#mitzvah

[hiddurmitzvah]

[babka-enjoyer]

I have a Daily Mitzvot app that tells me one new mitzvah every day at 9 a.m. and some of these are wild as hell to read first thing in the morning

[girlactionfigure]

ajewishresistance

This is a Jewish resistance.

[leahbasavraham]

Mo said “Totty you are such a mitzvah totty”

[eretzyisrael]

Mitzvah grocery shopping Parshat Kedoshim 

[my-orly]

We live by faith, we bring prosperity Genesis 12:3 Read, know we bring blessing to those who help us! So contribute to my rabbi destroyed home! ״Seen If, G-d doesn’t bless you!״

[ramlionbam]

mitzvah update is that he has experienced the most joyful thing a dog can experience: playing with a ball at the park until it becomes a grubby muddy mess. he was so intense with this that after i threw the ball and he picked it up, he would run around with it, drop it, and chase after the rolling ball again.

he's been having some issues recently with separation anxiety + not letting us know he needs to go outside before bedtime (and going in the apartment instead) but he is so lovable. the most dog ever.

[cornchka]

"hurting a nice jewish girl like me?"

"that's gotta be against a mitzvah"

[thepomegranatewitch]

Today's inspiration yielded this wee bracha. Use it in good health.

Image description. A leafy green background with white lineart of ssuk repeated in the background. There are drawings of a shadowed almond blossom in top left, a gilded white California rose in top right, and a gilded tekhelet blue California rose on far left middle. Text os white serif with a black border. A heavier bordered larger text at top reads "a bracha for asking for and receiving help." Thinner bordered and slightly smaller text reads "blessed are You, Gd our god, Sovereign of Space Time, who invites us to help others fulfill the teachings of connection." Black text and logos at bottom give the handle @ the.pomegranate,witch for instagram, tumblr, and kofi, and Sahar Bareket for redbubble. Bottom right has the author's chop in red.

[septembergold]

"Holiday Mitzvah Train" by Michoel Muchnik

[hindahoney]

is halachot different than the 613 mitzvot?

This is an interesting question I never thought to ask!

The answer is yes and no. All mitzvot are halacha but not all halacha are mitzvot.

Halacha is essentially the daily application of mitzvot. Halacha covers pretty much everything, from death and life, to your community, to prohibiting leaving trash on the ground. It is an incredibly comprehensive living system of laws that we follow in order to live our lives in a way that is good for us and the world around us.

Mitzvot, on the other hand, are commandments given by God (and some by Rabbis in addition to the 613). These mitzvot are pretty specific "dos and don'ts" such as no fire on shabbat, and giving tzedakah. Whereas there are halachot regarding regulating where you can build things and how you can build them, but these are not mitzvot.

Hope this helps!

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Structure, Flexibility, and Torah

(I wrote this d’var for tomorrow’s Shabbat evening services. Turns out I won’t be leading services tomorrow after all - so I’m sharing it here instead!)

I love being a Jew. I see it as an active thing – BEING a Jew. Living a Jewish life, making Jewish choices, taking part in our rich, meaningful traditions and fulfilling the mitzvot of the Torah.

However, if I said that I was living a Jewish life in every possible way – making all Jewish choices, taking part in all our traditions, and fulfilling all mitzvot – that would be a lie.

Those of you who come to Shabbat services regularly on Friday nights know that you will nearly always find me here, now. However, if you also come on Saturday morning, then you know that you will almost never find me there, then. I bake challah, but I do not light Shabbat candles. I take time off from my day job on Jewish holidays when I can, but I’m not always able to. I eat kosher foods, but I do not have kosher dishes, since I share my kitchen with three people who do not keep kosher.

I do what I can. Sometimes, I feel like I’m not doing enough.

It’s easy to imagine that G-d might also think that I’m not doing enough. After all, there are 613 mitzvot in the Torah. If your boss gave you an employee handbook with 613 rules for employee conduct, then you would assume that this is a strict boss with a very structured work environment, someone who wants you to obey their instructions without fail or flexibility.

But this week’s parsha makes it clear that “obey without fail or flexibility” is not an entirely accurate description of G-d’s expectations for Jewish people.

This week we read Parshat Vayikra – the beginning of the book of Leviticus. Incidentally, Leviticus has 243 of the 613 mitzvot – more than any other book in the Torah.

(If you’re curious, second place goes to Deuteronomy at 203 mitzvot, Exodus comes in third at 109, Numbers is fourth at 56, and Genesis has only two.)

So, Leviticus is the Big Book of Rules, right? In Vayikra, the start of this book, there are a lot of rules about making offerings at the temple. These are sin offerings. A person would admit wrongdoing and atone for their sin by making the offering. In Leviticus chapter 5 verse 6, the Torah explains, “he shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord for his sin which he had committed, a female from the flock, either a sheep or a goat, for a sin offering.”

But it doesn’t end there. The next verse, verse 7, reads “But if he cannot afford a sheep, he shall bring as his guilt offering for that [sin] that he had committed, two turtle doves or two young doves before the Lord.”

And then if we jump ahead a couple verses, to verse 11, the Torah reads, “But if he cannot afford two turtle doves or two young doves, then he shall bring as his sacrifice for his sin one tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering.”

(An ephah is a unit of measurement here, and according to Google, it’s about the size of a bushel. So you would bring a tenth of a bushel of flour. I’m not sure exactly how big that is, but it doesn’t sound like much. Certainly it sounds less than a whole sheep.)

So – the commandment here, the mitzvah, is to make a sin offering. And through the Torah, G-d gives specific instructions about what to bring and what to do with it – you bring a sheep, and this is how you kill it. It’s a structure for atonement. But the Torah also provides exceptions or alternate options for this sin offering. If you can’t bring a sheep, bring two doves, and if you can’t bring two doves, bring some flour. The Torah provides structure, and it also provides different structures depending on your individual means.

In doing so, the Torah takes a behavior that could be very limited – something that only rich people could do, the people who could afford to give up an animal because they had plenty more to eat or breed – and turns it into something that anyone could do, within their means, in the way that works best for them. It’s flexible. It’s also encouraging in a way – having these different options for how to participate in the mitzvah makes the whole idea of making sin offerings feel more accessible for anyone.

And this ties in well with how I see and experience Judaism. It’s accessible for all of us. Yes, there’s structure. Judaism includes instructions for every part of our lives. And like I said before, it’s an active thing. I don’t think that you can really BE a Jew if you aren’t doing ANYTHING that’s Jewish.

But you don’t need to do EVERYTHING.

You don’t need to obey EVERY commandment in exactly the same way as everyone else in order to live a Jewish life, make Jewish choices, and participate in the Jewish community. G-d empowers all of us to show up when we can, and how we can, in the way that works best for us, to create a meaningful life as Jews. For me, tonight, that means standing up here in front of you, delivering this d’var. Last week, it meant sitting in the back row with my friends, and next week, it will mean traveling home to spend Passover with my family. And every week, every day, we get to make those Jewish choices, to create our Jewish life. Shabbat shalom.

[girlactionfigure]

"And these words, which I command you this day, shall be upon your heart... You shall bind them as a sign upon your arm, and they shall be a tefillin between you eyes"

- Devarim 6:6-8

The Mitzvah that binds our minds with our hearts and deeds, and allows a daily reunification within ourselves and with G-d. 

[leahbasavraham]

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[my-orly]

Gift when all else it lost. To rebuild lives lost by tragic accidents to calamities! As such, the term mitzvah has also come to express an individual act of human kindness in keeping with the law. The expression includes a sense of heartfelt sentiment beyond mere legal duty, as "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18).