Parshas Vayeira
By Rabbi Dovid Zauderer
When the multi-gazillion dollar company Google first started, the founders came up with “Ten things we know to be true†– i.e. ten “philosophes†that the company would live by.
The # 2 philosophy on the list was: “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.†As the Google people put it: “We do search. With one of the world’s largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better.â€
[It turns out that Google is not the only company with that philosophy …..
In downtown Toronto, just across from Rogers Centre (home of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team), is the location of the Steam Whistle Brewing Company. On their website, they write the following: One of the biggest factors working in our favor is that we have just one product — our Premium Pilsner. That means we can focus in and we are not distracted by having to balance a whole range of products each directed toward a different target audience. The company’s motto is “Do one thing really, really wellâ€. That single focus gives the ability to steer all resources to a single end.]
Well, guess what? In Judaism we have had this “guiding philosophy†for centuries and millennia. Allow me to explain:
There is a well-known tradition that G-d included 613 commandments in the Torah. Of these, 248 are positive, while 365 are negative. Many of these commandments, however, deal with the laws of purity and sacrifice, and were thus only applicable when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. Therefore, of all the commandments, only 369 apply today. Of these, 126 are positive, and 243 are negative. [Ed. Note: This is according to the view of the Sh’nei Luchos HaBris. However, see the Chafetz Chaim in Sefer Mitzvos HaKatzar who lists 77 positive commandments, and 194 negatives, for a total 271 that apply today.]
Even of these, however, many only pertain to special cases or circumstances. The total number of commandments which apply to everyone under all conditions is 270. Of these, 48 are positive, and 222 are negative.
Now, notwithstanding the fact that “only†270 out of 613 commandments apply to all Jews today, one has to wonder why G-d needed to give us so many mitzvos in the first place!
Well, believe it or not, the Mishnah in Makkos 3:16 addresses this exact question:
Rabbi Chanania ben Akashia says: The Holy One, Blessed is He, wished to confer merit upon Israel; therefore He gave them Torah and mitzvos in abundance, as it says: “G-d desired, for the sake of its [Israel’s] righteousness, that the Torah be made great and glorious†(Isaiah 60:21)
On a simple level, what this means is that by giving Israel the opportunity of performing so many commandments, G-d graciously provided them with the means of acquiring abundant merit.
Of course, the obvious problem with this interpretation is that even though we now have more ways to gain abundant merit by doing all these commandments, we also have many more chances of messing up in our performance of the commandments! So - one can ask - is it worth it to have received from G-d all those hundreds of extra commandments?
Maimonides, in his commentary to the Mishnah, offers a radically different interpretation of this teaching, along with a whole new understanding of the abundance of commandments that G-d gave us. He writes that it is a fundamental principle that in order to merit life in the World to Come, a person must fulfill at least one mitzvah properly, with complete devotion to G-d. This mitzvah must be performed purely to fulfill G-d’s will, lovingly and unselfishly. Therefore, G-d gave us an abundance of commandments so that every person should, in his lifetime, observe at least one mitzvah perfectly and thereby merit eternal life.
In other words, what Maimonides is essentially teaching us is that all we need (in order to gain entrance into the Next World) is to do one mitzvah really, really well.
So what do we do now, you ask. Which mitzvah should we choose to work on and perfect before it’s too late? And can we do this as a family project?
Obviously, how you want to do this is your choice. One obvious commandment you can choose is the prohibition against speaking lashon hara (slander). You could always turn your family room into a “No Lashon Hara Zoneâ€.]
I would just caution you not to bite off more than you can chew. Rather you should pick something attainable that you think you can do really, really well. Hatzlachah Rabbah! (Good Luck!)
http://www.torchweb.org/torah_detail.php?id=639