Command or connection?

Saruman gave me a little research task today. One of the chief creative leaders of an educational organization we fund and work with has written a lot of material on the notion that the word "mitzvah" can also mean "connection" as well as command.

It turns out that she's right. According to Jastrow's lexicon, the Qal form of the root צןה does in fact have as as base meaning "to join" or "connect." It is the Pi'el form that means "command."

I like this. A while back I wrote:

...the commandments are not the laws that a commanding God issues to a chosen people but the actions that the people that chooses God feels commanded to take in order to create in the world of human thought and society a vision of the unity that underlies all things. The mitzvot are paths toward holiness, not laws to be obeyed under fear of punishment. Where the body goes, the mind and spirit will follow so by mandating ritual action, the mitzvot should in theory lead the mind to conscious appreciation of the unity and sacredness of life.

In this sense, the mitzvot are actions that "connect" us to God, that help us "plug into" the fundamental unity of existence.

This is one of the reasons I love my job.