📋 Shiur Overview
Zohar Shiur for Erev Shabbat, Parashat Vayera – The First Commandment in the Order of the Commandments: Knowledge of God
The Concept of Mitzvah and the Order of the Commandments
Today is Erev Shabbat (Sabbath eve), and it is already almost Shabbat, Parashat Vayera. We are returning to the sequence where we stand, which is the first commandment. We need to approach the first commandment once and for all. Certainly there is a connection to the weekly portion, “And God appeared to him” (*Vayera elav Hashem*, Genesis 18:1), and whoever has studied what we wrote on this matter will see the connection for himself (as we wrote elsewhere, and this is not the place for it). But my intention here is simply to return and study the place where we stand in the first commandment, to make a few observations, and perhaps we will also merit to understand something.
As we have learned, the Zohar here compiles a kind of *Sefer HaMitzvot* (Book of Commandments), and at its head it placed an introduction on the meaning of the concept “mitzvah” (in the shiur before last, which dealt with the commandment of circumcision, we spoke about the meaning of the word “mitzvah” and how the mitzvah itself becomes Godliness, and this is not the place to elaborate). As the Chassidic works say, “mitzvah” derives from *tzavta*, meaning something that connects a person with the One who commands. A mitzvah is not merely an order; rather, as the Zohar says, the positive commandment and the negative commandment are *dechar ve-nukva*, male and female, so to speak, of the supernal attributes, of the *sefirot*.
From this introduction we continue to study the first commandment. And the introduction to the first commandment must be framed in a very important way, for one must know that regarding the question of what the first commandment is, there is a great question, a great dispute, and great perplexity.
As we learned in one of the introductions to this series, arranging an order for the 613 commandments is to a large extent arranging an order in the Torah itself. For besides the general order, that there are 613 commandments or a certain list of commandments, and that there are fixed commandments, constant commandments, and obligatory commandments, there is also an internal order within the commandments: which commandment is first, and how the commandments are grouped and joined to one another. This order is what gives us the structure of the commandments, and the understanding of how they function as a single whole.
Maimonides’ Innovation: Knowledge of God as the First Commandment
Maimonides (the Rambam) came with a great and far-reaching innovation, and said that the first commandment is the commandment of knowing Godliness, knowing the existence of God. This was an innovation of the Rambam; as far as I can see, no one before him counted what is called the commandment of faith, or the commandment of knowing God (that is what the Rambam and the Zohar call it), as a commandment at all, and certainly not as the first commandment. It was the Rambam who introduced this.
And why should it be the first? Seemingly the matter is simple, for this is the most important thing of all. But this can be understood in two ways, and according to both ways it will become clear that it is not so obvious that knowledge of God can be the first commandment. And in my opinion, the Zohar deals with this very question.
The First Approach: A Logical Prerequisite to the Other Commandments
The first approach is a relative one, in relation to the other commandments. When arranging an order, it is proper to place the general before the particular, and the foundation before the branches and the stories built upon it. When there are two things, one dependent on the other, such as general and particular, or such as a premise from which a conclusion follows, it is fitting to open with the general premise, with the thing upon which what follows is built and without which it could not exist, and only afterward to detail what follows from it.
For one could say this: commandments are things that one does because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them. Whether or not this is the reason one does them, in any case commandments are things that God commanded. It follows that before speaking about commandments, one must know that there is a Creator who commands them. One must know at least two things: that there is a Creator, and that He commanded the commandments. And perhaps a third thing should be added: that since He commanded, it is therefore obligatory to perform them.
Here, then, are three stages. And if one frames the commandments this way, that a commandment is something God commands, one must understand that there is a Creator, that He commanded commandments, and that what God commands must be done. These three things at the very least precede the commandments, and in the structure we construct, they will come first.
The Objection of Rabbi Hasdai Crescas and Nahmanides: God’s Existence Cannot Be a Commandment
Against this approach there is a famous objection by Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, and perhaps, though it is not clear, Nahmanides (the Ramban) also alluded to it. The Ramban, in his glosses on the *Sefer HaMitzvot*, seeks to defend the position of the author of *Halakhot Gedolot* (the Behag), and I believe the position of others as well; the Behag is the principal enumerator of the commandments before the Rambam, with whom the Rambam argues, but perhaps others too, and I believe Rabbi Saadia Gaon also does not count faith as a commandment.
And so the Ramban argues: this makes no sense. You are absolutely right that without God’s existence, and also without the two following things, namely the command itself, and the fact that if there is a command one is obligated to obey it, there are no commandments at all. But that is precisely why it is not a commandment! As the Midrash says: “Accept My sovereignty, and afterward accept My decrees” (Mekhilta, Yitro, Parasha 6). These are two separate things. First you must know that there is a God (“accept My sovereignty” does include somewhat more than God’s existence, but in any case).
And Rabbi Hasdai Crescas sharpens this even further: it cannot be a commandment at all. For a commandment means that God commands, so how can there be a commandment to believe that there is a Creator? Before it is known that there is a Creator, there is no one to command the commandment! The commandment presupposes that there is a Creator, and necessarily knowledge of God precedes the commandment and cannot itself be a commandment. It is like that rabbi who testifies about himself that he merited a revelation of Elijah; it is self-referential, an argument that circles back on itself, and nothing proves itself. God commands us to believe in Him: if one knows there is a Creator, there is no need for the commandment, and if one does not know, what use is the commandment? This is Rabbi Hasdai’s famous objection to this concept, and in his words: “It is a well-known error to count… knowledge of God as a commandment” (*Or Hashem*, Introduction).
This, then, is the objection of Rabbi Hasdai, and to some extent the objection of the Ramban. The Ramban does not go that far, but his intent is close: it is true logically that this precedes the commandments, but it is very difficult to say that it is itself a commandment, and there is something strange about it. Either it is not fitting, or it is entirely impossible and illogical for it to be a commandment in itself, or at any rate, as the Ramban says, it is not correct to call it a commandment.
Torah from Heaven: What Is Missing in the First Approach
There is another point to note here. In truth, the way the reasoning is presented here differs from the way the Rambam’s reasoning can be presented, and if we understand how it should properly be stated, we will understand that there is no objection at all.
For there is another way to explain why the first commandment should be knowledge of God; not because in order to fulfill commandments one must first know that there is a God. For if so, first, the objection is strengthened, and second, more things truly need to be added.
And indeed the Ramban himself seeks to add more commandments to the first commandment, at least one more and perhaps two, and one should examine carefully the wording of the Ramban’s glosses on the *Sefer HaMitzvot*. And a most interesting point in this matter is the Torah. Everyone understands what is called “Torah from Heaven” (*Torah min ha-shamayim*). If, as we said, for there to be commandments one must know that there is a God, that there is a Creator, and that He commanded the commandments, then these two things at the very least should be the first two commandments. And yet even the Ramban did not write this: suppose there are three commandments, since unity, love, and fear must also be included, but it did not occur to him to write that the first commandment is to know God and after it comes a commandment to believe that the Torah is from Heaven.
And he could have done so. Incidentally, the Ramban comes quite close to this (and one should examine the gloss more carefully, I believe on the Rambam’s first or second commandment): for there are enough verses from which such a commandment could be derived. Just as there is the verse “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2) and “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4), from which the Rambam made a commandment to believe, “to know that there is a First Being” (Rambam, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 1:1), so too one could derive a commandment from the verse “Only take heed to yourself and guard your soul diligently, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen” (Deuteronomy 4:9). The Ramban says (Forgotten Negative Commandments, no. 2) that this is a commandment not to forget the Revelation at Mount Sinai. The masses think the Ramban is introducing some commandment of remembrance here, but the Ramban’s intent is precisely this point: in order to fulfill commandments one must know the Torah, and the Torah means the Revelation at Sinai, and there is an explicit verse that it is forbidden to forget the Revelation at Sinai! That is, one must know and remember, and remembering and knowing are one matter, that the Revelation at Sinai occurred. This is very reasonable. And one must wonder about the Rambam: if he follows the reasoning that a logical order must be established for the commandments, and that before knowledge of the commandments one must know God’s existence, then certainly, and perhaps even more so, one must also include the existence of the Torah, Torah from Heaven, the Revelation at Sinai. And the Rambam does not do so.
Love and Fear: The Reason for Fulfilling the Commandments
And there is something more, as we said: even after we have established God’s existence, and even after the Revelation at Sinai, it is still not enough. For a person can argue: why should I obey? What do I have to do with the Revelation at Sinai? Granted that God commanded a commandment, so what? This is a very difficult point to explain (and we have apparently spoken about it on other occasions, and this is not the place to elaborate): so what? Something more is missing here, and certainly something more is missing on account of which I would be obligated to fulfill commandments.
That “something more” the Rambam did indeed count among the first commandments, and the Zohar holds that perhaps it should be the very first commandment. In our terminology, this “something more” is called: the commandments of fear and love.
Each of fear and love, which correspond to the positive commandment and the negative commandment (as we discussed above), can be explained in dozens of ways and levels. But the essence of fear and love is this: God commanded commandments, and one must fear Him; if this means fear of punishment, then you already have a reason to fulfill commandments. And if it means fear of His exaltedness (*yirat ha-romemut*), it means that it is good to fulfill commandments. And according to what we have learned, love means that it is good to fulfill commandments, whether or not I know their reasons. And this is already a reason to fulfill them.
Incidentally, from this understanding one can grasp a little why it did not occur to the Rambam to count Torah from Heaven. Torah from Heaven is merely a historical fact, from which we received the commandments, but it is not the reason one must fulfill the commandments, and it is certainly not the essence. The essence is: why must one fulfill the commandments? Because of love and fear. Love and fear are a reason for fulfilling the commandments; Torah from Heaven is not a reason for fulfilling the commandments, but rather the story of the source from which the commandments first came. I do not know whether one can truly say that had it not occurred, everything would be as it is, for one still needs a source for the fact that these are the commandments and that they are good. But in any case, if one understands the matter, that the only thing that is good, and this is the commandment of love according to what we are learning, then certainly there is no need, so to speak, for Torah from Heaven as a principle in its own right and as a commandment in its own right. For love and fear are the reason one fulfills the commandments.
The Order of the Commandments in the Zohar and Among the Other Enumerators
But even this is not sufficient, for the Rambam did not establish love and fear as the first commandment, but rather said that God’s existence is the first commandment. What does this mean? It means that the Rambam intends something entirely different. And the Zohar here, in the *Ra’aya Meheimna* (*Pikudin*), follows in the footsteps of the Rambam, and clearly argues with the other position.
And this, in my opinion, is something very beautiful. In the Zohar there are two places that begin explaining the reasons for the commandments in order. In the Introduction to the Zohar there are fourteen first commandments that the Zohar explains in order. Certainly there are many reasons for commandments scattered throughout the Zohar’s discourses, but the writing of an actual *Sefer HaMitzvot* is found in the *Sefer HaPikudin*, and that is the main one; it goes through, as we discussed, forty-seven commandments, and in the Introduction to the Zohar there are fourteen commandments. That is, neither was completed, but in any case it is evident that it is attempting to do so.
And in the Introduction to the Zohar the commandment of knowing God does appear, but it is only the eighth commandment, if my memory does not deceive me (Zohar I, 11b). The first commandment there is fear of God, and the second is love of God, and it brings an explicit verse for this: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). And afterward I saw it noted, and I believe Rabbi Saadia Gaon does indeed open this way, that the first commandment is fear of God and the second is service, meaning prayer and other forms of divine service. And there are also other enumerators of the commandments who held that one should open with fear, and there is much logic to this.
God Is the First, and the Commandments Are God and His Deeds
But the Rambam did not do so. And the Zohar here argues explicitly, saying: but it is written “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and it gives an answer to this. It explicitly grapples with the idea that one should open with fear of God.
And what is the plain meaning? The plain meaning is that there is an entirely different reason why the commandment of God’s existence, knowledge of God, should be first. Not because it is a precondition, a foundation for fulfilling the commandments, but for an entirely different reason: because God is the First! What does God’s existence mean? God’s existence means the first thing. The first thing, in the Rambam’s words, without which nothing could exist. He is the First, the most fundamental of all, the foundation of all things, “the foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdom” (Rambam, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 1:1); the foundation of all things is God.
And now, let us recall what we said about the commandments. The commandments, as the Zohar understands them, and in truth also as the Rambam understands them, are not things that God commanded. The commandments are God Himself! In other words, one should say: God and His deeds. The first commandments deal with God Himself, and they are love and fear, and after them come commandments that are God’s deeds, which teach how to conduct oneself: how God governs His world, and how it is fitting for a person to conduct himself in the world. This is the matter of God’s deeds. And in the language of the Zohar it would be said: God and His attributes, the Divine Essence and the attributes, *Zakhor* and *Shamor* (Remember and Keep).
If so, if the commandments are not a command of God, requiring a precondition of how one knows about God before the command, but rather they are God Himself, then certainly the first commandment, or the principal commandment, which is perhaps all the commandments together, is God’s existence itself, the knowledge of God’s existence! And God’s existence can be known through knowledge, it can be known “when you walk on the way” (Deuteronomy 6:7), in one’s conversation, in reciting the Shema, in wrapping oneself in tzitzit, in donning tefillin; all of these are branches of the knowledge of God Himself. And afterward, as mentioned, also God’s deeds: that it is fitting to keep Shabbat, that it is fitting to observe “You shall not wear *sha’atnez*, wool and linen together” (Deuteronomy 22:11). All of these are details, which the Zohar will explain as to which *sefirah* they relate, that is, which mode of conduct among God’s attributes they concern.
But essentially all the commandments are about God’s existence, and the commandment of knowing God itself must certainly be the first, not because God commanded it first. It makes no sense to say that God commanded that people believe in Him; but in truth, regarding the commandments in general, too, it makes no sense to say that God commanded.
The essence of the commandments is that God is thus: either He is thus, or He acts thus. If so, this is an entirely new explanation of why knowledge of God is the first commandment. And this is how the Zohar proceeds here, not in the Torah portion but in the commandment itself. The Zohar counts the commandments by their numbers, and at this number it says: “*Pikuda kadma’ah*” (Zohar II, 42b), the first commandment, “*reishita kadma’ah le-khol pikudin*,” the beginning and the start, the first of all the commandments, is “*le-minda leih le-Kudsha Berikh Hu bi-khlalut*,” to know the Holy One, blessed be He, in a general way (ibid.). That is, and this is how I understand his words here: its being the first commandment is not a matter of number, nor a matter of logical necessity that one must first know this and afterward something else.
“I Am the First and I Am the Last”: Knowledge of God in General and in Particular
It is the first, just as God is the First! And the Zohar itself explicitly cites the verse for this: “I am the first and I am the last” (Isaiah 44:6).
“I am the last” refers to knowledge of God in particular, and we are not able to explain this now (in the next shiur, God willing, we will enter into it and return to the topic). This is the answer to the Zohar’s question, for it is written “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” implying that fear should be the first commandment. And to this the Zohar answers that this is the last knowledge, which a person attains after understanding all of God’s deeds, namely the 248 positive commandments and all the commandments altogether, which are knowledge of God in particular, that is, His actions and modes of conduct in the world. This is the end of all the commandments; this is the detailed knowledge learned after forty years: “Yet the Lord has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, until this day” (Deuteronomy 29:3), the last knowledge of God’s existence.
But “I am the first and I am the last,” says the Zohar, means literally: I am the first commandment and I am the last commandment. That is, the knowledge of the “I” is the first commandment and it is the last commandment; and this is not an arbitrary number in the count of the commandments, but rather it truly is the most important thing of all, the beginning. The difficulty is on the human side: at the beginning of his path he does not understand properly, and at its end he understands properly. In “I am the last” he understands properly, and it is the very same thing. What was understood at the beginning is the very same as what is understood at the end, only at the end it is understood better. Not only does he know, in the Zohar’s language, that there is One above the world who rules over the world and so on, but he also knows a little of how God governs all His deeds, and how good all His deeds are, and so on; and this is “I am the last.” This is the novel insight I wished to share regarding faith in God and knowledge of God, and how it is the first commandment and in what sense.
And if you ask: but it is written “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” implying that before knowledge, before knowing God, there is a need for fear of God? The Zohar answers: No, you have not understood the plain meaning. “The fear of the Lord” is itself the *Shekhinah* (Divine Presence), and it is the last thing a person knows. And one must understand why it is the last thing, for seemingly, from below to above, it is the first; but in any case, his intent is a particular knowledge, called knowledge of the *Shekhinah*, and not merely knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He. This is the Zohar’s way of expressing things. And this is what becomes known at the end, and this is indeed the fear taught in the Book of Deuteronomy, which is already the particular knowledge.
But this does not mean, and therefore do not learn, that fear is something that precedes the commandments, that is, as people say, that one must first fear God in order to fulfill the commandments. No! That is a narrow-minded interpretation. The Zohar in the Introduction does indeed follow precisely this interpretation; but whoever understands fear of God in truth understands that fear of God is an additional commandment, and it is itself, as we have already said, the final level of the commandments, “I am the last.”
“I am the first” means love of God, or if you prefer, God’s existence; “I am the last” is fear of God. And both are the very same “I am the Lord,” and all the paths are one matter, as the Zohar says: in general and in particular, and all is one.
Thus far what I wished to study in honor of the holy Shabbat.
📝 Full Transcript
The First Mitzvah in the Order of the Commandments: Knowledge of God (Yedi’at Hashem)
Introduction: The Meaning of the Word “Mitzvah” and the Order of the Commandments
The Connection to Parashat Vayera and the Meaning of “Mitzvah”
We are returning to the sequence where we are holding at the first mitzvah. There is certainly a connection to this week’s Torah portion of “And the Lord appeared to him” (Vayera elav Hashem) (Genesis 18:1), and whoever has studied what we wrote about it should already see the connection. Here we will review where we are holding at the first mitzvah, and raise certain observations.
As we have learned, the Zohar here composes a Book of the Commandments (Sefer HaMitzvot), and it gave an introduction explaining what the meaning of a “mitzvah” is. In an earlier shiur, before the shiur on the mitzvah of circumcision (milah), we spoke about the meaning of the word “mitzvah,” and how a mitzvah itself becomes Godliness (Elokut). As the Hasidic books say, “mitzvah” derives from “tzavta,” togetherness: something that joins a person with the One who commands it. A mitzvah is not merely a command; rather, as the Zohar says, the positive commandments and the negative commandments are *dekhar venukva*, the male and female, as it were, of the supernal attributes, the sefirot.
With that introduction, we continue studying the first mitzvah. This introduction must be applied to the first mitzvah in a very important way, because there is a great question, dispute, and perplexity regarding what the first mitzvah is.
The Internal Order of the 613 Commandments
As we learned in one of the introductions, the subject of ordering the 613 commandments (taryag mitzvot) is, in a certain way, the subject of ordering the Torah. Besides there being a list of the 613 commandments in general (fixed commandments, constant commandments, obligatory commandments), there is also the internal order of the commandments: which mitzvah is first, and how one groups the commandments and puts them together. This gives us the structure and the understanding of how the commandments work as a single whole.
Maimonides’ Novel Idea and the Difficulty Raised by Rabbi Hasdai Crescas and Nachmanides
The First Way of Understanding Why Knowledge of God Is the First Mitzvah
Maimonides (Rambam) came with a bombshell chiddush (novel idea) and said that the first mitzvah is the mitzvah of knowing Godliness, knowing the existence of God (yedi’at metziut Hashem). Before Rambam, no one counted the mitzvah of faith (emunah) or knowledge of God (Rambam and the Zohar call it the mitzvah of knowing God) as a mitzvah at all, and certainly not as the first mitzvah.
Why should it be first? It seems obvious that it must be first, because it is the most important thing. But this can be understood in two ways, and we will see that it is not so clear that knowledge of God can be the first mitzvah. The Zohar addresses this question.
One way is relative to the other commandments. When making an order, it makes sense to place the general principle (kelal) before the particular (perat), or the foundation before the branches and levels built upon it. When one thing depends on another, like a general principle and a particular, or a premise from which a conclusion follows, it makes a lot of sense to begin with the general premise, without which the next thing cannot exist, and afterward to state the details that follow from it.
Commandments are things God commanded, whether or not one performs them for that reason. It follows that before speaking of commandments, one must know at least three steps, three levels: first, that there is a God; second, that He commanded the commandments; and third, that what God commands must be done. If commandments are something God commands, then these three things precede the commandments, and in the structure they must come first.
The Difficulty with This Approach: God’s Existence Cannot Itself Be a Mitzvah
On this there is a famous difficulty (kushya) raised by Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, and perhaps Nachmanides (Ramban) also hints at it. Ramban, in his Sefer HaMitzvot, wants to justify the Halachot Gedolot (the Behag is the principal enumerator of the commandments before Rambam, with whom Rambam argues) and all the others, such as Rav Saadia Gaon, who likewise do not count faith as a mitzvah.
Ramban says: You are one hundred percent right that without God’s existence there are no commandments, and also without the next two things: the fact that there is a divine command, and that if there is a command it must be obeyed. But that is precisely the reason it is not a mitzvah! He cites a phrase from the Midrash: “Accept My kingship, and afterward accept My decrees” (Kabbelu malchuti ve’achar kach kabbelu gezeirotai) (Mekhilta, Yitro, Parasha 6). These are two separate things: first you must know that there is a God (“accept My kingship” already includes a bit more than God’s existence).
Rabbi Hasdai Crescas makes it even sharper: this cannot even be a mitzvah. A mitzvah means that God commands. So how can it be a mitzvah to believe that there is a God? Before I know that there is a God, I do not know who is supposed to give the mitzvah! A mitzvah presupposes that there is a God, so knowledge of God must come before any mitzvah. There cannot be a mitzvah to know God. It is like the rebbe who claims that he himself has a revelation of Elijah (gilui Eliyahu): it is self-referential and circular, and a thing cannot prove itself. If one knows that there is a God, no mitzvah is needed, and if one does not know, what good is a mitzvah? He writes about this: “It is a well-known error of whoever counts… knowledge of God as a mitzvah” (Or Hashem, Introduction).
This is the difficulty of Rav Hasdai, and something similar from Ramban: it is indeed logical that it comes before the commandments, but it is illogical and impossible (or at any rate incorrect, as Ramban says) to call it a mitzvah.
Torah from Heaven and the Commandments of Love and Fear as the Foundation for Obeying the Commandments
In truth, Rambam’s reasoning can be explained another way, in which case there is no difficulty at all. If one understands that knowledge of God is the first mitzvah only because, in order to perform commandments, one must first know that there is a God, then besides the difficulty above, there is also the problem that more things would have to be added.
Indeed, Ramban himself wants to add one or two more commandments to the first mitzvah (this needs to be checked precisely in Ramban’s glosses on Sefer HaMitzvot, Mitzvah 1 or 2). If, in order for there to be commandments, one must know that there is a Creator and that He commanded the commandments, then those two things, knowledge of God and Torah from Heaven (Torah min hashamayim), ought to be the first commandments (together with God’s unity, love, and fear). Yet even Ramban did not think to write a first mitzvah of believing in Torah from Heaven.
Ramban did, however, almost add such a mitzvah. Just as Rambam derived from “I am the Lord your God” (Anochi Hashem Elokecha) (Exodus 20:2) and “Hear, O Israel” (Shema Yisrael) (Deuteronomy 6:4) a mitzvah to believe, “to know that there is a God” (leida sheyesh sham Eloah) (Rambam, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 1:1), Ramban says (Forgotten Negative Commandments, Prohibition 2) on the verse “Only guard yourself and guard your soul diligently, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen” (Deuteronomy 4:9) that this is a mitzvah not to forget the revelation at Mount Sinai (Ma’amad Har Sinai). People think Ramban simply means a mitzvah of remembrance, but he means this very point: to perform commandments one must know about the Torah, which means the revelation at Sinai, and there is an explicit verse stating that one must know and remember that the revelation at Sinai took place. And regarding Rambam, it is a wonder: if he follows the reasoning that the commandments require a logical order, why does he not include the fact of Torah from Heaven and the revelation at Sinai?
Furthermore, even after knowing God’s existence and the revelation at Sinai, it is still not enough. Someone could ask: suppose God did command a mitzvah at Sinai, so what? Why must I obey? Something is still missing that would give me a reason to perform the commandments.
That “something more” Rambam did count as one of the first commandments, and the Zohar holds that perhaps it should be literally the very first mitzvah: the commandments of fear (yirah) and love (ahavah).
Fear and love, which correspond to the positive commandments and the negative commandments, can be explained in dozens of ways and on many levels. If one must fear God (for example, fear of punishment, or awe of His exaltedness, which means that it is good to perform commandments) and love Him (which, as we have learned, means that it is good to perform commandments whether or not I understand), then you already have a reason to perform the commandments.
Accordingly, one can also understand why Rambam did not think to list Torah from Heaven as a mitzvah. Torah from Heaven is only the historical fact, the story of where we received the first commandments, but it is not the reason one must perform them. The reason to perform commandments is love and fear, the only thing that is truly good. Therefore Torah from Heaven is not needed as a separate principle (ikkar) and mitzvah.
The True Meaning in Rambam and in the Zohar: The Commandments Are God Himself
The Order of the Commandments in the Holy Zohar and Among Other Enumerators
But even this is not enough, because Rambam did not place love and fear as the first mitzvah, but rather God’s existence. The explanation is that Rambam means something else entirely, and the Zohar here, in the Ra’aya Mehemna (Pikudin), follows Rambam and clearly argues against the view that says otherwise.
Besides the many reasons for the commandments (ta’amei hamitzvot) scattered throughout the homilies of the Zohar, there are two places in the Zohar that begin to set out a Book of Commandments in order (neither of them was completed). The main one is the Sefer HaPikudin, which covers forty-seven commandments, and in the Introduction to the Zohar it covers the first fourteen commandments.
In the Introduction to the Zohar, knowledge of God is only the eighth mitzvah (Zohar I, 11b). The first mitzvah there is fear of God and the second is love of God, because of an explicit verse: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Yirat Hashem reshit da’at) (Proverbs 1:7). Rav Saadia Gaon also begins this way: the first mitzvah is fear of God, and the second is service (avodah), meaning prayer and other kinds of divine service. Other enumerators of the commandments also thought they should begin with fear, and that makes a lot of sense.
God Is the First Thing, and the Commandments Are God and His Deeds
But Rambam did not do so. And the Zohar here explicitly argues against the idea that one should begin with fear of God. It asks, after all, it says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and it gives an answer.
The explanation is that there is an entirely different reason why the mitzvah of knowing God’s existence must come first: not because it is a precondition and foundation for performing commandments, but because God is the first thing! As Rambam says, without Him nothing could exist. He is the most basic thing, the foundation of all things: “the foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdom” (yesod hayesodot ve’amud hachochmot) (Rambam, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 1:1).
According to the Zohar, and in truth also according to Rambam, the commandments are not things that God commanded; rather, the commandments are themselves God: God and His deeds. The first few commandments (knowledge of God, love, and fear) concern God Himself, and after them come commandments that are God’s deeds: how God conducts the world, and therefore how it is right for a person to conduct themselves in the world. In the language of the Zohar this is called God and His attributes: the essence of God and the attributes, “Remember” and “Keep” (zachor veshamor).
Therefore, if commandments are not a divine command that requires, as a precondition, knowing about God before the command, but rather the commandments are God Himself, then certainly the first and principal mitzvah, which is in truth all the commandments, is knowledge of God’s existence itself! God’s existence can be known through knowledge, through “and when you walk on the way” (uvelechtecha vaderech) (Deuteronomy 6:7), through reciting the Shema, wearing tzitzit, and putting on tefillin, all of which are branches of knowing God Himself. And afterward come God’s deeds, such as keeping Shabbat, or “You shall not wear sha’atnez, wool and linen together” (Deuteronomy 22:11), details whose connection to particular sefirot and modes of conduct of God’s attributes the Zohar explains.
Essentially, all the commandments are contained within God’s existence. It indeed makes no sense to say that God commanded us to believe in Him, but for commandments in general it also makes no sense to say that God commanded. The essence of the commandments is that God is a certain way or acts a certain way.
This is how the Zohar treats this mitzvah: “The first commandment… the first beginning of all the commandments… is to know the Holy One, blessed be He, in general” (Zohar II, 42b). The first mitzvah, the beginning and starting point of all the commandments, is to know the Holy One, blessed be He, in general. Its being the first mitzvah is not a matter of numbering, nor a logical necessity that one must first know this and then that. It is first just as God is the First!
“I Am the First and I Am the Last”: Knowledge of God in General and in Particular
General Knowledge at the Beginning and Particular Knowledge at the End
On this, the Zohar itself explicitly cites the verse “I am the first and I am the last” (Ani rishon va’ani acharon) (Isaiah 44:6). The Zohar says that this means quite literally: I am the first mitzvah and I am the last mitzvah. Knowledge of “I” is the most important thing, the beginning and the end.
“I am the last” relates to particular knowledge of God, after one understands all of God’s deeds: the 248 positive commandments corresponding to the 248 limbs, and the 365 prohibitions corresponding to the 365 sinews and the 365 days of the solar year, which are His actions and His conduct of the world. This is the culmination of all the commandments, the detailed final knowledge of God’s existence that is learned after forty years: “Yet the Lord has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, until this day” (Deuteronomy 29:3).
The difference is from the person’s side. At the beginning, at “I am the first,” one does not understand properly; one knows only in general that there is Someone above the world who rules over the world. But at the end, at “I am the last,” one understands the same thing better and correctly, knowing a little of how God conducts all His deeds and how they are all good.
The Answer to “The Fear of the Lord Is the Beginning of Knowledge”
This is the answer to the Zohar’s question: doesn’t it say “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” implying that one needs fear of God before knowledge of God? The Zohar answers: No, “the fear of the Lord” itself refers to the Shechinah (Divine Presence), which is the last thing one comes to know. (Although seemingly, from below to above, it is the first thing, here it refers to particular knowledge: knowledge of the Shechinah, not merely knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He.) This is the fear that is taught in the Book of Deuteronomy at the end, the particular knowledge.
Do not understand fear as something that precedes the commandments, as if one must first fear God in order to perform the commandments. That is an immature interpretation (although the Zohar in the Introduction follows that interpretation). In truth, fear of God is itself the final level of the commandments: “I am the last.”
“I am the first” is God’s existence and love of God; “I am the last” is fear of God. Both are the same “I am the Lord” (Ani Hashem), in general and in particular, and all is one.