9/19/2011

Maybe it is the approaching high holidays or just a nagging sense of life not being as good as it could be but when last weekend's bnai mitzvah spoke about practicing mitzvahs it really resonated. Doing good doesn't necessarily come naturally and isn't always felt to be necessary. Each person walks this path in their own way, but I had the thought for sometime that I should do more. Sometimes this was the guilt of not answering the nightly calls for money from Doctors without Borders among others. The feeling of resentment towards the solicitors for various causes that set up tables outside my local Ralphs. The requests for money at a time that worrying about money is a constant mantra in my life seemed never ending and I felt that the more I turned a way, the harder my heart was. So I wondered, could I each day do small mitzvahs as practice that would lead me to a different place, perhaps one of greater clarity about what I do and don't do. The goal of this blog is to do just that and then talk about it.
It is just past lunch on a Monday and already I have a number of choices to make. I have been asked to usher during high holiday services which I am not sure I want to do. I have a flyer from the Walter Hoving Home sitting on my kitchen counter which I am not sure what to do with. I have already agreed to deliver plants prior to the high holidays to those in need of healing but that is for another day, and I am dropping off stationary so someone else can write thank-yous for our Sisterhood. Is doing something courteous that takes you a bit out of your way, and burns gas, is that truly a mitzvot?

According to Wikipedia, yes! The meaning is quite broad ranging from commandments and laws that are captured in writing to just something as basic as a human kindness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitzvot
Under these guidelines, I could work up to a mitzvah a minute! Open doors, let cars cut in front of you, think about God, say a prayer and call your parents! But it also seems like Talmudic scholars have argued (big surprize there) about how intentional mitzvot should be, in other words if you are thinking about it in a sort of look at how good I am way, it defeats the point. Perhaps getting the list of 620 commandments and working may way down the list (like that TV show Earl) is just too structured, although it's tempting. So for now we are going free form and trying different things, and see if I can get to something, some place that matters.