 This goes on to yield an important sense in which Leibowitz’s circle is a virtuous one. Over time if we are good Leibowitzians who observe the mitzvoth, presumably including that of study of Torah itself, we will come to understand that this very practice in fact defines the nature of Jewish faith altogether. Thus Claim 1, initially understood as a historical definition, takes on epistemic meaning for the person who practices mitzvoth. One will understand that faith is indeed this commitment to practice and nothing else – for Leibowitz “the purpose of the mitzvoth is to educate man to recognize that knowing God and cleaving to him consist in the practice of these very precepts” (Judaism, 27). What one comes to realize is that the faith commitment cannot be cashed out other than in terms of that practice itself. One might thus read Claim 2 as saying that faith is founded on mitzvoth, in the sense both of being acquired and maintained through practice, and also by creating the understanding of faith spoken of in Claim 1, as over time one comes to understand that Jewish faith can indeed only be defined practically. Much as Aristotle believed that virtuous action precedes the true acquisition of the virtues – the latter involves that we know what we are doing – our commitment to the mitzvoth and knowledge of their definitive role within Jewish faith (Claim 1), or at least the conscious commitment that we make to this as reflective beings, is founded on or created by participation in those very halakhic practices (Claim  2).[12]  Just as for Aristotle it is only once we have acquired the virtues that those same acts becomes truly virtuous, in the same way halakhic actions only latterly become true acts of religious faith, in which one is conscious of the manner in which they constitute faith.