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After some many Parshiot of story line with no mitzvot we are suddenly introduced to a parsha with many mitzvot. Rashi at the beginning of Bereishit asks the obvious question, why not start with Parshat Bo and the mitzvah of Rosh Chodesh. We can make the question even stronger, why do we need all of these mitzvot connected to Yitziat Mizraim at all.

The Sefer Hachiniuch writing to his son, explains why there are so many mitzvot related to yitziat mizrayim and  why so many mitzvot in Judaism in general?

“Know that a man is influenced by his actions and his intellectual and emotional life is conditioned by the things he does, good or bad…Even if he is thoroughly wicked and his mind is dominated by evil thoughts the whole day long, if he bestir himself and endeavor to be constantly occupied with the torah and its mitzvot, though not with G-dly intent, he will inevitably veer toward the G-d."

We don’t fully agree with this approach. How can it be that if one if truly thinking terrible thoughts that Mitzvot will change him for good? Perhaps if his evil thoughts were influenced by society, the mitzvot will influence him to not let society dominate him.

The Rambam explains that the multitude of mitzvot will influence his behavior as he does so many over and over again. If we fill our lives with mitzvot in will cause us to do more mitzvot. Nechama Leibowitz explains that if we just told the story about the exodus without doing actions related to it then the story would have no meaning.

This year we have learned that actions speak louder than words and that if we want to accomplish anything we have to work to do it and not just discuss whether we are in the mood to do it.