Why Are We “Obsessed” with Details? We all have dreams. We all have aspirations. People dream about investing in their relationships, improving their health, expanding their knowledge, exploring ideas, and touring the world. The problem, of course, is that dreams and aspirations are not enough. Growth requires specific, concrete action. In Jewish life and Jewish law, there is a strong emphasis on specifics. Almost every one of the six hundred and thirteen commandments comes along with dozens, if not hundreds, of specifications which instruct on the precise time and manner in which the commandment is to be performed. For many, the “obsession” with detail is hard to relate to. True, the big ideas are important, true, the underlying values are inspiring, but why is the emphasis on detail so critical? To understand the focus on detail, we need to explore and define the core purpose and objective of Judaism. Judaism is not a religion in the conventional sense. Most spiritual disciplines hope to teach a person how to become spiritual, how to escape the lure of material life and connect to the eternal by transcending the physical. The Purpose of Judaism is the opposite: it is to draw the transcendent, infinite presence of G-d, into a specific time and place in this physical world. This theme is expressed in the beginning of the fourth book of the Torah, where the Torah not only introduces the commandment to take a census, but also describes the precise time of the commandment: The Lord spoke to Moses in the Sinai Desert, in the Tent of Meeting on the first day of the second month, in the second year after the exodus from the land of Egypt, saying. The Chassidic master, the Sfas Emes, explains why these time references matter so much: “And therefore time is written in the Torah in terms of month and year. Although the Torah is above time, nevertheless, this is the primary service of the Children of Israel: to draw the light of the Torah and holiness into time and nature.”
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