The March-April 2023 issue of Harvard’s alumni magazine carried a column by the university’s then-president, Lawrence Bacow, headlined “Mitzvot.” Bacow wrote about a visit he made to his mother’s hometown of Londorf, Germany, to dedicate a Holocaust memorial. “I challenged my audience to do good deeds, or mitzvot in Hebrew,” he wrote.
Bacow’s translation of mitzvot as “good deeds” is common but flawed. There are other Hebrew words that mean, literally, good deeds. The actual meaning of mitzvot is commandments. Some mitzvot are good deeds but others – say, the commandment against mixing wool and linen in one garment – are simply commandments.
The concept of a commandment implies the idea of a G-d that issues commands. Plenty of modern people find that concept challenging, reject it as well as all the commandments. They may find the idea of “good deeds” easier to accept.
My own view, though – validated by experience, observation, and even some social science research suggesting that religious people donate more money and volunteer more time to charity – is that, generally, the idea of a commander and commandments helps to motivate good deeds. There is free will, but commandments contain a sense of obligation – a mandate – in contrast to a good deed, which implies something more optional.
It was nice to see Harvard try to use Hebrew. However, the inability to translate mitzvot accurately into English was a warning of the underlying problems at the university that have since, deservedly, attracted widespread negative attention.
