This lecture studies the second mishnah of the fourth chapter of Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), that of Ben Azzai: run after a mitzvah, even a light one, and flee from transgression, for one mitzvah draws another in its wake and one transgression draws another, since the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah. It follows on from the mishnah of Ben Zoma, which defined who is rich, who is strong, who is wise and who is worthy of honor. Most of the session is devoted to a prior question: what, exactly, is a mitzvah — an order, a bond, a constraint, a necessity? Rav Raphaël Benizri answers it before turning to the running the text speaks of, and to the next maxim, which forbids us to despise anyone.
The lecture opens with the figure of Ben Azzai himself: a man without a rabbinic title, known by his father’s name, whose learning covered every domain of the revealed word, a disciple and study companion of Rabbi Akiva. The Rav recalls that he was among those who crossed the threshold of knowledge of the world beyond, that he never married although he taught the gravity of refusing to have children, and that he is counted among the Ten Martyrs. This biography serves to situate the temperament of a quick and incisive mind that nonetheless never unsettled the teaching of his masters.
Then comes the central part: the mitzvah as a lamp that reaches where the diffuse light of the Torah does not enter, its three levels of fulfillment, its social and universal reach, and the refusal of any scale between light and heavy commandments. The lecture arrives at the maxim that follows, on every man’s hour and every thing’s place, and then at two questions from the audience, one on the relation of the mitzvah to the light of the Torah, the other on mitzvot performed by non-Jews.
What this lecture teaches
This mishnah completes that of Ben Zoma. Ben Zoma defined the rich man as the one who is content with his lot and rejoices in it, the strong man as the one who succeeds in mastering himself, the wise man as the one who seeks to learn from every person, and the man worthy of honor as the one who honors others. To this whole Ben Azzai adds a definition of his own, turning our attention to the mitzvah itself.
Neither Ben Zoma nor Ben Azzai bears the title of rabbi. They are known by their lineage, as the son of Zoma and the son of Azzai. It is said that they were orphaned at a young age, and that naming them this way was a means of keeping their fathers’ memory alive. Their one distinguishing trait, in short, was the respect and love they bore their parents — to the point of setting aside their own names.
Their learning embraced every field at once. It was confined neither to thought, nor to law, nor to Kabbalah; it managed to cover every aspect of the revealed word and to hold them together as a single whole. For true idolatry consists in breaking things into pieces and taking them as independent elements. The human body is a whole, and so is the universe; one must not fix on a single aspect or a single organ while ignoring the rest, but seek an overall harmony, in body as in mind. This is how the proclamation of unity that we repeat morning and evening works: we divide nothing, neither on the level of creation nor on the level of the spirit.
His teachers were to him like the peel of garlic — and this was not contempt. Ben Azzai was the disciple and study companion of Rabbi Akiva, and the disciple of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya. The image does not diminish him: just as garlic is strong in flavor while its peel has none but protects what lies within, so the teaching of his masters always enveloped this quick and incisive mind that sought the truth at the bottom of things. For when one digs and wants to reach the bottom, one tends to unsettle the teaching one has received; that was not his case.
He was among those who crossed the threshold of the world beyond, and it is said that he died of it. There are thresholds which, once passed, leave one no longer belonging to this world: one is in the world of the angels, in the world of ideas, entirely cut off from reality. This is also why he had no married life and never took a wife — some say he married the daughter of Rabbi Akiva, but only for a very short time. Yet it was he who taught that whoever evades the commandment to have children is as though he were shedding blood, and he was reproached for it; he answered that his soul longed for the Torah, that others would take care of it, and that he himself was incapable of it. He is counted among the Ten Martyrs.
To remain at the stage of constraint turns the mitzvah into idolatry. The word that designates it evokes a command, and so suggests constraint: in early education there is no escaping this, for a person’s education begins with rules one must take on. But to stop there becomes an idolatrous practice, for the simple reason that it is no longer we who are performing: an outside force imposes it on us, and to become the servant of that force is blameworthy.
To be attentive to the mitzvah is to read through it. The verb used does not speak only of caution: it speaks of reading. For the mitzvah is a lamp and the Torah is light. The Torah is a diffuse light, which remains on the level of a general theory; the lamp, for its part, penetrates the cracks and the most inaccessible corners. In this respect, the mitzvah stands higher than the Torah.
There is in the mitzvah a body, a spirit and an essence. Just as we are endowed with a nefesh, a ruach and a neshamah — physical reality, spirit, essence — there is the body of the mitzvah, the one we practice out of habit because it costs nothing and commits us to nothing; there is its spirit, which we understand and appreciate, but which can remain a noble thought or a quest for erudition; and there is its essence, which is to perform it lishmah, for its own sake, in complete gratuitousness. It is then the will we share with the Creator, and we become, as it were, partners in what breathes a soul into the world.
“A land that devours its inhabitants” speaks of the danger of settling in. How can a land devour those who occupy it? Those who settle in the land and lose the sense of growth, who let themselves live in a monotony with nothing new, no new aspiration, no will to move forward, fall victim to their own settledness. One must not sit on the land; one must go forward.
What allows us to go forward is precisely the mitzvah, because it is a bond. It is indeed a command, and I am its subject as I am the subject of the Creator and of those who brought me into the world, until I am able to assert my own autonomy. But it is first of all what forbids isolation, solitude and annihilation. Its meaning for me is threefold: it allows me to regenerate myself; to live with my fellow man and create a bond with the society around me; and above all to go out toward the Creator. The Sages did not mince their words when they said that the mitzvot are elements of the Divine: observe what I observe.
Of the two hundred and forty-eight positive commandments, we personally practice only about sixty. The rest is done in common accord with the other members of society. It is enough for someone to perform the redemption of the firstborn donkey or the shearing of the flock — not everyone has donkeys or sheep — and for me to take part, to be there, for him to have done it on behalf of all. For every mitzvah we perform has a social, national, even universal resonance. How is this to be explained? The Rav says there is no explanation.
Ben Azzai asks us to run after the mitzvah. The mitzvah does not simply offer itself to you: it invites you to run, to walk, to brisk activity; it pulls a person out of his torpor and his settled routine. There are indeed light mitzvot and heavy mitzvot: building a parapet around the roof of a house goes without saying, as do the morning blessings, which also belong to hygiene; Shabbat, on the other hand, is heavy, since one must close the shop when everyone else is opening and give oneself over to an intense spirituality, which is not easy.
But in practice there is neither light nor heavy. The diligence you show in a mitzvah that costs you nothing will open for you the gates of a mitzvah ten times greater, because the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah. You do not know where a mitzvah will lead you. One must therefore not choose between those that are difficult and those that are not.
One must not seek one’s own profit in the mitzvah. It is not to be worn as a cloak of religion. True fulfillment is to be able to pass on to another, higher mitzvah: its reward is that elevation itself, which comes about slowly. It is the mitzvah that gives rise to the mitzvah.
Conversely, one must flee from transgression, for it draws another after it. Just as we are asked to run after the mitzvah, we are asked to flee from sin — which consists in listening only to oneself, satisfying one’s urges, answering one’s needs and taking advantage of everything on offer. These urges are nonetheless inherent in life, and without them we could not go on: what we call the evil inclination is also creative; it is what supplies society with the forces it needs to move forward. Sin begins when one stops there and oversteps the line of one’s own needs. The image of the one who flees is Yosef before the wife of Potiphar.
All the mitzvot form a single block. Whoever practices one mitzvah by going to its very depths is as though he had practiced all the mitzvot of the Torah, because he has reached the essence of the whole. Here, as in the realm of thought, it is forbidden to fragment, and one must keep the overall view. And in the practice of the mitzvah lies a way of drawing the Divine Presence into this world: by cleaving to it, we allow that Presence to dwell among us.
There is no man who does not have his hour, and no thing that does not have its place. So despise no one and hold nothing as negligible: if a thing seems strange to you, it is because its moment has not yet come, but it has in itself its importance and its inwardness, just as you do. The same holds for my own coming into the world: generations upon generations preceded me, and if I have come in this generation, it is in this generation that I must fulfill my mission. This is my hour, and it is here that my mission has meaning.
The mitzvah is not superior to the Torah, but it is the Torah’s light brought up close. To a woman in the audience who links the teaching to the verse “in Your light we see light,” the Rav confirms that it is through the practice of the mitzvot that the Torah is seen in a unity of light. Asked next about mitzvot performed by non-Jews, he answers that many commandments make obvious sense and belong to universal morality — do not steal, do not lie — and that the Jewish people has no monopoly on them. But the way of practicing them differs: cut off from the whole, a mitzvah is neither whole nor complete, and may even, in the extreme case, become a private cult; it must form one body with the entirety of the Torah, and only thus does it endure.
Full transcript of the lecture
We now take up the study of the second mishnah of chapter 4, which we will read next Shabbat. This mishnah completes the words of Ben Zoma, who defined the rich man as the one who is content with his lot and rejoices in his portion. The strong man is the one who manages to master his inclination. The wise man is the one who seeks to learn from every person, and finally, the one who is worthy of respect, of dignity, of honor is the one who respects others — who shows respect to his fellow men, to G-d’s creatures. Now comes Ben Azzai. You will notice that Ben Zoma and Ben Azzai carry no rabbinic title. Rather, they bear a name of filiation, referring to their fathers, Zoma and Azzai. It is said that they were orphaned at a young age, and so they were called “son of Zoma,” “son of Azzai” as a way of perpetuating their fathers’ memory. In reality, their only distinguishing trait was the respect, the love they bore their parents — to the point that they set aside even their own names.
These men distinguished themselves by a learning that embraced many fields and was especially attuned to an openness of mind through the Torah. It was confined neither to the domain of thought, nor to the domain of halakhah (Jewish law), nor to the domain of Kabbalah; it truly managed to cover every aspect of the revealed word and to see them as one whole. True avodah zarah, idolatry, is to break things into pieces and to take them as — let us say — independent elements. The human body is a whole; so is the universe, the physical universe and […]. Consequently, one must not focus solely on one aspect or one organ while ignoring all the rest.
One must seek an overall harmony, both in the body and in the mind. That is indeed how the proclamation of unity works — the proclamation we never cease to make, morning and evening: namely, we do not divide, we fragment nothing, neither on the level of the world of creation nor on the level of the world of the spirit. And Ben Zoma was indeed — I say Ben Zoma, but we are studying Ben Azzai. Ben Azzai was the man of this openness of mind, such that through his study an intense light always shone forth. Yet this man did not sin through pride — quite the contrary. He looked up to his teachers: he was the disciple and study companion of Rabbi Akiva, and a disciple of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya as well. But he used to say that the chakhamim, his masters, were to him like the peel of garlic — and there is nothing contemptuous in this, quite the opposite. He was a quick, incisive mind.
You know that when one digs and wants to get to the bottom of things, one tends, in the extreme, to unsettle the teaching of one’s masters; that was not his case. Just as garlic is sharp, with its very strong flavors, while the peel protects it yet has no flavor at all — it only protects what is inside — so too was the teaching of his masters. The teaching of his masters always enveloped his mind, which sought the truth at the bottom of things. For we know that Ben Azzai was among those who dared to cross the threshold of knowledge, of the world beyond, during his lifetime — and it is said that he died of it. For there are thresholds that one sometimes passes, and then one no longer belongs to this world: one is in the world of the angels, in the world of ideas; one becomes entirely cut off from the reality of this world.
And that, incidentally, is why Ben Azzai had no married life and never took a wife. Some say he married the daughter of Rabbi Akiva, but for a very short period. And yet it was he who said that whoever avoids fulfilling the mitzvah of peru u-revu — the mitzvah of procreation — is as though he were shedding blood, and he was reproached for it. What was his answer? My soul longs for the Torah; I cannot manage it. Let the task fall to other people, but as for me, I am incapable of it — I am […]. And that is why he was regarded as absent from this world, whereas he is counted among the ten people — the ten victims, the ten great men — who were cruelly put to death […].
What does Ben Azzai invite us to? To dwell on the meaning of the mitzvah. What is a mitzvah? Is it an order? A bond? Does it belong to constraint or to necessity? One may answer: all of these at once. But the term tzav, “command,” leads you to think that the Torah is a constraint, that the mitzvah is a constraint. Certainly, in early education there is no escaping this. A person’s education passes first and foremost through certain rules that one must take on. But when one remains solely at the stage of this constraint, it becomes avodah zarah. It becomes an idolatrous practice. Why? For the simple reason that it is not we who are fulfilling the Torah, fulfilling the mitzvah; it is an outside force that imposes it on us, and to become the servant of this outside force that compels us to the mitzvah is blameworthy. One ought to reach the point of being zahir be-mitzvah. Zahir be-mitzvah is usually translated as being careful in the practice of the mitzvah.
But zahir be-mitzvah means reading through the mitzvah. Ki ner mitzvah ve-Torah or — “for a mitzvah is a lamp and the Torah is light.” The mitzvah is a light; Torah or — the Torah is a greater light. It is a diffuse light. But when we perform bedikat chametz, the search for leaven — when we truly want to eliminate everything that risks turning sour around us and within us — that is done le-or ha-ner, by the light of the lamp. It is with the lamp that one goes into the cracks, into the holes, to see whether there is any chametz. In this respect the mitzvah stands higher than the Torah. For the Torah remains on the level of a general theory, while the lamp of the mitzvah brings light into the places most inaccessible to light. And that is why, in the same way that by our very creation we are endowed with a nefesh, a ruach and a neshamah — the nefesh is the physical reality of the being, the ruach is the spirit, the neshamah is the essence — there is in a mitzvah a nefesh, a ruach and a neshamah. There is the body of the mitzvah: sometimes these are the mitzvot we practice simply out of habit, or because it costs us nothing and commits us to nothing. And there is the ruach of the mitzvah, the spirit of the mitzvah: we understand it, we appreciate it; this can remain on the level of a noble thought, a desire to study, a quest for erudition — but we have not touched the essence of the mitzvah. The essence of the mitzvah is when one does it lishmah. Lishmah means “for its own sake.” There is a complete gratuitousness in the will of the mitzvah, since it is the will we share with the Creator of the universe. And so we wish, in a sense, to be partners in the mitzvah, which keeps the world from sinking into a merely vegetative existence — for the mitzvah is what breathes a soul into the world and allows us to regenerate ourselves.
This was said even concerning the Land of Israel: eretz okhelet yoshveha — “a land that devours its inhabitants.” How can a land devour its inhabitants? Eretz okhelet yoshveha: those who settle in the land and no longer have the sense of growth, who let themselves live in an endless monotony, without the slightest novelty, without new aspiration, without any will to move forward — well, they fall victim to their settling on this land, to their occupying this land. One must not be yoshev, sitting, on the land; one must truly go forward. And what allows us to go forward is the mitzvah, because the mitzvah is a walking-together — not only with one’s fellow man — because the notion of tzav la-tzav, kav la-kav, “precept upon precept, line upon line,” is a bond. The mitzvah is a bond. Certainly there is a notion of command in it, and I am the subject of the mitzvah, just as I am the subject of the Creator, just as I am the subject of those who brought me into the world, until I am able to assert my autonomy, my independence.
So the mitzvah is a bond; to be without this bond is to condemn oneself to total isolation, to solitude, to annihilation. It is in this that the mitzvah has a threefold meaning with regard to me. It truly allows me to go forward, to regenerate myself; to live with my fellow man, to create a bond with the surrounding world, the surrounding society; and above all to go out toward the Creator — “you who cleave to Hashem your G-d.” Cleaving — in what way? Our Sages did not mince their words. They said that the mitzvot are elements of the Divine. U-shmartem et mishmarti, “you shall keep My charge”: they are to observe what I Myself observe. And the mitzvah has a specific reality that lies beyond our understanding, that breaks the chains of this universal straitjacket in which we are held, and that gives us an overall view: of myself in my place within society, of the society that surrounds me and is indeed at my service, and of my Creator, the One who grants me life — and this life is mitzvah.
As for the mitzvah, it is the whole of the Torah. It is true that the Torah as a whole comprises 248 mitzvot — there are 248 positive commandments — and I invite you to leave aside, in parentheses, the 365 negative commandments. Of these 248 positive commandments, we personally perform at most sixty. The others are done in common accord with all the other members of society. It is enough, for example, that someone perform the mitzvah of peter chamor, the redemption of a firstborn donkey, or the shearing of the lambs, the shearing of the sheep — not everyone has sheep, not everyone has donkeys […] — it is enough that one person does it and that I take part, that I am there: he has done it for everyone, because every mitzvah we perform has a social, national, even universal resonance.
How is this to be explained? There is no explanation. Because the mitzvah is, in a certain sense, the Divine Name: the vav-heh of the word mitzvah is the vav-heh of Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh, of the Divine Name. The vav is the letter of truth, the letter we find in vavei ha-amudim, the hooks of the pillars, in the Torah. It is the letter of the Torah: ve-zot ha-Torah, “and this is the Torah.” We do not say zot ha-Torah but ve-zot, with the introduction of the vav […], because the vav is what stabilizes everything; it is what gives reality to all the elements of the universe, to all the elements within ourselves on another level, and to the whole of the society that surrounds us, with its nuances and its diverse elements, which of course are not all alike.
Whether one multiplies mitzvot, applying oneself to performing the greatest number of them, or limits oneself to the bare minimum, the essential thing is the orientation toward Heaven, that is, a spirit of complete gratuitousness, seeking nothing in return. The mitzvah is lishmah. The vav-heh is what it shares with Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh: the vav-heh of the Divine Name. But the yud-heh is present in it as well, in a hidden way. You know that there are various readings of the Torah through the Hebrew alphabet: either in the order of aleph-bet, or with tav replacing aleph, shin replacing bet, resh replacing gimel, and so on. This is called atbash. There are others, but I give you this one. To the letters mem-tzadi of mitzvah there correspond, in the atbash alphabet, yud-heh. That is to say, there is a hidden meaning in the mitzvah, corresponding to the Divine [Name] — the yud-heh — which we do not perceive.
Now our Sages have taught that the Divine being itself is made of this fabric, […] so that man may maintain contact with this notion of perfection, of fullness, of aspiration beyond his own problems. So now, what does Ben Azzai say? Ben Azzai says: hevei ratz le-mitzvah kalah, run after even a light mitzvah. The mitzvah does not simply offer itself to you. It invites you to run; it invites you to walk, to brisk activity. It pulls a person out of his torpor, out of his settled routine. Of course there are small mitzvot and great mitzvot. There are light mitzvot — for example, the mitzvah of ma’akeh, of building a parapet, putting a parapet around the roof when one builds a house.
That makes obvious sense, let us say; it is a mitzvah kalah, a light mitzvah — anyone can see it belongs to building a house. Likewise the morning washing, the morning blessings, and so on: that is part of hygiene. The heavy ones are those like Shabbat, when one must close the shop while everyone else is opening; Shabbat, when one must truly devote oneself to an intense spirituality. That is demanding: it is not easy to keep a Shabbat with all its prohibitions. Yes — but he says there is neither kalah nor chamurah, light nor heavy, in practice. Hevei ratz le-mitzvah kalah: the diligence you show in practicing a mitzvah that costs you nothing — that very mitzvah will open for you the gates of a mitzvah ten times greater, because sekhar mitzvah mitzvah: the reward of a mitzvah is another mitzvah.
In the mitzvah, one must indeed not seek to find one’s own happiness, one’s own profit. One must simply not use the mitzvah as a cloak of religion. The true mitzvah, the fulfillment of the mitzvah, is to be able to pass on to another, higher mitzvah — and that is its reward. Its reward is to be in a proper elevation, one that comes about slowly. Mitzvah goreret mitzvah: one mitzvah draws another, because a mitzvah brings another mitzvah along with it. Therefore one ought not to stop and make a choice among the mitzvot, deciding which are difficult and which are not. You simply do not know where a mitzvah will lead you. And conversely, averah goreret averah: one transgression draws another.
You must also be bore’ach min ha-averah, one who flees from transgression. Just as you are asked to run after the mitzvah, to bestir yourself to perform a mitzvah, so you are asked to flee from the averah, because the averah, as we said earlier, is listening only to oneself, satisfying one’s urges, answering one’s needs and seeking to take advantage of everything that is offered to us. These urges are themselves inherent in our life, because without them we truly could not go on living. The yetzer ha-ra — we have already said that the yetzer ha-ra, what we call the evil inclination, in reality has a creative role as well. It is what provides society with the drives it needs to move forward, to survive.
But the averah is when one has not stopped there and has overstepped the lines of one’s own needs. Hence bore’ach min ha-averah: with Yosef we have the image of the one who flees from the wife of Potiphar — bore’ach min ha-averah. For just as a mitzvah draws a mitzvah, a transgression draws a transgression. There, the door is open to the world, the universe of debauchery. And here too one must know that this self-destruction of the being — sekhar averah averah, the reward of a transgression is a transgression — once we are caught in this gear, we can no longer get ourselves out. So what Ben Azzai adds to the teaching of Ben Zoma — namely, who is wise, who is strong […] —
[…] All of this stands first of all under the sign of humility […]. I can realize myself in the domain of wisdom, in the domain of wealth, in the domain of honor, in the domain of strength, only by way of sekhar mitzvah mitzvah or sekhar averah averah. So the mitzvah itself is a monolith. All the mitzvot form a single block. Whoever practices a mitzvah […] — whoever goes to the depths of a single mitzvah — is as though he had practiced all the mitzvot of the Torah,
because he has indeed reached the essence of the whole of the mitzvah. Moreover, when the Torah speaks of all the mitzvot, it says kol ha-mitzvah, “the whole commandment,” in the singular, and this can be understood as applying to the whole of the mitzvot. Here too one must pay attention: in this domain, as in the domain of thought, it is forbidden to fragment the elements of thought, and one ought to preserve the overall view in all things — in every domain, in the domain of practice, of self-realization. There is, in the domain of the mitzvah, in the practice of the mitzvah, a way of drawing the Divine Presence into this world. For since the universe of the mitzvah is that of the Divine being, by applying it, by cleaving to it, we allow this Divine being to dwell among us.
He used to say: al tehi baz le-khol adam, ve-al tehi maflig le-khol davar — “do not despise any man, and do not regard anything as far-fetched.” Do not scorn, do not disdain: she-ein lekha adam she-ein lo sha’ah, ve-ein lekha davar she-ein lo makom — “for there is no man who does not have his hour, and no thing that does not have its place.” If a thing seems strange to you, if you underrate it, for the moment it is simply because its time has not come. But in itself it is important; in itself, any word, any element has its own inwardness — just like you, just like your own person. As we ourselves say: ad she-lo notzarti eini khedai, ve-akhshav she-notzarti ke-ilu lo notzarti — “before I was formed I was not worthy, and now that I have been formed, it is as though I had not been formed.”
I myself — it is in this era that I am called to exist; before me there were generations and generations. But among these generations, it is here that I appear; I could not avoid it. If I have come in this generation, it is in this generation that I must fulfill my mission. It is my hour, and it is here that my mission has meaning. Ad she-lo notzarti, before I was formed… ve-akhshav she-notzarti, now that I have been formed, I must act as though I had existed only to fulfill my function at that very moment — and we fulfill it, says Ben Azzai, only through the mitzvah. That, then, is the reflection on Ben Azzai’s teaching. If you have any questions to put forward…
— I have two questions. Your lesson, for which I thank you very much, made me think of Tehillim (Psalms): be-orkha nireh or, “in Your light we see light.” So I understand that it is through the mitzvot, through the practice of the mitzvot, that we see the Torah in a unity of light. — That’s it. — And my second… In that sense, the mitzvah would not be superior to the Torah, but rather a light […]. — Exactly. Now listen, there is one point I did not mention: there are two hehs in the Divine Name, Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh. I said that there is a part of the mitzvah that is ineffable, beyond the reach of our understanding, that escapes us: that is the first heh. And there is the natural, physical expression of this mitzvah, afterwards, below. The first is the fabric of the mitzvah that envelops the Divine being and gives it the Torah.
And the Torah — we are studying it, we are learning it, we are analyzing it in all its forms. But to do so, the second heh is a heh of present reality, of practice in the very moment, of the physical expression we give to the mitzvah. — Thank you very much. And a second question: is the practice, or even the very notion, of mitzvah reserved for the Jewish people? We see quite clearly that from time to time non-Jews do things of which one can say: there, that is a mitzvah. As a practice, can we count it within this body of mitzvot practiced by the Jewish people, or do we make a separation?
For some, perhaps, it is a good deed, and for others, there it is, a mitzvah — […], and so on. — Well, there are mitzvot that make logical sense: for example, not to steal, not to lie, not to bear false witness. And it is not only the Jewish people who practice them. I believe this belongs to universal morality; there are many laws that belong to universal morality. But the way of practicing them is different. Because these laws, when they are detached from the whole — I told you that the mitzvah is a block, a unity — and so, when we practice a mitzvah, we practice it within this unity. We always attach it to this unity, to this whole; and as long as we do not attach it to the whole, it is not entire, it is not complete. It may even, in the extreme case, become a private cult, a foreign worship. Why? Because: it is my nature, it is my nature to give charity, it is my nature to cling to the truth, not to lie, not to harm others — but that is not […]. I say that the mitzvah I practice must be one with — must form one body with — the whole of the Torah.
That is how it endures in its permanence. Any other question? Well then…
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