The behavior of a man as a particular physical action or, obversely, as the renunciation of a particular action has a significance far beyond his subjective present existence-indeed, beyond his own life.
This is true not only for the many commandments that are concerned with relations between and among people, but also for those commandments that a man is to do by himself .
When one is engaged with objects in the physical world, one sets off a chain of relations involving all the things and people who have in one way or another taken part in this action through time as well as in space.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz