September 17, 2025|כ"ד אלול ה' אלפים תשפ"ה When Command Becomes Connection By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

In recent years, scholars of religion have been speaking about something called “lived religion.” The term was developed by Robert Orsi, one of the most influential historians of religion. Orsi teaches that if you really want to understand people’s religious lives, you can’t just look at official doctrines or what rabbis and priests tell them to do. You have to look at how ordinary people actually live their religion in practice – sometimes in line with tradition, sometimes against it, and sometimes in their own creative ways.

Orsi gives the example of a spring in the Bronx that local Catholics treated as if it were the waters of Lourdes, a famous religious pilgrimage site in France. Everyone knew it wasn’t the “real” Lourdes. But for the people who came there, that spring became holy. It gave them comfort, connection, a sense that God was close. For Orsi, this was the essence of religion – not just theology, but lived experience.

And I think there is something very powerful in that idea. Because so many Jews today are also looking for “lived religion.” They want to feel connected. They find meaning in a grandmother’s recipe, in visiting a Jewish museum, in placing an old menorah on a shelf. These are beautiful expressions of Jewishness, and they can open the heart in profound ways.

But here is where Judaism differs. Orsi teaches that lived religion is powerful because it allows people to be authentic to themselves – to create a religious life that feels personal, and real. That is true. But in Judaism, mitzvot are not lived religion in Orsi’s sense. They are not simply expressions we invent to feel connected. They are commanded from above. They begin with obligation, not with personal expression.

And yet – here is the brilliance of Torah. When we observe mitzvot with intentionality, when we do them not by rote but with presence of mind and heart, they actually accomplish the very goal that lived religion seeks. They create that sense of subjectivity, of authenticity, of deep personal meaning.

Think about it: mitzvah is not thin ritual. It is not nostalgia. It is the thick fabric of life itself – eating, resting, working, loving – woven into covenant. When I put on tefillin with kavanah, when I light Shabbat candles with gratitude, when I give tzedakah with compassion, I am not just performing an external command. I am living my Judaism in a way that is true to who I am.

So mitzvot begin as command, but they end as lived experience. They are given from above, but when done with heart, they become fully ours. They create both the objectivity of covenant and the subjectivity of authenticity. That is why they endure.

That is why the Torah gives us mitzvot. Mitzvot are the most authentic form of lived religion – because they take the very stuff of everyday life, eating and speaking, work and rest, family and community, and they turn it into covenantal connection with God. And mitzvot do something else, too: they bind us not only to God, but also to each other, across time and across place.

This is the paradox of Jewish life. On the one hand, our faith is “top-down.” Kabbalat ol malchut shamayim – accepting God’s kingship – comes first, even when it is hard, even when we don’t understand. But on the other hand, mitzvot turn that kingship into a “bottom-up” experience. They allow us to live God’s presence in the rhythms of our day.

That is why on Rosh Hashanah we blow the shofar. The sound is not nostalgic – it is covenantal. It doesn’t just remind us of our past; it calls us into the future. It is the lived cry of a people reaffirming God’s kingship, not in theory but in life.

And that’s the message for all of us this Rosh Hashanah. Judaism cannot survive as nostalgia alone, nor can it thrive as dry obligation. It must be both: the discipline of covenant and the passion of lived connection. When we live mitzvot with that awareness, then Shema Yisrael becomes not only an acceptance of God’s kingship, but a love song: V’ahavta et Hashem Elokecha – to love Hashem with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might.

May this year be one in which our Judaism is not only remembered, not only performed, but truly lived – a covenant that binds us, sustains us, and draws us ever closer to the Ribbono shel Olam.