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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoPlainText>“> I have a question which has always troubled me.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>> One of the quintessential mitzvot is belief in G-d.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>> How can you legislate belief if you don't believe?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>I've seen several answers to this. My personal favorite it that this mitzvah is not really any different than any other positive mitzvah in this regard. You can't simply decide to do a mitzva, and then expect it to happen by magic; there is almost always some sort of preparation required.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>You can't do the mitzvah of matzah on Pesach unless you purchase some, or bake it yourself. You can't sit alone at home and do tzedaka; you have to find someone who you can help. If there's no shofar in town, you need to resolve that somehow.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>And if one doesn't believe, he needs to work on that. Exactly how one does that will vary with the individual and the situation. Again, that's no different than the mitzvos I listed above: One person will spend Rosh Hashana in another town where he can go to shul and hear the shofar, and another will make his own shofar and learn to blow it properly himself. So too, there are different ways of coming to belief: One will work through the intellectual "proofs", and another will simply spend time among believers and allow them to make an impression on him.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:2.25pt'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoListParagraph style='margin-left:20.25pt'>* * * * *<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>This answer doesn’t work for me; belief is very different from the other mitzvoth because there is something practical you can do to observe them. As you point out, you can go to another house, make the shofar yourself etc. But with belief, you can study all you want, listen to as many shiurim from gedolim that you can and do anything else you would suggest and still not “believe”; belief is something that we cannot control. I would agree that we have to take these steps to try to arrive at belief, but if we do so in good faith and still do not believe, I would think it would be a case of ones where rachmana partei.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Joseph<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>