[Avodah] A question for the chevre

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 01:29:35AM +0200, Moshe Zeldman wrote:
: You have a secular Jew who's on his way to Africa for the rest of his life,
: and you have an opportunity to teach him one mitzva that he'll keep until
: he dies. He has no opportunity there to continue his growth there and will
: never go beyond just keeping this one mitzva. Do you teach him: a) to love
: Hashem, or b) not to take bones out of a fish on Shabbos?

So many axis to think about:

1- Mitzvah maasis vs chovas haleiv

2- Lav vs asei

3- Emunah ("os hi... ki sheishes yamim Asah hashamayim ve'es ha'retz")
   vs ahavah

And 1 and 3 combine -- One is a practical mitzvah that leads one to emunah.
The other is ahavah itself. Which i why I can't totally agree with
: To emphasize, the question here is not a kiruv/chinuch strategy question--
: it won't lead to more mitzvos...

I'm not sure one can consider the full value of Shabbos without the
"lead to".

Also, how does one teach the mitzvah of ahavas Hashem? We are presuming
the student already has the emunah that there is a Hashem to love. Tell
him to spend time every day contemplating creation (not the Torah, if
he knew any, we wouldn't be in this bind) to develop awe, an awareness
of dependence and hence love for the Creator?

All in all, I can't get a handle on the question, never mind suggest
an answer.

>From a pragmatic point of view: borer has measurable goals, and the
talmid is more likely to stick with it. And if he isn't doing borer,
he might figure out ahavas Hashem on his own, since we now got him
thinking about Shabbos, creation and G-d.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Education is not the filling of a bucket,
micha at aishdas.org        but the lighting of a fire.
http://www.aishdas.org                - W.B. Yeats
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