Changing the Mitzvoth
Adapted from Rabbi Braun’s sermon in 5770
This past Thursday the AC in my car died. I drove to the mechanic, he looked at the car and said yes, the AC is not working at all. So I left the car and was going to call for a ride when Pat says, Rabbi this woman is going your way, let me ask her to take you. It was a Jewish woman and we walk to the car, Pat asks her if she can take me and she says, I don’t think he is allowed to come in the car with me. I think it is a prohibition. Don’t worry I told her, I will sit in the back and it will be ok.
I said something to Pat so that he wouldn’t think the Jews are crazy but all I could think was, who makes this stuff up? Whose Judaism is this?
That exact message is front and center in Moshe’s farewell speech to the people. After recounting the past 40 years in the desert and rebuking the people for their past misdeeds, the very first mitzvah that Moshe records is “do not add to the commands that I have given you and do not detract from them in order to keep all of the mitzvoth that I am commanding you today.” He continues, your eyes saw what God did to you regarding Baal Peor, (when the Jews were seduced by the midyanite women and ended up worshipping idolatry) for everyone that followed baal Peor God wiped out.
Two questions immediately present themselves:
- Why is this the first thing that Moshe tells the people? Are there not more important mitzvoth? We read the Ten Commandments later in the parsha, why not start with them?
- What does the command to not subtract or detract from the Torah have to do with the Jews sinning with prostitutes and idols in the desert?
I want to answer the second question first and then return to the first. Many of the commentators offer answers but as the Abarbanel says when he rejects them, the style and context of the parsha prevent them from being true. The same can probably be said of his answer as well.
The answer that rings most true is offered by SR Hirsch. He writes: “it proclaims the fact that every denial of the inviolable Divinity of the torah, even regarding one single mitzvah, setting man’s opinion as being equal to the statues of God is equivalent to a general defection to polytheism.
In other words- if you add to the mitzvoth or detract , if you change one iota of the command, you man or woman have changed God’s Torah, you have put your voice and mind above the divine and that is tantamount to idolatry- thus the connection to baal Peor. That instance is used, says Hirsch, simply because it is fresh in their minds.
Any change in the mitzvoth, is a change to the Torah and a challenge to the Torah’s divine and eternal nature. If that is correct than I understand why Moshe begins with it. Mitzvoth make up a fair amount of the book of Devarim. This is not a more important mitzvah perse; rather it should be seen as a fundamental principle upon which the others are based. Its message is a pre-requisite for keeping all of the other mitzvoth.
Moshe is telling the people, the key to keeping all the mitzvoth and thus the key to entering, settling and living in the land is to keep the mitzvoth as God gave them to you. Do not pretend to be smarter than God and in doing so come close to idolatry. That is the key to Jewish continuity and success.
Unfortunately as we look around the Jewish world and non orthodox denominations we see that they have failed miserably in this area. They have decided that some mitzvoth no longer apply and some can be changed. And this hass damaged Jewish continuity and spirituality immeasurably.
Before we get on our high orthodox horses we should note that the Torah does not distinguish between adding or detracting. One who adds to the Torah or changes a mitzvah is just as guilty of spiritual arrogance and denial of the divinity of the Torah as one who detracts.
In a striking comment Maimonides argues that although Jewish law allows for rabbinic decrees and safeguards, the command not to add to the torah means that one is forbidden to say that something which is rabbinically prohibited is actually forbidden from the Torah. He gives the following example- meat and milk are a Torah prohibition. Chicken and milk is rabbinically prohibited. “Do not add” means that if I said that chicken and meat are forbidden from the Torah I would violate this torah law of not adding to the Torah.
At first glance that hardly seems comparable to the reform pronouncement in 1885 that one need not keep kosher anymore. Nevertheless the underlying principle is indeed the same. You have taken the word of God and changed it.
One of the issues that has plagued orthodoxy in the late 20th century and early 21st century is this form of bal tossif and what I would call and extension of it. Many customs and practices seem to have taken on Torah law status. People who don’t do x,y, or z are looked at as non orthodox and less religious. By putting extraordinary focus on certain practices and giving them unwarranted importance and status one comes close to perverting the word of God and misrepresenting Judaism.
Admittedly this has not done as much damage as removing mitzvoth to Jewish continuity but it is not the ideal Judaism to which we should strive.
The ideal Jew knows and appreciates what God’s Mitzvoth are. He or she knows which mitzvoth and prohibitions are rabbinic and what is custom and what is nonsense and is able to appreciate the differences between those 4 categories.
Only then can you practice real Judaism and live the life that God wants us to.
