In this week’s reading, we find the second, longest paragraph of the Shema [Deut. 11:13-21], the daily reading in which Jews commit to follow G-d and His Commandments. The first section, with Shema itself [6:5-9], was part of our reading last week.
The Mishnah [Brachos 2:2] explains why it is that these two paragraphs are read in this order: “in order that a person first accept upon himself the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, and then afterwards accept upon himself the yoke of the Commandments.” Without acknowledging that there is someone to give a command, the very idea of a “commandment” falls away—it cannot be a command if no one gave it and no one expects us to obey.
The word “Mitzvah,” accurately rendered as “Commandment,” is often mistranslated as “good deed,” and this is not coincidental. It is a lot easier to do something because I want to do it than to accept it as an obligation, one which I am required to do whether I like it or not! Yet that, the Shema declares, a “Mitzvah” is tied to our Creator and Commander. It is a good deed precisely because G-d is good, and gave us that Commandment to perform.
A modern thinker once claimed that a Jewish person should ask “do I feel commanded” by each Mitzvah, and also said that a person should feel “commanded without being coerced.” But an actual command, of course, is implicitly coercive. There is an expectation that it be obeyed, even an implicit system of reward and punishment—which the second paragraph of Shema, which we read this week, makes explicit.
The idea of morality itself is tied to the order of paragraphs in the Shema, as described in the Mishnah. The Sages teach us that Polytheism, the desire to worship idols, was attractive to people precisely because it allowed immoral behavior. If Zeus, Hera, and Dionysus want to do different things, and want humans to do different things, then there is no single moral standard that all must obey.
The latter idol, of course, existed in the Greek pantheon precisely to encourage drunken, licentious abandon. His Roman counterpart, Bacchus, gives us the English word bacchanal.
That is exactly what the Torah is countering in the passages of Shema. First, the Mishnah says, a person must accept that there is a single G-d, the Commander who establishes right and wrong, and then a person can accept that he must do all the Commandments.
Judaism teaches that a person naturally feels a greater tie to something he or she has earned, rather than simply given at whim. So Hashem gives us Commandments so that we will feel we have earned the delightful rewards He always wanted to give us.
Contemplating the words of the Shema has a profound effect on a person, driving home these concepts. The Shema helps a person pursue the good and moral path, each and every day. We are fortunate to be “coerced” to read it!
