This Shabbat is the second day of Shavuot—a good time to think about our relationship to the Torah as a source of law (halakhah) that is supposed to shape how we live every day. 

Problem: For most of us, it doesn’t. 

The Torah says: keep kosher. Many of us don’t. 

The Torah says: observe Shabbat. For many of us, Saturday is not Shabbat but another weekend day, not particularly distinguishable from Sunday. 

The Torah (as the rabbis interpret it) says: we are obligated to pray daily. Many of us don’t. Perhaps we come to shul when we have a Yahrtzeit, or when we are invited to a Bar/Bat Mitzvah or an auf ruf. But few of us actually believe we are required to pray every day. Witness that in our congregation of almost 4,000 souls, we average 20 to 40 people at our daily minyanim. 

The Torah we received at Sinai posits a commanding God whose commands we are obligated to observe. 

Few, if any of us, believe in that commanding God. 

There is a disconnect between the commanding God we are supposed to believe in and the autonomous lives we lead, where we do what we want to do, when we want to do it.  

How do we understand this disconnect? Can we solve for it, or at least ameliorate it? 

To consider these questions, please read the attached article by Elliot Cosgrove, the rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, “A Choosing People,” published in Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, Spring 2023. In addition, Rabbi Cosgrove was in dialogue with Yehuda Kurtzer in this recent podcast. 

Rabbi Cosgrove asserts: 

 While the language of “obligation” may have run its course, “commandedness” has not. The performance of mitzvot as an expression of service to God remains a powerful driver for Jewish practice. 

Can we resuscitate commandedness as a relevant category in our religious lives? If not, do you have an elegant theory that explains why you do what you do as a Jew? What is your personal definition of the word mitzvah?