This week's reading, the final one in the book of Leviticus, begins with a condition—"If you walk in My statutes, observe and practice My commandments"—and follows with a pledge: "I shall grant you timely rains; the earth shall yield its produce, and every tree of the field will yield its fruit" (Leviticus 26:3-4). Shortly thereafter, we find the converse: "If you despise My statutes, loathe My laws, fail to practice My commandments, and violate My covenant, then I shall do the following to you: . . ." (15-16).

Obedience engenders reward; disobedience, punishment. As theology, it works fine. As anthropology, however, it is lacking in a significant detail: how does one walk in a statute?

The Hebrew word h-o-k (statute) derives from the verbal root h-k-k, to carve, which also yields the noun m'hokek (Genesis 49:10), literally an engraver but here in its meaning as legislator. Given that the codes of law of the ancient world were either engraved on stone tablets (like the Ten Commandments) or inscribed with a stylus on damp clay tablets (like the Code of Hammurabi), the connection seems obvious and logical. A hok, then, is an engraving—or, if you will, a groove.

A counterpart to hok, in this week's portion, is the word keri, which is also accompanied by the verb to walk: "if you walk keri" (21, 24). Of it, the same question can be posed: how does one walk keri? The noun derives from the verb k-r-h, to befall or occur; keri is indifference, apathy, impassiveness—or, if you will, a rut.

If the Jewish people are indifferent to the presence of God in their midst, regarding His providential concern as matter of mere happenstance, then, again implementing the principle of reciprocity, "I, too, shall behave indifferently with them" (23-24).

What distinguishes a groove from a rut? Objectively, nothing; but subjectively they are diametric opposites.

A good deal of religious life revolves around the performance of fixed obligations, fulfilled, it often seems, by means of rote repetition. Some religious writers try to counteract the casualness of routine by investing it with inspirational moral significance. Others, often of a kabbalistic bent, attempt to offset it by infusing (or, as critics would say, confusing) the mundane with the sublime. In hok and keri, however, we are offered another paradigm: a distinction based on personal perspective.

Two people can walk the same road without following the same path. Outwardly alike in all respects, they diverge in essence and purpose. One sees himself as belonging in a meaningful niche, a groove; the other sees himself as stuck in a rut. Both are defined not only by their actions but also by their perspectives.

Maimonides draws a similar distinction that illuminates the issue from the point of view of the community as a whole:

Those who are included in the category of Israel, we are obligated to love them and care for them and do everything God has commanded us concerning love and brotherhood. Even if a Jew committed a sin due to his lust and the overpowering nature of his evil inclination, he is punished according to the severity of his transgression, but still has a share [in the world to come].

A declaration of indifference, however, is another matter entirely. According to Maimonides, a Jew who rejects the providence of God, preferring to see the universe and everything in it as mere happenstance, has committed a sin so grievous as to constitute heresy.

To transgress God's law on account of nonfeasance is blameworthy, but it does not place the transgressor outside the pale of Jewish communal concern or redemption. To treat God's law and God's providence as mere chance or accident is to turn one's back on the very possibility of redemption and to be on a path, in a rut, that leads nowhere.

Moshe Sokolow, professor of Jewish education at the Azrieli Graduate School of Yeshiva University, is the author of Studies in the Weekly Parashah Based on the Lessons of Nehama Leibowitz (2008).