Parashat Mishpatim, Exodus 21:1-24:18, Shabbat Shekalim, Exodus 30:11-16

Why on earth be active in the Jewish community if you do not believe?

If I had to do it all again I'd spend a lot of time practicing piano, violin, drawing, shooting baskets, whatever. While practice doesn't make perfect, it gets you pretty close. One of the most intriguing pieces of information in Malcolm Gladwell's  book Outliers is the 10,000 hour rule; this being the amount of time you must spend doing something to be really good at it. The opportunity to have this much practice is more important than talent alone. If someone had told me this when I was ten, I would now be a terrific animator who just happened to play the banjo with ease and could speedskate with the best of them. There may still be a chance: five hours a day, five days a week and I could reach one of these goals in less than eight years. Nineteen years of practice for two hours a day, five days a week would allow me to be a pretty impressive baton twirler by the time I retire.

Even if I don't make the magic 10,000 hour mark, this bit of information revealed new insight into a well-known verse from Parashat Mishpatim. This portion covers a wide variety of rules (mishpatim) that God wants us to follow. At the very end of the parashah, Moses reads the covenant to the people of Israel, who respond:
All that the Lord has spoken we will faithfully do! (na'aseh ve-nishmah) (Exodus 24:7) The Hebrew na'aseh ve-nishmah has been translated in many ways; the nuances are best summarized by Ibn Ezra:

Literally, "We will do, and we will hear," adding "we will hear" to what they had already said in verse 3—we will do everything that is written down, and we will constantly hear them in that they will never be forgotten from our mouths. Saadia says that it is another case where the Torah is written out of chronological order, and what they really said was "We will hear and we will do." Or it might mean, "We will do" the commandments that are planted in our hearts, and "we will heed" the commandments that have been revealed to us. Or, "We will do" all the commandments He has given us so far, and "we will heed" the commandments that we will be given in the future. Or, "We will do" the positive commandments, and "we will heed" the prohibitions and not do them.

Ibn Ezra on Exodus 24:7 from The Commentators' Bible: The JPS Miqraot Gedolot, Michael Carasik, translator and editor

Na'aseh means “we will do.” Nishmah can mean “we will listen, we will heed, or we will learn.” Either way, one would think that the listening or learning precedes the doing, yet the order is reversed in this verse: Action leads to insight. This is the lesson of 10,000 hours of practice; it is reaching the point when you get so good at something that you are performing at a higher level. So too with mitzvot (commandments).

However, it is safe to say that within Jewish tradition the stress is on the importance of study as a catalyst to everything else. Let's eavesdrop on a rabbinic conversation:

Rabbi Tarfon and the Elders were once reclining in the upper storey of Nithza's house, in Lydda, when this question was raised before them: Is study greater, or practice? Rabbi Tarfon answered, saying: Practice is greater. Rabbi Akiba answered, saying: Study is greater, for it leads to practice. Then they all answered and said: Study is greater, for it leads to action.

Kiddushin 40b, Soncino translation

Or if you prefer, here is a similar teaching that has made its way from the Talmud (Shabbat 127a) to the siddur (prayerbook):

These are things that yield interest during your life, while the principal remains for you in the world-to-come: honoring your father and mother, doing kindness, arriving early to study morning and evening, welcoming strangers, visiting the sick, providing for the bride, burying the dead, paying attention to prayer, bringing peace between one person and another; and the study of Torah is like them all [talmud torah keneged kulam].

Translation from My People's Prayer Book, vol. 5: Birkhot HaShachar,

  Lawrence Hoffman, ed.

Talmud torah keneged kulam, the study of Torah is equal to all the other mitzvot, is not that simple and not everyone agrees with it. Shimon ben Gamliel warns that "Study is not the primary thing but the doing." (Avot 1:17) Even study (nishmah) can be taken to its extreme and the deed (na'aseh) gets lost. Study without deed is meaningless. Rabbi Huna is even more adamant than Shimon ben Gamliel: "He who only occupies himself with the study of the Torah is as if he had no God." (Avodah Zarah 17b) Whoa! Too much Torah and you're the equivalent of an atheist?! Rabbi Huna certainly catches my attention with that!

His is a radical way of saying that Judaism is more concerned with the na'aseh then the nishmah. The doing takes precedence, and not only in the word order in this verse. As has often been said: Judaism is about deed not creed. While other religions worry about faith, our greatest concern is action. Let's call it living expression rather than giving expression. You can be a Jew and not believe. This is not easy for a rabbi to say, but we know our synagogues include members who are there for communal, cultural and ethnic reasons. You can be a Jew and question your beliefs. That's an even bigger part of our synagogue membership. Why on earth be active in the Jewish community if you do not believe? Because being part of a community matters. Deeds count. Na'aseh. 

Sometime this month a new advertising campaign will begin on subway trains in Toronto. It is organized by an atheist organization and based on a similar campaign in London, England. Sponsored by the Freethought Association of Canada, it will feature posters such as: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." (In England the campaign was in reaction to a Christian group's campaign that non-believers will end up in a lake of fire.) The idea behind the campaign is to promote dialogue.

In the past couple of weeks I've been getting calls from the media looking for reaction to this campaign. Frankly, I don't see how dialogue can take place on something we inherently disagree about. I can't prove God exists. How do you prove a relationship? They can't prove God doesn't –though the use of "probably" is more agnostic, than atheist. They're imagining a being, I'm dealing with relationship. In response to their campaign my billboard would quote Martin Buber:

God cannot be inferred in anything—in nature, say, as its author, or in history, as its master, or in the subject as the self that is thought in it. Something else is not "given" and God then elicited from it; but God is the Being that is directly, most nearly, and lastingly, over against us, that may only be addressed, not expressed.

Martin Buber, I and Thou, pp. 80-81

Okay, that's a bit wordy for a billboard. Perhaps an excerpt from Midrash Eichah Rabbah (proem 2) would be catchier in a rabbinic sort of way: "If only they had forsaken Me but kept My law." That's right, better to forget God, but keep on doing.

What's important is na'aseh, the doing, our doing. As long as folks live a civil, moral and ethical life, then let them believe what they like. As my friend's bubbie (grandmother) used to say, "They should live and be well."

For all of us na'aseh must be the first step; deeds are what sustain the world. For some of us this leads to nishmah: a soulful awareness of the reason for the deeds, an understanding which further enhances our lives and our appreciation for the world.

Na'aseh ve-nishmah allows me to engage life on so many more levels than na'aseh alone. I may never be a virtuoso musician, a world-class athlete, or a successful business-person no matter how many hours I allocate to these tasks. But every minute I devote to na'aseh, doing, gives me a deeper comprehension of life and the One who bestowed this precious gift on all of us.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Michal Shekel