Heart vs Head

 Lev means “heart.”  It has the numerical value of 32 (each Hebrew letter corresponds to a number).    The word yachid also has the numerical value of 32.  Yachid means “alone.”  A powerful lesson inheres in those words and the connective tissue between them. 

What happens in the heart, how we feel, takes place only within us.  It is not an alone event.  It does not impact the world in any meaningful way.

Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote that, “one can always find warms hearts who in the glow of emotion would like to make the whole world happy, but who have never attempted the sober experiment of bringing a real blessing to a single human being.”

Do you like to being around positive people?  I do.  Being with people who grumble and grouse continually makes us feel sour.  Those who speak sprightly of sunshine and hope, on the other hand, makes us feel buoyant and light.  Yet there are times when it is preferable to have the sour than the sweet.  What good is it to have a person buzz happily around the room and turn away from someone or something that needs help?  Perhaps they represent a danger to their joy?  A downer?

As Jews, we are commanded and blessed because God trusts us enough to levy responsibilities.  That is why we say when we perform a mitzvah ….”asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav…”  “….Who has made us holy by acting on His commands…”.  God’s brit, covenant, with us is the task of putting order to an incomplete universe.  More, our religion holds that when we act in accord with God we become holy vessels.

Good intentions are good but they are, after all, only intentions.  They are not actualized until it brings about a physical response.  Talmud states, “Matters of the heart are not matters.”  They do not count until we are moved to action.

Sometimes we feel energized to do the right thing and other times our heart is hard.  For the Jew, it is not irrelevant how we feel but ultimately what matters is what we do.   This is mitzvah.

Perhaps that is why the word mitzvah is equivalent (gematria again) to the word, emunim, faith.  When we enact a mitzvah it is an act of faith.  A mitzvah is a movement of faith because we acknowledge that we are not final word on anything: there is a God beyond us who knows that the heart is not enough to change the world, to perfect that which is incomplete.