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So That the World Not Be a Jungle

The mitzvos [commandments] that are actually commanded by G-d can be categorized chronologically: those commanded by G-d at or after the giving of the Torah and those given before the stand at Mount Sinai. According to Hasidus, the difference between the two categories is so great that there is no comparison between them. The concept of a mitzvah as a Divine revelation on the part of G-d guiding man to certain acts is applicable only to those mitzvos given after the Torah. The earlier mitzvos should be viewed as something totally different, a means for preparing the world for the mitzvos that were to follow.

The most intelligible reason we have for the creation of the universe and its inhabitants was to "establish a dwelling place for the Almighty here on earth." Thus, our Rabbis commented many times that the world was created for "Israel and the Torah," that is, the Jewish people make the world suitable for the Divine by fulfilling the Torah's commandments. Just as a king must dwell only in a house fit for a king, such as a magnificent palace, the same applies to the Almighty. Thus, man must work to ensure that this world is made beautiful spiritually by fulfilling the Torah and thus creating a suitable dwelling for the King of Kings. It would follow, then, that this process began at the giving of the Torah at Sinai. The purpose of the mitzvos given before Torah was to elevate the world to the point where it could be worked with and elevated for the purpose of achieving a Divine goal.

To better understand this fundamental concept, we must examine the mitzvos given by G-d to the first man, Adam. These mitzvos, which have come to be known as the seven Noachide laws, are universal laws intended to be kept by all people, Jew and non-Jew alike.

The Seven Noachide Commandments: Constructing a Moral Society

The world cannot function as a jungle. Before any spiritual considerations are addressed, the orderly day-to-day running of the world must be established. The Jewish people, as well as the Torah, are part of and must live in the physical world. The majority of mitzvos [commanded to the Jewish people] can be fulfilled only with physical objects; wool for tzitzis, parchment for tefillin, and meat and wine to celebrate Shabbos and festivals. Therefore, the first premise that needs to be established for the proper performance of Torah is that the physical world not be in shambles or bereft of goodness and virtue. How could people study Torah, to take but one example, in the midst of revolution and war?

If the purpose of the world is for the Jewish people to infuse it with holiness by fulfilling G-d's commands, then the more ethical and the moral the world is to begin with, the easier it is to bring G-dliness into the world. A pure world serves more as a receptacle to holiness than a base or decadent society. The world must have a certain refined quality before the Jewish people can begin working on it. It is this crucial premise that facilitates the later sublimation process that the world must undergo.

To achieve this goal, G-d gave all of humanity a universal code of morality and ethics in the form of seven laws governing both interhuman and G-d-man relationships. The laws governing interhuman relationships, such as the prohibition against theft, ensure stability and social justice so that mankind could prosper in peace. The mitzvos between man and G-d, such as prohibitions against idol worship and blasphemy, preserve the spirituality of the world and ensure that it not be marred by man's perversions.

Nevertheless, even a just and moral society is still only a coarse physical place. A decent world is not necessarily suitable for G-d to dwell in. Coarse materialism still presents an obstacle to the spiritual. It is for this reason that the performance of mitzvos is necessary, since a mitzvah is a synthesis of the two worlds: a physical object becoming consecrated through a Divinely prescribed act. Thus, the seven Noachide laws facilitate, without actually accomplishing, the introduction of holiness into the mundane world. When they are looked at from this perspective, their importance cannot be overemphasized.

G-d's intention at the onset of creation was for the world to assume a certain orderliness that we call nature. Natural phenomena are visible from the irrigation of the land to the instinctive habits of the animals, as well as man. Amid this order, G-d also wanted certain important decisions to be made by man of his own free will. So although G-d desired the world to be morally and ethically sound and wanted man to preserve the sanctity of life by refraining from murder, He gave man the choice of whether to act accordingly. But He still commanded him to choose the path of justice.

These commandments thus form an integral part of the creation itself. In some way they are not even so much spiritual as ethical in nature. And although they serve as a means to something spiritual, they also possess a tangible goal: the preservation of the moral integrity of mankind and creation. The seven Noachide laws are thus as integral a part of the creation as sunshine and rainwater. Both are necessary for the continuity of the earth, but there is one difference: G-d chose not to institute the laws of morality as part of a natural process. He wanted man to choose, and He instilled in man a strong conscience and propensity toward the morally correct amid the complete freedom to choose and act otherwise.

Therefore, one who has denied his adherence to the laws has denied his right of existence. He was put on earth to help make the world a more G-dly place, and instead he has added to its anarchy.

The Sinaitic Commandments: Infusing the World With Holiness

Markedly different from the Noachide mitzvos are the ones given to the Jewish people at Sinai. Their purpose was to elevate the world to a more spiritual plane. None of the laws prescribed by Torah can be fulfilled without some sort of material input, because they were designed to uplift man and his material surroundings and inoculate all the world with G-dliness. Thus, even the laws governing man's behavior toward his fellowman are constructed, not to preserve orderliness, but to infuse man's daily life and all his activities with holiness. The mitzvos at Sinai, therefore, were not given to serve as human and moral standards, but so that the world would be a spiritual-physical domicile housing the Almighty. In turn, man was to be elevated by the mitzvos from the domain of the purely physical to that of Homo spiritus, a G-dly being.

In light of this explanation, we can now put the commandments fulfilled by our forefathers into proper perspective. They cannot be in the same category as those mitzvos after Sinai, and they also cannot be mere societal-preserving laws like the Noachide code for, if so, they have no real spiritual dimension. They were not commandments whose purpose it was to police society.

In Hasidic thought it is explained that the mitzvos fulfilled by our forefathers did possess some vestige of the unique properties of Sinaitic mitzvos: they were able to bring G-dly light down into the world, albeit not a very lofty one. A talmudic passage states that "until Abraham the world was sunken in darkness, and with the advent of Abraham the world was illuminated." The difficulty with this passage is tat it seems to ignore all the righteous men who preceded Abraham, such as Noah, Methusaleh, Shem, and Ever. The explanation is that the word "illuminated" connotes a heavenly light that transforms the world from a place of material blackness to spiritual enlightenment. To be sure, there had been tzadikim before Abraham's time who led morally righteous lives and may even have encouraged other men to live by these unalterable ethical truths. Still they did not bring G-dly light to radiate in the world. Thus, in a somewhat similar passage the Talmud declares, "In Abraham's time two thousand years of Torah began," the allusion referring to the power of Torah to introduce spirituality into the coarse material world.

Nevertheless, even these mitzvos did not approach the sublimity of the Sinaitic mitzvos. It was there where G-d proclaimed, "Anochi," "I," which the Talmud interprets as an acrostic for "Ana nafshi kesovis yehovis" - "It was my Essence which wrote and gave the Torah." G-d invested His intrinsic Self into the Torah, enabling man, by virtue of his fulfilling the mitzvos, to bring Him into the material fiber of the earth.

The Forefather's Mitzvos are Fragrance

It is with this intention that our Rabbis in the Midrash comment on the verse in Song of Songs "Your oils have a goodly fragrance; Your name is an oil poured forth," as follows: "The forefathers' mitzvos are considered to be only the fragrance of a mitzvah in comparison to our more substantive mitzvos." Their mitzvos were more fragrant, whereas ours are the actual oil that produces the fragrance.

Thus, we arrive at three categories of mitzvos: (1) the commandments given to Adam, Noah, and his descendants, which were for the express purpose of taming and policing man in order that he form a more socially perfect world but that did not comprise a spiritual aim in their own right; (2) the mitzvos of the forefathers, which, although bringing into the world something of the G-dly light of the later mitzvos, were not as wholesome as the latter and are thus referred to as being a mere "scent" of the later mitzvos; and finally (3) the mitzvos given at Sinai, which "I Myself gave and put My essence into" and through which the Jewish people actually bring G-d into this world, thereby consecrating it as a material structure.

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