Thousands of worldviews: religions, philosophies, cultures. Which one should I live by?
Endless choices: how should I think, speak, act on a daily basis? Time is limited; how should I use it?
Experts tell us to focus: on the Essential, on the The One Thing, on the Wildly Important Goals, on What Matters Most. But what IS essential? What IS the one thing?
“It is…the will of G-d that is the sole basis for all our duties. And should any other basis for any duty be possible for the whole of mankind? Ought the idea of ‘duty’ to be conceivable without the idea of ‘G-d’s will’?.....everything which appertains to activity –our personality, our intellectual capacity, and physical powers, and the world which surrounds them and provides them with objects and means---belongs to the One and Only G-d. Who then can have disposal of all this except G-d alone? Whose orders ought we then follow except His?” (Horeb, by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Foreword, first paragraph; bold added.)
Simple words, yet stunning in their implications.
We can eliminate from our list out of hand any worldview that is not directed by the One G-d’s commands. Atheism, agnosticism, and polytheism have no concept of a command that could be binding on anyone.
But in truth, even monotheism that downgrades the concept of G-d’s eternal commandments is suspect. A narrative of an omniscient Creator who suddenly changes his mind about his forever commands; who then decides that a small fraction of these commands will suffice, because "all you need is love"; this narrative does not inspire confidence.
The same can be said of a prophet who claims that the omnipotent Creator was unable to keep His forever commandments from being distorted; whose version of commandments rejected or revised almost all that had been extant when he came on the scene; and whose main selling point for this can be summed up as "all you need is fear"--- convert or die.
The Torah provides clear, unchanging commands from the One and Only all-powerful Creator; it is the final contender in our search for meaning.
And all of this is implied by one word: Mitzvah.
