From Commandment to Companionship: Pesah and Mitzvot

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God's activity in the Exodus is two-fold: dismantling Egyptian society through the plagues on the one hand, and disclosing the first mitzvot to Israel - counting time and the Pesah sacrifice - on the other. A mirror symmetry of Egyptian downfall and Israelite building-up emerges, and invites us to consider how and why these mitzvot link Israel to God.

Mitzvah, it turns out, doesn't only mean 'commandment' - though it also means that - but also intimacy. The most revealing appearance of 'tzivah' (a verb-form of mitzvah) is in Yitro's advice to his son-in-law Moshe. Yitro couches his counsel of establishing courts in an artfully parallel rhetorical envelope: the four phrases of his opening are parallel to the four concluding lines (18:17-19 in the left column; 18:23-4 in the right column):

This thing which you do is not good

If you do this thing [which I have said]

You will surely wither, both you and this people that is with you.

For this thing is too heavy for you, you will not be able to do it yourself

and God will 'tzivah' you (= line 4)

Now, obey my speech, and I will counsel you

You will be able to stand, and all this people will arrive in its place in peace ( = line 2)

And God will be with you (imcha Elohim)

And Moses obeyed the speech of his father-in-law, doing everything he had said ( = line 3)

Take a minute to take in all of this parallelism - I've bolded the sections that correspond to one another.

Something simple and profound is at work here. The Torah, in again and again using a word whose basic sense is being-together to also mean 'command' places asking someone for something at the center of relationship. In saying "Please, it would mean so much to me if you were here with me next week," or "I need you for this," we reveal ourselves. Commandment is inevitably revelation. This is true of God as well: God is revealed, first and foremost, through the act of commanding and through the content of those commandments - through the Torah. The Torah is revelation because all commandments spoken in good faith, all requests, are revelation.

The kicker here is line 2 on the right - God will 'tzivah' you - in parallel to line 4 on the left. Tzivah quite plainly matches 'being-with' (im, spelled with an 'ayin'). It's not a stretch to say that Yitro uses 'tzivah' as a verb that we don't have in English, and which most of us didn't realize we had in Hebrew: to be with. Could mitzvah mean very simply "to be with"? What would it look like if the meanings of 'commandment,' and 'being-together' were linked?

R. Moshe Hayim Luzzato captures just these possibilities in his classic Mesillat Yesharim. In describing true piety, R. Luzzato says,

"A person who truly loves God will not try to fulfill only their explicit obligations. Rather, the same thing will happen to this person as happens to a child who loves her father: when the father reveals, however slightly, that he delights in a certain thing, the child will immediately respond by pursuing that thing or action to the fullest of her ability. And even though her father may have only expressed this once, and in passing, that will be enough for the child to discern the inclinations of her father's mind; since she can reason for herself that this thing brings comfort to him, she will not wait until it is commanded (tzivah) explicitly or said again..."

Love motivates on two levels here. First, I am roused to carefully and attentively study my friend; because of my love for him, I try to understand him, to fully and accurately know what she wants and needs. Vis a vis God, this is nothing other than the study of Torah, where we begin with incomplete and often-cryptic instructions, and build from them a full picture of God's designs for our lives.

And second, love moves me to act: to expend time, effort, creativity, and wealth to realize the desires of the person I love. Love bubbles up into visiting store after store to find the right present, to dedicating hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to the poor - because a friend, or God, has shown us that this is their desire.

This week of Pesach we relive these first mitzvot, which culminate in reading the love poetry of the Song of Songs. May all of us merit the true freedom of living a loving give and take with our families and friends, and with God: revealing ourselves by asking on the one hand, and enacting our love by listening and responding on the other.

haggadah Section: Commentary / Readings

Source: Original