I struggle not with my emunah in Hashem, not with the belief that the Torah is truth, but with the actual laborious nature of Judaism. I personally feel bogged down by the minute mitzvos, the zman (time) constraints, the feeling like I’ll turn into a pumpkin if I am late for shobbas, G-d forbid. I will never get over the annoyance of a constricting shetiel. The list goes on. I understand we are instructed to be an Ohr Legoying and Kadoshim Tih’yu, but I could be that without worrying about so many of the little things. There are boundaries and then there is feeling suffocated. I try to have my emuanah and the seeing of daily nissim Hashem sends me be motivating factors, but it starting not to be.

This might also answer the author of the “Norman” post where the author and a commenter are puzzled at how a person could believe in the Truth of Torah Judaism yet choose no to do it.

yy – Thanks for the “before and after” reference, that makes a LOT of sense!

AND ‘pushing someone to the wall’ and ‘demanding’ is very different from an acknowledgement that the ‘right’ thing is the ALL.

There’s a vast difference between ‘not for me/I have a right to select which mitzvos *I* believe have value’ and ‘I will start with X and not Y because it speaks to me but I understand ALL to be something to strive for.

Nevertheless, all Jews will ultimately choose to do exactly that—all. If we can help to persuade them (this is not the same as demanding), that day will come sooner.

As the Aleinu prayer details, we look for the day that the other peoples of the world will sign on, too.

Of course, Amalek represents the negative response to that committment which one can find in the writings of all critics of Judaism from Tactitus to Hitchens. More fundamentally, wnen one examines the universalist counter response, it degenerated into such utopian nightmares as Nazism and Communism.In a real sense, Amalek represents the continued rejection of the unique combination of the universal and the particular that constitutes Torah, Halacha and Mesorah.

On some level, Amalek is the mirror image of the Jewish mission as well, which is in its own way, also irrational and counterintuitive in the sense of a particularist relationship with an activist God. In a more universal sense, the human condition defies logic and explanation. In fact, one could argue that Amalek is responding very negatively to a leap of faith that the human condition means anything at all, to the declared mission of Israel and the negation of that special mission, or any mission at all. The Israelite and Amalek positions represent the two extreme poles of human interpretation of why we are here.

And if that’s true, then the Torah as a whole shouldn’t be treated as a “Chinese Menu” (e.g. I’ll take two from column A, and 1 from column B, I don’t need anything from column C.)

If you push the vast majority of world Jewry to the wall and demand all or nothing, you are not going to be happy with the answers.

Perhaps instead, we should allow for varying degrees of literalism that we and others attach to our respective theologies, as well as the cost of not recognizing any mission beyond our own egos and desires. While this might sound too fluffy for some, and many Orthodox frequently downplay the importance of non-Jews, I would note that the Torah does record varying responses of other nations to these questions that all of mankind face — or at least, should be grappling with.

As we say in tfilla: Ha’seir Satan m’lifneinu u’m'achareinu / may the Satan be removed from before AND AFTER us. It’s referring to Mitzvos. Before = all that stuff that keeps us from doing ratzon H’. After = those doubts that plague us once we’ve begun.

One thing is sure. The Sages anticipated these conflicts.