Ve'ethchanan: perspectives

 וְזֹ֣את הַמִּצְוָ֗ה הַֽחֻקִּים֙ וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר צִוָּ֛ה יְ

Now this is the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that you might do them in the land into which you go to possess it:

The Koren Jerusalem Bible

Every year, I am struck by the singularity of the word mitzvah, commandment, juxtaposed against the pleural, nearly synonymous statutes and judgements. I wonder: what is the Mitzvah. 

JPS avoids the problem by translating the sentence: 

And this is the Instruction—the laws and the rules—that your G

The Contemporary Torah, JPS, 2006. 

The Jewish Publication Society makes mitzvah into a collective singular noun, the Instruction,  that encompasses the subcategories of laws and rules. This is a credible interpretation, consistent with the relative absence of comment by the Medievals. 

I remain troubled. I want to understand the singular. Which mitzvah is the special one?

 The parsha ( chapter) motivates this idea. Immediately prior, we read the ten commandments. It is only in this parsha that the ten commandments are identified as the contents of the tablets delivered from Gd via Moses: (4;13)

וַיַּגֵּ֨ד לָכֶ֜ם אֶת־בְּרִית֗וֹ אֲשֶׁ֨ר צִוָּ֤ה אֶתְכֶם֙ לַעֲשׂ֔וֹת עֲשֶׂ֖רֶת הַדְּבָרִ֑ים וַֽיִּכְתְּבֵ֔ם עַל־שְׁנֵ֖י לֻח֥וֹת אֲבָנִֽים׃ 

[God] declared to you the covenant that you were commanded to observe, the Ten Commandments, inscribing them on two tablets of stone.

Absent this sentence, the idea  of the ten commandments would be an oral tradition, subject to question and possible alterations. Moses testifies to the special significance of these ten ( an import that is minimized by Orthodox Judaism). 

The ten commandments are singled out. Saadia Gaon saw all 613  commandments suggested within the ten. That does not devalue the ten. The first two: "I am ..." and the prohibition of other gods were communicated directly to the people. These may be THE Mitzvah. 

The prohibition of idolatry is strongly emphasis in the narrative of the chapter. Mythologizing the Sinai experience is carefully and repeatedly forbidden. 

Science is a great challenge. Is faith in science a violation of  THE Mitzvah: to have have faith in nothing but Gd? This question can be spectral. As science has become more instrumental, less intuitive, stranger ( quantum mechanics, relativity), it has increasingly become an article of faith. Even for those who study science and come to "understand" it,  the mindset that accepts the counterintuitive and the non-traditional is antithetical to faith in Gd, especially an unpredictable and transcendent  Gd [demonstrated by the opening passage: Gd rejects the prayer of Moses]. For those uninitiated or uninterested in the details, science truly is a competing Faith, an alternative source of claims with an obscure foundation. 

The opening scene in Liu  Cixin's Three Body Problem, a science fiction trilogy dealing with Earth's response to the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligent society, is very telling and probably factual. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) scientists were tortured and occasionally killed for their belief in the Big Bang theory: the idea that the universe had a point and time of origin. This belief violated Communist ( aka Scientific Socialism) doctrine that the universe is eternal, and smacked of creationism.  As the novel progresses, acceptance of the Big Bang is assumed. Beliefs change. Science changes. 

The  conflict between science and Torah forces the emergence of parallel consciousnesses; both  involving an uncomfortable departure from the intuitive world. Is it useful to have alternative platforms... or is it forbidden.

The genocidal instructions for conquest of the Promised Land that end the parsha also invoke the need for multiple perspectives. I, an American inculcated with a pseudo tolerant, universalist perspective want to reject this edict. I am not alone. Since the time of accurate historical recording, these instructions have been cancelled. "We cannot identify the nations that are to be annihilated."  Even Joshua accepted the partial  integration of Gibonites, concealed Canaanites, into the nation of Israel; he protected them and did not destroy them. But some element of permission for  hegemony in the Promised Land remains in the tradition. I cannot deny it. The approach to that perspective is treacherous for me.