Mitzvot

A mitzvah is a commandment, an instruction given by HaShem; the plural is mitzvot. Tradition counts 613 of them in the Torah, and both Rabbinic Judaism and Western Christianity have treated that number as the heart of the matter, one guarding it, the other discarding it. But a mitzvah is not a bare rule. It comes from the root tzavah, to command, and a command in Scripture is never less than relational: it is the Father pointing the way, the contours of how someone who knows Him naturally walks. The mitzvot are not the point of the Torah. They are the shape of an intimacy offered before the structure existed.