One of the many ways we try to make sense of the mitzvot is by breaking them down into two categories. Ethical mitzvot are described as being “between one human being and another” and ritual mitzvot are described as being “between one human being and God.”
Of course, there are many mitzvot that don’t neatly fall into one category or the other. This is a game I like to play with our bar and bat mitzvah students. I ask them to explain why they categorize a particular mitzvah the way they do. Surprisingly, most students instinctively identify the rabbinic mitzvah of lighting Shabbat candles as ethical in nature, as they say it bonds “one human being to another.”
Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf of Chicago complicates this conversation by challenging us to further blur the lines between the categories by “ethicizing the ritual mitzvot and ritualizing the ethical mitzvot.”
What does this mean?
When Jews refrain from eating treif, they fulfil the ritual mitzvah of kashrut. But when some Jews boycotted California table grapes in the 1980s and called them “treif” because they were cultivated by mistreated migrant field workers, they ethicized the ritual of keeping kosher. They expanded the ritual of carefully inspecting the fitness of food by being just as diligent in inspecting the ethics behind it. Similarly, some Jews consider all veal to be treif, because the animal is treated with cruelty. In addition, the term “eco-kosher” has been coined so that Jews might consider the effect of food production on the environment.
Another example: the ritual of building a sukkah. On the Sunday of chol hamoed Sukkot, Jews in their 20s and 30s volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and helped to build a permanent shelter for the homeless. The ritual of the rickety sukkah became a reminder of what else the festival requires of them ethically.
Yet another example: when synagogue leadership develops a policy requiring that only Israeli wines be served in its building in order to support Israeli exports, the ritual of making Kiddush is ethicized by a love of Zion and her people.
How can the inverse also be realized? When members of my congregation, Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, turn their synagogue into a homeless shelter each Thursday, they fulfil the ethical mitzvot of “feeding the hungry” and “welcoming the stranger.” The volunteers ritualize the ethical by reciting a blessing before beginning their preparations and by putting on kippot before they serve warm meals to their guests.
Similarly, when a circle of friends supports a woman through her battle with cancer, they fulfil the mitzvah of “caring for the sick.” They expand and strengthen that ethical mitzvah when she completes her regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, and they accompany her to the mikvah, which spiritually cleanses the poison from her body. By showering her with prayers of hope for a healthy future, they ritualize the ethical.
Rabbi Wolf’s approach expands the scope of mitzvot in practice and in purpose. Sometimes the grace of a simple ritual stands on its own. Its beauty and history can be enough to inspire. And sometimes the additional gloss of the ethical can add the depth and relevance that so many people crave in a life of mitzvot.
Sometimes the human impulse to do good is overwhelming and steers us to walk in God’s ways, to fill our days with acts of kindness. And sometimes the addition of a sacred ritual helps to put doing the right thing in religious terms, to frame it as a direct response to the Source of Blessings.
This approach of ethicizing the ritual and ritualizing the ethical suggests that the fullness of each mitzvah is only waiting to be discovered.
Rabbi Splansky is associate rabbi at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto.
