Ten years ago, when my children were now almost three years old, they had reached a stage in life in which they liked to be helpful to their mother and to me when we were busy with household chores. As we prepared a meal, they liked to help rip up the lettuce, or open a package, or mix the food in a bowl. As much as I appreciated their helpfulness, there was also a drawback to their voluntarism: they often didn’t finish the job they had begun. If I didn’t watch the process from start to finish, I’d often return to find the food congealed and not mixed, or the lettuce still a great big clump, on top of a few shredded leaves.
That drifting attention span is normal in young children. And it isn’t totally foreign to adults either. How often has someone told you that they meant to call you, or write, or return a borrowed object and just never got around to it. The desire to have done the right thing may be real, but our annoyance that they never translated their intention into action is a clue that intention isn’t enough. The bottom line is what we do, not how we feel.
The rabbis of antiquity derive a similar point from today’s Torah portion. Moses recounts God’s command that “you shall faithfully observe every commandment (kol ha-mitzvah) which I command you today that you may live and increase and be able to possess the land that the Holy One promised on oath to your ancestors.” Noting that the phrase kol ha-mitzvah literally translates as “the entire commandment,” we are justified in asking why the Torah doesn’t say kol ha-mitzvot, observe all the commandments?
The traditional rabbinic assumption is that unusual grammatical formulations are in the Torah to teach us something significant. What does this strange phrase teach? In Midrash Tanhuma, Rabbi Yohanan notes that “whoever begins a mitzvah and afterwards someone else comes and completes it, the mitzvah is credited to the one who completes it.” Rashi makes the same point: “If you begin a mitzvah, finish it, for it is only credited to the one who completes it.”
While good intentions are nice to have and may add an additional layer of meaning to a good deed, intentions are often over-rated. When a beggar on the street asks for money, good intentions won’t provide food or shelter. When a child cries out in fear, thinking good thoughts won’t soothe or calm. A sick person isn’t comforted by an intended visit that never materializes, and the loneliness of a shut in isn’t diminished by the intent to call.
In such instances, good intentions are just a sop to appease a guilty conscience for its own failure to do the right thing. Sometimes, the only thing that matters is what we do.
In the same way, we moderns often subsume religion as a branch of psychology, useful to the extent that it makes us feel good. We expect (demand?) God’s understanding when we fail to live up to our own sense of what we owe religion, and we approach our faith with a pervasive sense of entitlement. Judaism should accommodate us and our desires.
We pay a price for that shift in focus. Demanding of religion that its highest purpose is to make us feel good, we fail to invest enough time, energy, or emotion to enable it to speak to our souls. Expecting an effortless reward, we often turn away at the first signs of effort, disappointed that we felt no rush, experienced no thrill. God grows ever more distant, and life feels ever more frightening and purposeless.
Perhaps that’s why the rabbis insist that we finish each mitzvah we undertake. Having perceived a divine imperative in a particular deed (that’s what makes it a mitzvah) our failure to see it through is a betrayal of our own integrity and potential. Rather than creating a moment of spiritual breakthrough and growth, our easy distraction can lead to stagnation of the soul.
Jewish tradition teaches that God only enters the heart that lets God in. Only our willingness to let holiness play a significant role in our lives makes that a possibility. Only our willingness to entertain the discipline of the mitzvot will allow us to climb the ladder of holiness that Judaism offers. Anything less is just going through the motions.
When you have the opportunity to do a good deed, see it through. When you have the chance to do a mitzvah, stay the course. You may be surprised by the rich rewards you will reap.
Shabbat shalom.