Last time, I made a couple of suggestions I don’t know of as being generally recognized. First, I offered reasons for my belief that it was at Sodom that Hashem taught Avraham that he was allowed, if not expected, to make petitions in his prayer. Not only could humans talk to God, he was being told, humans have the right if not responsibility to ask God to shape the future as they prefer.

The best way to do this, I then also argued, was to show how the course of events the person wants actually produces a better outcome than the one currently expected. In the example we saw, Avraham noted that saving all the cities because of the presence of righteous people would leave open the possibility of improvement, of moving away from evil, without the death and destruction God intended. While in that case the prayer failed, the lesson remained.

A first example for our purposes is Moshe, who, like Avraham, is taught about prayer at a crucial juncture in his career.

God Teaches Moshe How to Pray

Moshe’s early prayers suggest that it was not a natural skill. When Pharaoh asks Moshe to pray for him, he uses the verb העתרה (“to entreat”).[i] The Torah describes Moshe as צועק (“shouts out”),[ii] פורש כפים (“spreads his hands”),[iii] and מעתיר, all verbs of notable effort.[iv] The master of prophets, at this stage, seems unsure of how to speak effectively to the living God.

His early difficulties contrast remarkably with his handling of two later incidents. When God afflicts Miriam with leprosy, Moshe successfully elicits relief in just five words.[v] A chapter later, when God mentions destroying the Jewish people, Moshe composes a lengthy, eloquent prayer that elicits the desired response: “סלחתי כדבריך, I have forgiven as per your request.”[vi] Elsewhere, the text uses the simple verb ויתפלל, and he prayed.[vii]

The Biblical report of the conversation after the sin of the Golden Calf shows us that it was there that God trained Moshe how to pray, feeding him the arguments that would allow him to avert the people’s destruction. The Torah records the Jews’ sin in Chapter 32 of Exodus, followed (in verses 7-14) by God and Moshe’ dialogue about how to react. The relevant text reads:

God spoke to Moshe: “Go, descend—for your people that you brought up from the land of Egypt has become corrupt. 8They have strayed quickly from the way that I have commanded them. They have made themselves a molten calf, prostrated themselves to it and sacrificed to it, and they said: ‘This is your god, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt.’” 9God said to Moshe, “I have seen this people, and behold! it is a stiff-necked people; 10And now, desist from Me. Let My anger flare up against them, and I shall annihilate them; and I shall make you a great nation.” 11Moshe supplicated before God, his Lord, and said: “Why, God, should Your anger flare up against Your people, whom You have taken out of the land of Egypt, with great power and with a strong hand? 12Why should Egypt say the following: ‘With evil intent did He take them out, to kill them in the mountains and to annihilate them from the face of the earth? Relent from Your flaring anger and reconsider regarding the evil against Your people. 13Remember for the sake of Avraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Yourself, and You told them, ‘I shall increase your offspring like the stars of heaven, and this entire land of which I spoke, I shall give to your offspring and it will be their heritage forever.

A thousand years ago, Rashi already understood that God’s telling Moshe to “desist from Me” actually informed him of his right to carry the conversation further.[viii] In fact, every one of God’s utterances frames Moshe’s reply. God tells Moshe that his (Moshe’s) people, the ones he (Moshe) took out of Egypt, have sinned, quickly leaving the path of righteousness, making other gods, and declaring them their own; now, God says, leave Me alone and I will allow My anger to destroy them.

God’s words deny all connection with the people—they are Moshe’s, not His. This severing allows God to react with the full harshness appropriate to their act; partners to a long-term bond bear an obligation to view any act, no matter how egregious, through the prism of the entire relationship, which might reduce the impact of this one incident; a slap in the face administered by a stranger is different from the same physical act coming from a close friend or relative. Denying the connection is a first step to justifying the Jews’ destruction, which their current sorry spiritual state merits.

The Themes of Effective Prayer

Moshe takes up each claim in turn. First, they are not his people but God’s, whom God took out of Egypt. Further, not only are they God’s people, God deliberately publicized their leaving Egypt to convey His power not just to the Jews, but the world at large. Should God now destroy the people, He would completely negate the lesson— a lesson that the Jews themselves have learned insufficiently, as their sin shows. Finally, while God asks Moshe for permission, as it were, to destroy the Jews, Moshe notes that he, Moshe, cannot grant it, since God must fulfill his promises to the Patriarchs.

As with Avraham, God’s omniscience should mean that He knew Moshe’s arguments even before they were said; that God raised each of the useful points for Moshe’s response suggests that the introduction was a guide. Indeed, the themes Moshe strikes in his plea remain those in use until this day: showing how it would be inappropriate or ineffective (in God’s terms) to continue as we fear the Divine Plan dictates.

The Jews who left Egypt were the fulfillment of God’s promise to the Patriarchs and the living embodiment of God’s singular power, His ability to reduce even the strongest nation in the world to abject submission. Moshe seems to be “reminding” God of His relationship with the Patriarchs, who taught the world of His existence, and the Jews whom He took out of Egypt, who served as His representatives to the world.

Moshe’s experience confirms the lessons of Avraham’s prayer at Sodom, that petitionary prayer ideally combines absorbing God’s plans and goals for the world—a heteronomous experience—with the autonomous human ability to formulate plausible alternate ways of reaching those goals.

Chana’s Contribution to Prayer

Chana’s prayer for a son highlights how we can make autonomous petitions to God. As Scripture portrays it, despite her many personal reasons to want a son, she only vows to dedicate the child to God, to make him a Nazirite all his days.[ix] I note that that is a promise rather than a prayer; Scripture’s characterizing it the other way only makes sense if she was showing that her personal desires would actually further God’s goals for the world.[x] God’s plan did not include a child for Chana (for reasons of His inscrutable Will); her unusual willingness to dedicate the child completely to the Lord presented a less obvious plan that furthered God’s goals even better, giving God a prophet who served to spread His words and service among the people.

Thus, while prayer expresses human autonomy to reimagine the future, it only became available by God’s having shown it to us on several different crucial occasions. Further, it seems to work best when humans find alternative ways of achieving God’s goals; the successful supplicant will have to submit fully to God’s worldview before he or she could possibly understand a suggested future to include in prayer. Consistent with our general theme, we find an autonomy preceded by a dose of heteronomy.

Voluntary Modes of Worship: The Lost World of Avraham

Avraham is sometimes seen as the paradigmatic Noahide, since the Talmud assumes that Biblical statements about Avraham inform us as to the extent of Noahide obligations.[xi] He is also HaIvri, separate and distinct from the rest of the world. Similarly, while he obviously observed all of the Noahide laws, much of what he became most famous for—welcoming guests, building altars where he would call out in the Name of God, trying to convince others of the truth of monotheism—was not in the Noahide code, was Avraham’s understanding of how a God-focused individual should act.

Returning to prayer, we can now appreciate that it is but one example of a broader aspect of Avraham’s life. God taught Avraham that he was allowed to pray, but Avraham decided to institute regular morning prayer. Tradition sees the next two Patriarchs as each instituting one further prayer, suggesting that they had learned from their father the importance of innovating in one’s worship of God.

Indeed, Rambam thinks Avraham articulated an entire tradition of how to live a God-centered life.[xii] In his view, the move to Egypt and the influence of idol worship destroyed the Patriarchs’ legacy, making clear that a voluntary system would not work. Moshe’s contribution, for Rambam, was to convey God’s decision to legislate, with reward and punishment ensuring that the system—probably similar to the one Avraham enunciated– would take hold and last.[xiii]

How Important Is The Commanded Aspect of Mitzvot?

Rambam’s idea of a voluntary religion formulated by human beings, even Avraham, runs counter to the stress on mitzvot many assume is so central to Judaism. We will get to mitzvot, but already here Rambam’s picture encourages us to question whether commandments were always part of the Divine plan. In his view, it seems, had Avraham’s descendants and students maintained their commitment to his principles and practices, the events at Sinai might have been unnecessary, or at least radically different.

That would seem to reject the literal meaning of the Talmudic claim that the Patriarch kept the entire Torah, and call into question the ordinary reading of several other Talmudic statements as well. Focusing on a few will prepare us for the next chapter, where we show that mitzvot themselves were not meant as the sum total (or even the central focus) of how one worshiped God.

Berachot 8b says that from the day the Temple was destroyed, all God “has” in this world are the four cubits of halacha. On its face, the statement suggests that God’s concerns narrowed with the Destruction, that all He currently “cares” about is halacha and its observance. That interpretation does not explain, however, why God’s interest in halacha was intensified by the loss of the Temple. It seems that the Talmud is arguing that the world of halacha became the substitute for the overall function of the Temple, much as prayer came to substitute for the sacrifices.

I suggest that the Temple’s role as a location where people could experience God[xiv] was lost in the Destruction and can be regained by immersing oneself in the study of halacha. In the terms we have been discussing here, analyzing the heteronomous halacha allows the person to experience God in a way that can then infuse and inform that person’s autonomous contributions to God’s world.

The Talmud’s rule that גדול המצווה ועושה משאינו מצווה ועושה, one who is commanded to perform an act is greater than one who performs the same act without being commanded,[xv] is also often taken as demonstrating a general preference in halachah for heteronomy over autonomy. Here too, a moment’s reflection reminds us that the statement compares performances of a particular act; it does not mean that an obligated person who recites Grace After Meals, for example, is necessarily “greater” than one who voluntarily studies Torah. The Talmud only means that once God obligated certain people, they receive the greatest reward for fulfilling those obligations.[xvi]

This clarification of the Talmudic statement will be especially important later, when we compare the role of the commandments in the lives of Jewish men and women. Here, it is crucial to noting that the Talmud does not necessarily promote commandedness as an inherent good.

Although the Giving of the Law at Sinai is the central event of the Jewish religion, our thrust so far has been to show that there is room within Jewish sources to recognize that it did not have to contain the legislative content it eventually did. Had Noahides recognized their responsibility to serve God in all the ways a reasonably intuitive person would, or had Avraham’s students and descendants done a better job of handling his legacy, the Revelation at Sinai might have been of a different sort altogether, and we might today adhere to a system largely defined by humans. Working off of Divine guidance, of course, but with rules and details of our own making.

That realization has absolutely no practical ramifications, since we cannot turn back time. Seeing what might have been serves a positive function, however, in preparing us to look with new eyes at the system that developed, to realize that it is less concerned with punctilious observance of specific rituals for their own sake (although that is vital as well), and that there is still much room for autonomy in the human relationship with God.

[i] Exod 8: 4 and 24, and 9: 28.

[ii] Ibid. 8: 8.

[iii] Ibid. 8: 29. I construe Moshe’s extending his hands in prayer as an intensification of the experience.

[iv] Ibid. 9: 29.

[v] Admittedly, for this prayer he was צועק, cried out. Perhaps the difficulty stems from the prayer’s brevity, lack of argumentation, and hurried composition, not a discomfort with formulating effective prayer.

[vi] Num 14:18.

[vii] Num 11:2, 21:7, and Deut 9:20, where Moshe terms his prayers for Aaron after the Golden Calf a תפילה.

[viii] Verse 10, commenting on the words הניחה לי, desist from Me.

[ix] I Sam 1: 11.

[x] See I Sam 1: 10-12. The text says that Hannah prayed, and then records her vow. Even if we assume that she prayed in addition to the vow, the text still characterizes the vow as part of her prayer.

[xi] Sanhedrin 56b.

[xii] See his presentation at the beginning of Laws of Idol Worship. While many assume the Talmud meant Yoma 28b’s claim that Avraham kept the entire Torah literally, Rambam probably understood it to mean that he observed all the underlying principles and purposes of the system commanded at Sinai.

[xiii] In addition to ibid., see his presentation of the evolution of commandments in Laws of Kings, 9;1. Note that Rambam sees Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov as undertaking various acts on their own, but Amram, in Egypt, as commanded. See also Guide II;13, where the belief that God created the world is repeatedly credited to both Avraham and Moshe. I first heard this reconstruction of Rambam’s ideas from Aviezer Ravitsky at Harvard University in Spring 1993; it is now, I believe, commonplace.

[xiv] Rabbi Soloveitchik is reported to have noted that Scripture describes the experience of being at the Temple as being לפני ה’, before God.

[xv] Kiddushin 31a.

[xvi] Incidentally, the whole expectation of reward for voluntary performance is not as obvious as we take it. It is at least possible that acts obligatory upon one set of people are not particularly desirable for another set. The Talmud might have meant, then, that the metzuveh ve-oseh is greater because only he can be sure his act is wholly positive. Along these lines, see R. Nissim b. Reuben Gerondi (RAN), Derashot haRan, Sermon 13, who argues that God’s commandments are so specifically tailored that only those commanded to perform an act can fully accomplish its goals.