In reading that book, I am not certain that…
In reading that book, I am not certain that the book is actually the last ethical will. It seems to be more a book of commandments. And I realized that the word tzavaa, which means will, also means commandment. I will get to this book later. But it is a book about how to live life religiously.
— from True North (Ethics, Integrity, Truth, Values)
In the book
When I went looking for how to write down what I'd learned, one of the first books I picked up was the Tzava'at Harivash, the testament of the Baal Shem Tov — and I noticed that the Hebrew word for "will," tzavaa, also means "commandment," which felt exactly right. (In truth that particular book reads less like a farewell and more like a book of commandments for how to live — which only convinced me further that a life's ethics and a life's instructions are the same document.) I defined ethics for you, up above, as a kind of knowledge — how to deal rightly with people, with God, and with the world — and I want to be honest that I have spent far more of my life on the first and the third of those than I am qualified to spend on the second. — True North (Ethics, Integrity, Truth, Values)