somewhat pedantic post: http://jewschool.com/2009/05/12/16277/lies-we-were-taught-in-hebrew-school-or-why-613-is-a-meaningless-number/
Patty Jacobson
Watertown, MA
January 03, 2011
Okay, so David corrected my math, er my Hebrew translation. Mitvah means commandment, not good deed. I think I like my translation better. I intellectually understand that you're commanded to do the mitzvot; but I'm drawn much more to the concept of good deeds.