One of the charges most frequently leveled against Judaism is that of excessive legalism. According to this accusation, Judaism is obsessed with the petty and the restrictive rules that make Jewish life onerous and irrelevant. By focusing on endless regulations, Judaism, it is claimed, misses the bigger picture.
This accusation, repeated throughout the centuries, has resulted in two general Jewish responses. The first, offered by apologists for traditional Judaism, was to put together collections of rabbinic “theology”, culling the vast tractates of rabbinic law and lore to compile the more obviously spiritual and “religious” quotations. The most famous (and successful) of these compilations was Aspects of Rabbinic Theology by Solomon Schechter, great scholar and founding figure of Conservative Judaism in North America. Compiled almost a century ago, it is still available in paperback today. In this anthology, Rabbi Schechter strives to take the disparate rabbinic aphorisms that pertain to what Westerners would consider to be religious questions and he works to present those quotations into a single coherent theology.
A more recent response to the charge that Judaism misses the forest for the trees is to insist, to the contrary, that the overarching splendor of Jewish theology is to be found precisely in the details of its halakhot, its laws. Led by scholars such as Jacob Neusner and Abraham Joshua Heschel, this approach abandons the attempt to construct a Jewish theology along the same lines as Christian theologies. Instead, it proposes looking at Judaism from the same perspective as the rabbis of the Talmud, to appreciate Judaism from its own vantage point, rather than judging it by the external standards of some other faith.
In that approach, modern scholars and rabbis are actually walking in the footsteps of the great sages of classical Judaism. In today’s parashah, for example, are found a great list of detailed biblical law. The attention to each possible development, and the formulation of law to match each occasion is magisterial and raised the same questions for our ancestors that it does for us today: Why is there so much law, so many rules, and so few grand statements about God, faith, death, the purpose of life, punishment and reward, afterlife, and all the other “spiritual” concerns of most other religions?
The Midrash Sh’mot Rabbah answers that question with a parable: “It can be compared to a prince whom his father exhorted to be careful not to stumble over anything and hurt himself because he was as dear to him as the apple of his eye. God, likewise, exhorted Israel concerning the mitzvot, because the Jews are more beloved to God than the angels, as the Torah says “You are the children of the Lord your God.”
Just as a parent shows love to a child by providing detailed guidance for every aspect of a child’s life, so God shows love for the Jewish people by bestowing a myriad of mitzvot to guide our steps along paths of righteousness and wisdom. Just as a good parent knows that reasonable and consistent rules are the clearest demonstration of caring possible, allowing the child to internalize a sense of right and wrong, so God—our heavenly Parent—continues to provide for our training for a life of goodness and of meaning.
For God so loved the Jews that God gave us many, many mitzvot. What a gift! What a romance!
Shabbat shalom.