There is no Commander – and yet, I Am Commanded – by Rabbi Ariel Edery

Mitzvah or no Mitzvah? That is the question.

The life of a Jew is all about doing a Mitzvah, following a commandment. Jewish life
begins with a Mitzvah (circumcision and naming), and ends with a Mitzvah (Jewish
burial and mourning observances). And in between those, Jewish life is following
Mitzvah after Mitzvah: celebrating the holy days, eating Kosher, observing Shabbat,
giving Tzedakah (charitable contributions), studying Torah, teaching your children,
feeding the hungry, Repairing the World, … and so many more!
If you read the first sections of this book, and noticed the notions of God and Torah
presented – those embraced and those rejected – you may be asking this question:
“What then is a Mitzvah/commandment?” And you may be asking yourself, “Why must I
do any of those? Who says I have to?”
Obviously, many Jews have clear and simple answers: a Mitzvah is what God actually
said; a commandment is the Superior Being’s direct order; since a Mitzvah is each of
the specific orders God gave us in Scripture, given from God’s word to our prophets,
then you better listen and do them.
But these answers do not work for me. And if you are still reading this book, I suppose
they do not work for you either! Sharing many of the ideas expressed previously in this
book, I too reject the notion that God is a Big Man, an Omnipotent and Omni-everything
Being, a King (or Queen, or ungendered Monarch) who issues orders. My challenge
then - our challenge – is to answer the obvious question: if there is no Divine Being
issuing commands, then how can we even speak of Mitzvah/commandment? If there is
no “Commander”, then the concept of a commandment falls through. Is there any sense
left in the concept of Mitzvah for a non-theistic Jew like me?

The first impulse is to follow the simple logic, “if there is no Commander, then there are
no commandments”. And yet, as my life as a Jew developed, from my
Conservative/Orthodox upbringing, and through the next four decades of studying our
tradition, I encountered many ideas which give different and positive answers to our
question. In fact, Jewish tradition is full of ideas and reasons to keep
Mitzvah/commandment regardless of the Commander!
Some of those answers are presented in philosophical treatises (like Maimonides’
Guide). Some are presented through poetry and poetic images (by Biblical prophets,
Psalms, and later in Medieval piyutim). Some in parables, as in the Biblical Wisdom-
books, and in classic Rabbis’ Midrash. In this chapter I cannot comprehensively review
all those texts, which are plentiful. But I will share some examples of the “pearls” found
in them: ideas which fully embrace and support the validity of Mitzvah, and the authority
of Mitzvah, without any need for a heavenly Big Commander-in-Chief to give us the
marching orders.

There is no Commander – and yet, I Am Commanded – by Rabbi Ariel Edery Page 1

Tradition!
I am a non-theistic, Reform Rabbi, and also a deep Traditionalist, gladly embracing 12th
century Jewish thinking on God:
"There exists in the universe a certain force which controls the whole, which sets in
motion the chief and principal parts … and it is the source of the existence of the
Universe in all its parts. That force is God. … It is on account of this force that man
is called microcosm: for man likewise possesses a certain principle which governs
all the forces of the body, and on account of this comparison in the Bible God is
called ‘the Life of the Universe’ (Daniel 12:7).” (Maimonides)i

I am also guided by an abundance of Biblical texts, like the 2,700-year-old words of

prophet Isaiah, affirming that God is not a person, and is not a “Big Man”, but rather is
essentially different from a human, and more like an abstract force than a Being. ii
But let’s be clear: even those thinkers with the most abstract notions of God, such as
Maimonides and Isaiah, surely lived their life fulfilling Mitzvot/commandments, and saw
themselves strongly commanded to live that way, despite their non-theistic notion of
God and not believing in a Commander who speaks orders. Inspired by them, and many
other great Jewish thinkers, I believe we do not need to imagine a supernatural Being
who magically spoke commands to us to have a clear notion of Mitzvah – of being
commanded to behave in specific ways. We may not have Commander in Chief, but we
surely have several other sources issuing nothing less than commandments to us.

Some Pearls

* Look closely at this divine commandment in Torah (Exodus 23:9):

“You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for
you  too  were strangers in the land of Egypt.
While Torah presents this in God’s voice, we can see how the true source of this
mitzvah is our own Experience. Our experience is what commands us: we experienced
oppression, xenophobia, racism, and “from this experience” we learn how bad that is,
and from here we get the mandate to make sure we do not do any of this to anyone.
Clearly, some of “us” experienced Egypt, some of “us” experienced the Shoah, but most
Jews in history did not personally live through those. In this sense, when we speak of
the commandments emerging from “Our Experience” of oppression we refer both to the
personal experiences each of us may have, and also to the collective and historic
experience of generations of Jews. Our Personal Experience commands us, and our
Historical Experience commands us.iii

* Let’s look now at what is undoubtedly the most famous commandment in the world - in
the words of Torah (Leviticus 19) “You must love your neighbor as yourself”. This
commandment is so central in Judaism, that the Talmud tells us how Rabbi Hillel used it
to summarize the whole of Torah in one phrase: “What you hate when done to you, do
not do it to your fellow – this is the whole Torah!”.iv

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The Golden Rule – which is part of every religion, and is also Golden outside of
religious communities - is Golden precisely because it doesn’t matter if you believe in a
God or not, and it doesn’t matter who is laying the rule, since it includes its own source
of authority: Empathy. The awareness of how others feel pain just like we do, is enough
for us to see ourselves commanded not to cause that pain to others.

* The beautiful verses of Psalm 19 begin:

“The skies are telling us about a divine wonder;
A message is expressed day to day,
knowledge is conveyed night to night;
But there is no speaking, and there are no words,
Theirs is not an audible voice.”v
Indeed, deep contemplation of the skies, exploration and discovery of the Universe’s
grandeur, beauty, and power, is an eternal source of awe for us - in Biblical times just"
as in our time. Carl Sagan wrote:
“In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very
act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with
the magnificence of the Cosmos. … Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a
profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and
in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that
soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.”vi

Dr. Sagan and the Psalmist have a common practice of contemplating, discerning and
marveling at the Universe, so naturally they also share the awe resulting from it. Yet
knowledge of our amazing Universe does more than spark awe - it elicits reverence.
Reverence is not just a feeling, it also includes the call to adjust our behaviors in due
honor and respect for the object of our reverence. As Jews, many of the Mitzvot we
follow are precisely set to show reverence for Life – human, animal, the Life of the
Universe, and our natural environment. When I religiously abstain from eating animals
as food, and when I care to avoid products and behaviors which degrade the
environment (adopting what some call Eco-Kosher) I see myself clearly and directly
commanded to do so, by Nature, by Life, by my knowledge and awe of the
Universe.
The Psalm, and the Torah rules regarding animal suffering, and other similar Biblical
Commandments, are not themselves the source that commands me: they are the
reminder, they are the vehicle through which my attention is drawn to the actual sources
commanding me: Nature, Life, Knowledge, Awe, Reverence.

Following that line of thought, in the Talmud we are explicitly taught how Torah is simply
a reminder of values and behaviors which we ourselves derive using our intellectual and
spiritual abilities:
“Rabbi Yohanan observed: If the Torah had not been given, we could have learned
modesty from the cat, honest labor from the ant, marital fidelity from the dove, and good
manners from the rooster.”vii Torah does not give us mysterious orders – it commands
us the behaviors that we can learn ourselves from carefully observing nature.

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That notion, and the ideas we’ve been discussing from the Psalms, Biblical Wisdom,
Maimonidean philosophy, and Talmudic Rabbis like Hillel and Yohanan, may be
condensed in one phrase: We do not do a Mitzvah because Torah says so, or because
it is written that God said so; we do a Mitzvah because we came to understand that is
our responsibility to do it, because of what we learned from experience, because of the
knowledge we have gained observing our world, and studying our history. Torah’s and
God’s commandments are simple reminders of the expectations and demands all those
processes and forces present to us.

Perhaps the best way to conclude this discussion is with a finer definition of Mitzvah: a
Mitzvah is a responsibility I accept, an expectation that as a Jew I face regarding my
behavior, which I fulfill religiously – meaning, I do it regardless of my mood or daily
schedule, I do or I do not do something even if it is costly, even if it is inconvenient or
against a desire of mine, as I prioritize my sense of obligation over wants and selfish
concerns.
On Friday eve, when I fulfill the Mitzvot of celebrating Shabbat, and of communal prayer
in my congregation, we often read in our prayer book:
As Jews our main connection with holiness is through acts of mitzvah.
Mitzvah comes from the words of prophets, from Israel’s values and traditions; and also
from our conscience, from reason, and from what knowledge and wisdom call us to do
—for our own good and for the common good.
A mitzvah is that action we do knowing it is the right thing to do, without needing
explanations. 
We do not perform a mitzvah to go up to a holy heaven; we do it to help bring heaven
down to our earth. When we engage in a mitzvah, we make any time and place become
a holy moment and a holy place.viii

I believe, and I have seen time and again, how Mitzvah – the notion we have of being
commanded to do something – truly makes a difference in people’s life. And I think most
Jews (past and present) would agree that the whole point of embracing Judaism’s
commandments is for us to have a guide to doing good in this world, a context for doing
it, and a community to do it with us.
What Mitzvot should we follow? The list is surely long! On the top of our Mitzvah list I
see acting to reduce the oppression and suffering of “the widow, orphan, and the
foreigner”; working for Tikun Olam (repair what is broken in our world); dedication to
pursuing all knowledge, and using it to shape our life for better; improving ourselves and
our moral character through ethical and ritual practices.
Following the specific practices in Jewish tradition, or without those traditional forms,
each day I have countless opportunities to rise to a Mitzvah: in every act I do for my
society’s benefit, in the way I treat others, in the ways I treat animals and nature, in
consumption choices I can make out of ethical and moral concerns, in policies I support
or oppose, engaging in self-improvement and developing a more virtuous character. I

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am sure you can add others to this list, your own Mitzvah’s, the bar of expectations set
for yourself.

Prophet Micah said: “God has told you what is good; and what God requires of you:
only to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”ix These are
commandments assigned to us by God - which is to say, by Nature, by Reason, by
Knowledge, by Conscience, by History, and by Ethics. I am sure we all find these to be
powerful Commanders, whose Mitzvah’s we must embrace.

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i
Guide to the Perplexed, Pt. 1, Ch. LXXII.
ii
See Isaiah (51:8) referring to God as “not a person”, and (55:8) stating how God’s plans and ways are nothing like the
humans’, but belonging in a different category, as earth and heaven are unlike each other.
iii
Judaism can be understood as the sum of the lessons, sensibilities and behaviors which resulted from our long history on
this earth. When he wrote a book with a comprehensive presentation of Judaism, Rabbi Leo Trepp – a Shoah survivor
himself – tellingly gave it this title: “A History of the Jewish Experience.”
iv
BT Shabbat 31a.
v
This is my translation.
vi
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Ballantine Books, 2011)
vii
BT Eruvin 100b.
viii
This is in a prayer book published in-house at Beth Shalom, Raleigh NC. The text is mine.
ix
Micah 6:8.