הָנּ שְׁ תִַּנּ הַמ
Commanded to Love
Richard S. Moline
Mah Nishtanah Why is this Night Different?
In a college course I was taking in world religions, I was explaining some aspect of Judaism( though I no longer remember exactly what it was). What I do remember is that a fellow student asked whether what I was describing was Jewish dogma.
I replied that Judaism does not really have dogma. What we have instead are mitzvot – things to do, not things to believe.
Moses Mendelssohn once suggests that the only true dogma in Judaism is that we do not have dogma. Solomon Schechter famously observed that nowhere in Torah are we commanded to believe in God— although the first of the Ten Commandments could lead us there. It wasn’ t until the twelfth century that Maimonides articulated a formal system of Jewish beliefs.
What the Torah primarily gives us are not doctrines, but mitzvot— commandments.
The mitzvot themselves fall into categories. Some can no longer be practiced because they were tied to the Temple in Jerusalem. Others apply only in the Land of Israel. Some are specific to priestly families, and some read others as gender specific.
49