Conceptual Analysis – Lesson 4

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This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

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The purpose of conceptual analysis and opening examples
The concept of commandment as a foundational concept and the need to analyze it
Eighth root: warning, command, and negation of obligation
Negation that is not a command, and the example of “she shall not go out as the slaves go out”
Conceptual analysis as genus and species: decree versus factual narration, and then positive commandment versus prohibition
Implications for understanding Torah and the distinction between a moral prohibition and a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition
Sixth root: a commandment that contains both a positive commandment and a prohibition, and the difficulty of duplication
Two possible definitions and the critique of a linguistic criterion
A proposed definition: a positive commandment as a positive state and a prohibition as a negative state
Summary: the normative as attribution of values and the implications of conceptual analysis

Summary

General overview

The speaker presents the benefit of conceptual analysis as a stage that precedes study of the sources, because it sometimes makes questions unnecessary and sometimes directs us what to look for and how to understand the texts. He chooses the concept of commandment as an especially foundational example, and shows how Maimonides, in the roots of Sefer HaMitzvot, carries out a linguistic-conceptual analysis that distinguishes between command and warning on the one hand, and negation of obligation on the other, thereby explaining what should be counted in the enumeration of the commandments and what should not. Later he proposes a principled distinction between normative statements and factual statements, and argues that positive commandments point to a positive state while prohibitions point to a negative state, even when in terms of actual performance they may sometimes involve the same abstention or the same action.

The purpose of conceptual analysis and opening examples

The speaker defines his goal as showing the meaning and usefulness of conceptual analysis through examples such as leniency, change, patience, pluralism, and authority. He argues that analyzing the concepts involved in a discussion can make questions unnecessary or do part of the work even before opening the sources, because it gives direction for what to look for in the sources and how to understand them. He presents the move from those examples to a further discussion of the concept of commandment, and then to a theoretical-philosophical discussion of conceptual analysis itself.

The concept of commandment as a foundational concept and the need to analyze it

The speaker argues that the more foundational a concept is in Jewish law, the more people tend to ignore the need to analyze it, from out of a sense that it is self-evident, but precisely with foundational concepts it is worthwhile to clarify what they include and what they mean. He presents the advantage of the example of commandment in that its initial analysis appears explicitly in Maimonides. He describes Maimonides as someone with unusual methodological awareness, with introductions and works that deal with rules of method, and especially the roots of Sefer HaMitzvot, which define rules for counting the commandments and reaching the number 613.

Eighth root: warning, command, and negation of obligation

The speaker reads from the eighth root: “The eighth root is that it is not fitting to count negation of obligation together with warning,” and presents Maimonides’ determination that warning is one of the two parts of command, because one is commanded either to do something or not to do it. He emphasizes that Sefer HaMitzvot and the roots were written in Arabic, and that what is cited is a translation, and he brings Maimonides’ claim that in Arabic there is no single term that includes both positive commandments and prohibitions together, and therefore they had to call both by the name “command.” He explains the Aristotelian framework of genus and species in definition, and applies it to the division of the commandments into positive commandment and prohibition, and to the question of the inclusive genus.

The speaker gives examples of the relation between language and thought through Benjamin Whorf and a study of a tribe in Brazil with a number system of “one, two, and many,” and concludes that there is a two-way relationship between conceptual-linguistic lack and the ability to think certain distinctions. He uses this to illustrate that a person who speaks a language without a word that groups together positive commandments and prohibitions may not see that they are two species of one genus, even though both are familiar to him in practice, and he emphasizes that he is using Arabic and Islam only as an illustration.

The speaker quotes Maimonides, who determines that positive commandments and prohibitions are “both full command,” but points out that the term commandment belongs mainly to the world of positive commandments, whereas prohibitions are called warnings, and therefore the use of “negative commandments” is an extended usage. He brings Maimonides’ claim that in Hebrew the inclusive term is “decree,” and that the Sages called every commandment a “royal decree,” and concludes that the term decree serves as a normative heading uniting positive commandment and prohibition.

Negation that is not a command, and the example of “she shall not go out as the slaves go out”

The speaker presents Maimonides’ continuation, which distinguishes between warning and negation of obligation, and illustrates negation with sentences such as “so-and-so did not eat last night” and “Reuven is not Shimon’s father,” in which there is “not even a scent of command.” He quotes Maimonides on the distinction in Arabic between a word of factual negation and a word of warning, whereas in Hebrew the same word “not” serves both for factual negation and for warning, alongside the use of “there is not” and its derivatives. He brings from Maimonides biblical examples of negation with the word “not,” such as “And there arose not a prophet again in Israel like Moses” and “God is not a man, that He should lie,” and concludes that warning belongs to the future and to command, whereas negation belongs to narration and description.

The speaker quotes Maimonides’ claim that it is not fitting to count prohibitions that are merely negation among the prohibitions, and explains that the novelty becomes sharper when the verse is a halakhic / of Jewish law verse written in the language of “not” but is not a warning. He brings Maimonides’ criticism of the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, who counted “she shall not go out as the slaves go out” among the commandments, and presents Maimonides’ interpretation that the verse denies to a Hebrew maidservant the law of a Canaanite slave’s release through tooth and eye, that is, “she is not subject to the rule that she goes free,” and therefore this is a negation of a law, not a prohibition. He emphasizes that the point is subtle, because the verse establishes Jewish law but does not command “do not do,” rather it determines that a certain obligation has no legal effect, and therefore it should not be counted as a prohibition.

Conceptual analysis as genus and species: decree versus factual narration, and then positive commandment versus prohibition

The speaker explains that Maimonides sets up a primary distinction between “decree” and “factual narration” as two genera, where under decree there are two species: positive commandment and prohibition. He defines factual narration as a factual claim tested against reality, and decree as a normative instruction that is not a factual claim, and connects this to David Hume’s is-ought gap. He presents this analysis as a model for conceptual analysis that begins by distinguishing the concept from what lies outside it, and continues by distinguishing subtypes within it, and he parallels this to earlier examples such as change and authority, where distinctions arise between kinds of change and between formal and substantive authority.

Implications for understanding Torah and the distinction between a moral prohibition and a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition

The speaker argues that many people do not understand the distinction between norm and fact, and therefore ask questions whose basis is mistaken, such as “why does it need to say ‘you shall not murder’?” He states that the Torah does not come to tell us that something is bad, but to create a halakhic / of Jewish law obligation or prohibition by force of command, and therefore there is a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition in addition to a moral prohibition. He illustrates that the gap between morality and Jewish law can lead to a situation in which a person is a “complete murderer” morally but “exempt” in halakhic / of Jewish law terms, and presents this as part of the distinction between decree and factual narration.

The speaker cites “Greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does,” and attributes to Tosafot-Rosh and Ritva an explanation according to which one who is commanded and does gains both the benefit of the act and the response to the command. He illustrates this with a non-Jew giving charity to a poor Jew, where the positive result exists but “commandment” does not exist without command, and parallels this to an example from traffic law in order to distinguish between rational benefit and legal obligation. He concludes that when the Torah says “you shall not steal,” it is not conveying information but commanding, and the prohibition is a warning “not,” not a negation of obligation.

Sixth root: a commandment that contains both a positive commandment and a prohibition, and the difficulty of duplication

The speaker presents the sixth root: “A commandment that contains both a positive commandment and a prohibition—the positive commandment within it should be counted among the positive commandments, and the prohibition within it among the prohibitions,” and sets it against Maimonides’ ninth root, according to which duplications are counted only once. He brings the examples of the Sabbath, a Jewish holiday, and the Sabbatical year, where doing labor is a prohibition and resting is a positive commandment, and the fast of Yom Kippur as a positive commandment while eating on it is a prohibition. He explains that Maimonides’ novelty is that a combination of positive commandment and prohibition in the same content is counted twice, and that in addition Maimonides counts the positive commandment among the positive commandments and the prohibition among the prohibitions even though the practical demand may be the same abstention from labor.

The speaker brings Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla’s question on Maimonides: if the content is identical, why is this not duplication as in the ninth root, and what is gained by the fact that one formulation is positive and the other negative? He sharpens that the difficulty is even deeper, because if the positive commandment requires non-action, why is it not itself considered a prohibition, and in this he presents the need for a conceptual definition of positive commandment and prohibition that does not depend only on the mode of performance.

Two possible definitions and the critique of a linguistic criterion

The speaker cites an article by Aharon Shemesh of blessed memory in Tarbiz that proposes two ways to distinguish between positive commandment and prohibition: a performative distinction between action and omission, and a linguistic distinction according to the Torah’s wording. He describes Shemesh’s claim that in the earlier layers of the Talmud the distinction was performative, and in later layers it became linguistic, detached from performance. The speaker accepts the factual description but argues that a merely linguistic explanation is insufficient, because the wording reflects a real difference that must be defined, and he asks what, in principle, defines a positive commandment if both positive commandment and prohibition can direct the same abstention.

A proposed definition: a positive commandment as a positive state and a prohibition as a negative state

The speaker proposes that the difference between positive commandments and prohibitions is not a performative difference but a difference in evaluative pointing: positive commandments point to a positive state, and prohibitions point to a negative state. He brings examples of prohibitions that require action, such as “do not place blood in your house,” which obligates making a parapet, and “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” which obligates rescue, to show that the criterion is not action versus omission. He explains that on the Sabbath, “you shall do no labor” points to doing labor as a negative state and therefore it is a prohibition, while “you shall rest” points to rest as a positive state and therefore it is a positive commandment, even though performatively this is passive.

The speaker applies this to the parapet: “do not place blood in your house” defines a house without a parapet as a negative state, and “you shall make a parapet for your roof” defines a house with a parapet as a positive state, and he distinguishes between not being in a positive state and being in a negative state. He argues that a neutral state is a state that is neither positive nor negative, and from here presents a framework for understanding obligatory commandments as opposed to merely existential commandments, saying briefly that obligatory commandments are those in which there is a demand to be in the positive state and not remain in the zero state.

Summary: the normative as attribution of values and the implications of conceptual analysis

The speaker concludes that factual narration is a neutral description of facts without value, whereas decrees are normative statements that attach values to situations. He defines positive commandments and prohibitions as two species within the normative genus, where a positive commandment attaches positive value and a prohibition attaches negative value. He argues that this conceptual analysis has many implications, and it also generates questions that people who do not analyze concepts do not even notice, and he notes that he expanded on this in his article on the sixth root in the book “Shelach Shorshav” and on his website.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’re in the middle of a discussion about conceptual analysis, and my goal is to show a bit of the meaning of conceptual analysis and the benefit it has. I brought—and opened with—a few examples that demonstrated how you do it and what you gain from it. So I talked about what a leniency is, I talked about what change is, I talked about patience and pluralism, and of course I opened with an analysis of the concept of authority. And in all of those examples, it seems to me that I showed that when you analyze the concepts involved in the discussion, sometimes the question becomes unnecessary, and sometimes at least part of the work is done before we even opened the sources. It gives us guidance about what to look for in the sources, how to understand them, so it really does seem to me that those examples show that it is definitely worthwhile to do this analysis before entering the discussion or the topic, or in general. And maybe today I want to go into one more example, and afterward I’ll move to a discussion of conceptual analysis itself—that is, the theoretical discussion, let’s call it, the philosophical one. So maybe one more example where I want to deal with the concept of commandment. This is one of the most fundamental concepts, it seems to me, in Jewish law, if not the most fundamental of them, and I think that with regard to it too, very often—by the way, the more fundamental a concept is, the more people tend to ignore the need to analyze it, because it’s a foundational concept, so it seems obvious, it seems self-understood, so why do we need to think about its meaning and precise definition? But even with foundational concepts, and maybe sometimes precisely with foundational concepts, it’s definitely worth looking and trying to analyze exactly what this concept includes, what it means. So let’s talk a bit about the concept of commandment, and one of the advantages of this example is that the initial analysis of this concept appears explicitly in Maimonides. Meaning, a lot of times we use statements of Maimonides and ask what conception stands behind them. In other words, maybe we can extract from one statement or another of Maimonides how he understood a concept or a principle or something he is talking about. In this case, Maimonides—and I think this is no accident, because Maimonides in general was a person who was very, very aware of his methodological assumptions, very reflective, with a kind of self-awareness of how I work, because he was always asking himself by what rules, how exactly, I work—which many, the overwhelming majority of commentators, medieval authorities (Rishonim), later authorities (Acharonim), halakhic decisors, do not ask. Therefore Maimonides also has books of methodology, he has introductions, right, to the Commentary on the Mishnah and to the Eight Chapters and to the Mishneh Torah and Sefer HaMitzvot and so on. And he also has the roots of Sefer HaMitzvot and various compositions like that whose whole subject is methodology. The roots are rules for counting commandments, exactly how we classify the commandments, how we get to 613. In the eighth root—there are fourteen of these—in the eighth root Maimonides talks about what he calls “negation of obligation.” And he says as follows—I shared the text, so I’ll read it inside: “The eighth root is that it is not fitting to count negation of obligation together with warning.” Warning is a prohibition, of course. “Know that warning is one of the two parts of command.” That is, warning is one of two types that come under the heading of command, “and this is because you command the commanded person either to do one thing or not to do it”—those are the two types, positive commandments and prohibitions. “As when you command him to eat and say to him, ‘Eat,’ or command him to distance himself from eating and say to him, ‘Do not eat.’” So that’s positive commandment and prohibition. He says this, and we need to remember that this composition, both Sefer HaMitzvot and the roots, was written in Arabic. So what we are now reading is a translation of it into Hebrew. But you always have to keep in mind that we’re really dealing here with a text written in Arabic. “And in the Arabic language there is no noun that includes both of these matters together.” That is, in Arabic there is no name or word, no concept, that includes positive commandments and prohibitions, something that would serve as a heading over these two types. “And the scholars of logic have already mentioned this and said, this is their language.” And now he quotes some Arab linguist or something like that. “However command and warning”—this is the quote—“however command and warning have no name in the Arabic language that gathers them together.” Right, that this name gathers the two of them under one heading. “And we were forced to call both of them by the name of one of them, namely command.” What does that mean? So he says this: in Arabic there is no word under which—or a word that we generally, when we classify, when we deal with taxonomy of plants, of animals, and so on—the classification is divided into a primary classification, and after the primary classification each part of the primary classification is divided into a secondary classification. Genus and species, right. The genera are the primary classifications and the species are the classification inside each genus. Right, when we define something, Aristotle wrote that the way to define a certain thing is to determine the genus and the species. Meaning, when I want to determine what a human being is, I say it’s a speaking animal. Meaning, it’s an animal—that’s the general genus—and one of the species within that genus is the speaking one, which is the human being. Meaning, to define something you need to say what genus it belongs to and what distinguishes its species from the other species under that genus. That’s how you define things. So Maimonides says: in this classification, let’s try to see what the genus is that includes under it—we have many commandments. The commandments are divided into two species, right? The species are positive commandments and prohibitions. What is the genus that stands above and includes these two species? What we would call commandment in our conception, okay? So Maimonides says—or those whom he is quoting here—that in Arabic there is no word for that, there is no such genus. Now this is just a very interesting point, because I think once I talked here about Maimonides on this root, and I think I then brought the example—there’s a linguist who was actually an amateur, he didn’t have formal education in the field, Benjamin Whorf. He wrote various books on linguistic research and so on. So he was in anthropology-linguistics, that is, theoretical linguistics—well, not exactly theoretical; he described various linguistic phenomena in different places. Now he described there all kinds of phenomena that depend on language; he tried to show that there are certain things we won’t succeed in thinking because we don’t have tools in language that help us do it. I brought there an example, actually not from Whorf but from an article I once read in Nature, where he brings someone who studied a tribe in Brazil, in the forests of Brazil, some tribe, the Pirahã, something like that. And there are actually a few such tribes in the world—tribes whose number system includes only one, two, and many. In English they call it a “one, two, many system.” Meaning, this is a numerical system with three concepts for numbers: one, two, and many. Meaning, everything above two is many, okay? Now it turns out there in the study they showed that the people in that tribe have a very hard time thinking quantitatively about quantities above three. For example, when you ask one of them—you place before one of them a group of five batteries opposite a group of four batteries and ask where there are more—he won’t know how to answer. Meaning, if you put a hundred opposite five, he’ll know what to answer because he understands that it’s more. But in finer questions—five versus four—that’s more or less both “many,” the lower end, right, it’s the low part of the many range, as opposed to a hundred, say, which belongs to a higher range, so it’s easy for him to distinguish from five. But five versus four—after all, that’s many and that’s many, both in the low range of many—so he doesn’t know how to answer where there is more. Now it’s not that these people are stupid. After they taught them the numbers and everything, they knew how to perform these tasks exactly like any of us. They had a linguistic deficit. Their language didn’t have terms for three, four, five, and so on, and therefore there were many things they couldn’t think about, they couldn’t think them or think about them. It’s a very interesting question, and there I just had a disagreement with the person who wrote the article—not personally, but I once opened some thread about it and we argued around this issue. Because he attributed the causal direction from language to thought, and I argued that to the same extent there is also a relation in the opposite direction. Meaning, since I don’t know how to think the numbers three, four, five, six, I also don’t coin terms for them. And terminology is really only a result of conceptualization. When you understand a concept, you assign a word to it, right, you assign a term. Because a term is a linguistic thing; a concept is the thing the term expresses, points to. So therefore the relation is more complex. It’s not that language is the basis and we use it to think. There’s also the opposite side: thought is the basis and language describes the concepts we have conceptualized for ourselves and that we can think about. So the influence goes both ways. But in any case, one thing is clear: there definitely are cognitive limitations as a result of lack of concepts, as a result of the structure of a language. Right, the example everyone always gives—the already worn-out example—is the number of terms for snow in the Eskimo language. Right, that they have, I don’t know what, thirty words to describe snow, each one a slightly different kind of snow. And when we look at it, we ask whether there is snow or there isn’t snow, whether it’s snowing or not snowing—the answer is yes or no. We have one word. Now an Eskimo will show us these two kinds of snow and ask us what the difference between them is, and we won’t know how to answer him. It’s snow—what difference does it make? This or that—we don’t see any difference between them. But he has two different words that describe these two types of snow. So he knows how to distinguish between them, think about them, talk about each one separately; he notices differences that we won’t notice. And therefore linguistic limitations definitely limit our thinking. Meaning, that’s completely clear. Now if I go back to Maimonides here, think about a person who speaks Arabic and in his language there is no shared word for positive commandments and prohibitions. It could be that he won’t understand at all that they belong to a common genus. There are positive commandments and there are birds. It’s like asking yourself what the common genus is for positive commandments and birds. There isn’t one, right? These are not two species under the same genus; they have nothing in common. In order to say that two things belong to the same genus, I need to notice that they have something in common, and also that they have parameters that distinguish between them. But they do have something in common, and that common thing is the genus. The distinguishing parameters are what define the species, okay? So now when I ask such an Arabic speaker what is similar between positive commandments and prohibitions, it could be that he won’t understand what I want from him. What’s the connection between them? This is positive commandments and this is prohibitions. What does one have to do with the other?

[Speaker B] Isn’t it obligation? Rabbi, isn’t it that both of them are obligation? Even in Arabic there isn’t a word for obligation?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know Arabic; I’m living off Maimonides here.

[Speaker B] No, I mean, obligation also—it’s a category that can express both patterns, both positive commandment and prohibition, it’s obligation. To do or not to do.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is obligation a word that—what does that have to do with obligation?

[Speaker B] When you obligate someone, someone has an obligation, right? Now we call it a commandment, but it’s also an obligation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You call both an obligation—to do or not to do? So apparently that word doesn’t exist either. Rather, you’re already trying to conceptualize for yourself the similarity between them, so maybe you can connect it to some word. But think about a world in which it doesn’t even occur to a person that there’s any connection between these two things—two completely different things. Think, say, of a world where there are only positive commandments, okay? There are no prohibitions at all. Then it won’t occur to the person that there is even such a thing as prohibitions. There is no such thing. There are only positive commandments, or the reverse. Or a person who is subject to two law books: the religious law book contains positive commandments and the legal law book contains prohibitions. Okay? Or bans. Or prohibitions, yes. Would he think there’s a relation between them? That they’re the same genus? He grew up with the idea that of course not: positive commandments belong over there, to that; prohibitions are something else entirely, there’s no common word for them, they’re unrelated, he won’t see any similarity or any genus shared by these two.

[Speaker B] But again, right, in Islam—the Islam Maimonides is talking about in Islam—there is both this and that, and it comes from one source, as it were.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that there is both this and that doesn’t matter. The question is whether they understand that these two things are two species of the same genus. It’s not that they don’t understand what positive commandments are and they don’t understand what prohibitions are—they understand both. The only question is whether they notice that there’s something shared here. Now again, the discussion about Islam and Arabic doesn’t interest me; I don’t understand it, and I also can’t conduct it. I’m using it only as an illustration. So let’s assume for the sake of discussion that that’s the situation there. It doesn’t matter to me right now what actually happens there. So he says, “Behold, it has already been clarified to you,” I continue reading, “that warning is of the matter of command.” Where has that been clarified? It hasn’t been clarified. Maimonides, on the contrary, described there that in Arabic there is no common word for it, and we won’t really be able to see that they have something shared—that warning is of the matter of command. It’s not of the matter of command, they’re two different things. Maimonides assumes that his reader is already the Jewish reader, maybe even a Hebrew speaker if you like, who knows. Obviously it’s the same thing. It’s just that in Arabic there is no word connecting the two. And then he says, “And the well-known word in the Arabic language assigned to warning is the word ‘la.’” “La” means “not.” Really we should read it as “not,” because it’s a Hebrew translation. But that was probably what was in the original; I don’t know. So that’s the word assigned to warning. “And this very matter undoubtedly exists in every language.” Meaning, that you can command the commanded person to do something or not to do it. Clearly, in every language you can command a person with positive commands, and you can also command negative commands or prohibitions. That obviously exists. The question is whether we understand that these two things are two species of the same genus. “And if so, it is clear that positive commandments and prohibitions are both full command—things we were commanded to do and things we were warned not to do.” Now here you see: “both full command”—again, this is a Hebrew translation, I don’t know what was in the original Arabic, because in Arabic there is no word for this. And then he says: these are things we were commanded to do, and things we were warned not to do. Notice: “commanded us” belongs to the world of positive commandments. Prohibitions are warnings, they are not prohibitions in the sense of commandments; they are warnings. Commandment is positive commandment. The prohibitions are warnings. Therefore the use of the term commandment to describe positive commandments and prohibitions is an extended usage. Commandment, in principle, means positive commandment. Prohibitions are warnings. They are not commandments. “And the name of that by which we are commanded to do is positive commandments, and the name of that from which we are warned is prohibitions. And the name that includes them both together in the Hebrew language”—in Hebrew there is a common word unlike Arabic—“is decree. And thus the Sages called every commandment, whether positive or negative, the decree of the King.” Okay? So Maimonides claims that the term commandment is not the right Hebrew term to describe positive commandments and prohibitions. It’s an extended usage. Maybe it’s even a translation from Arabic. In Hebrew usage, the shared name is decree. Because the term commandment is only for positive commandments. Prohibitions are called warnings by the Sages. I’m not even sure the concept of prohibitions exists in the Sages. I don’t remember at the moment, but I’m not at all sure it exists, the term prohibitions; it could be a later term entirely. Let’s say: 613 commandments were commanded to Moses at Sinai. Actually that’s a Talmudic passage in Makkot. And within those 613 there are positive commandments and prohibitions. So indirectly, yes, all of this whole body is called commandments, right? Rabbi Simlai says that there at the end of tractate Makkot. But as a direct reference to prohibitions, to call them commandments—I’m not sure there’s even an example of that in the Sages. They are called warnings or prohibitions. Positive commandments and prohibitions, or warnings and commands. But the term commandments is not used in the context of prohibitions, and therefore when Maimonides looks for the shared term, he says the shared term is decree. Royal decrees: the king decrees something upon us; he can decree that we do something, he can decree that we not do something. That’s roughly what was suggested before, right, obligation—what you suggested before. That’s basically what Maimonides probably means here when he says decree. But in Arabic, he says, there is no expression, and therefore in Arabic apparently the usage is the usage “commandment.” And that is an extended usage for positive commandments and prohibitions—sorry, for prohibitions; for positive commandments it’s the proper usage. With prohibitions it’s an extended usage, since in Arabic there is no suitable word, so they use the term prohibitions as commandments. Which shows us that Arabic speakers or Muslims also understand there is a connection between positive commandments and prohibitions. Because the fact is that the extended usage they use is the word commandment. Meaning, they do understand that there is a relation between positive commandments and prohibitions. But in principle they could also be in a situation where they don’t see any connection at all because they really don’t have a shared word. Here it’s clear that the conceptualization came first; the terminology came after the conceptualization. Once they suddenly understood that positive commandments and prohibitions are really two species of the same genus, they said, okay, so let’s use the word commandment also with regard to prohibitions. And maybe from there it also entered Hebrew. So that in Hebrew too, there are prohibitions as commandments—again, this is an extended usage. You’d have to check in the Sages; I haven’t checked, but for some reason it seems to me that this usage won’t be there in the Sages. And it could be that this terminology came from Arabic entirely; it’s all speculation, I haven’t checked, I’m just saying in principle. And therefore Maimonides basically says that on the one hand they understand that they have something in common, but they don’t have a word for it. In Hebrew there is a word for it: decree. And therefore the Sages do not use the term prohibitions as commandments but commandments and warnings. We today, after the fact already—maybe under Arabic influence, maybe not, I don’t know—use the term commandment already for both of these things. Maimonides, after all, writes positive commandments and prohibitions in his Sefer HaMitzvot, but Maimonides is of course influenced by Arabic. So that shouldn’t surprise us. Now Maimonides continues—why does he make this whole introduction? Because he wants to explain why negation of obligation is not something counted in the enumeration of the commandments. Because this is really strict conceptual analysis—it really could have been a passage from an article in analytic philosophy, this root of Maimonides. It’s really phrased almost like an article in analytic philosophy, a modern article in analytic philosophy. “However negation of obligation is another matter, and it is that you negate a predicate of a subject, and there is in it nothing whatsoever of the matter of command. As when you say: so-and-so did not eat last night, and so-and-so did not drink the wine, and Reuven is not Shimon’s father, and the like. Behold, all this is negation of obligation; there is not even a scent of command in it.” Okay? We know that with prohibitions the Sages tell us: “beware,” “lest,” and “do not.” You need terminology in the Torah that hints to us that this is a prohibition—a prohibition commandment—it has to be either “beware,” “lest,” or “do not.” And of course also “not”; that wasn’t mentioned because it’s obvious. So there are really four expressions that indicate that we are dealing with a prohibition. But the word “not” also serves us in contexts that have nothing to do with commandments—there is not even a scent of command in them, as Maimonides says. For example: so-and-so did not drink the wine, or so-and-so did not eat last night. This is not a “not” that forbids something; it’s a “not” that describes a negative fact, a negative state of affairs. There is not even a scent of command in it. Meaning, it’s not a prohibition because it is something negative, it is “not,” but it is not a commandment of “do not.” It doesn’t have the command, okay? Therefore this is negation that is not related to the world of commands. “And the word with which they usually negate in Arabic is the word ‘ma.’” Okay? In Arabic, for negation of obligation they use a different word than they do for prohibitory negation. Prohibitory negation is “la”; negation of obligation is “ma.” That’s what he says—again, for me this is Chinese, I don’t know it. That’s what he says. “And they also negate with the word ‘la’ and with the word ‘laysa’” and so on; they have all kinds of words. “However the Hebrews mostly negate with the word ‘lo’ itself, by which they also warn.” To negate and to warn they use the same word, okay, in Hebrew. “And they also negate with ‘ein’”—the word “there is not,” not only “not”—as he said above: Reuven is not Shimon’s father. “And with what is joined to it from the pronouns, such as he is not, they are not, you are not, and the like. But negation in Hebrew with the word ‘not,’ as in: ‘And there arose not a prophet again in Israel like Moses’; ‘God is not a man, that He should lie’; ‘Affliction shall not rise up the second time’; ‘No man stood’; ‘and did not rise’; ‘and there did not stir from him’—and many such examples. And negation with ‘there is not,’ as in: ‘and there was no man’; ‘and the dead know nothing’; and many others. And behold, the difference between warning and negation has now been clarified to you.” So we have already understood there is a difference between warning and negation. “And that is that warning belongs to the matter of command, and exists only in the form of command alike. I mean to say, just as the act of commanding is always future, so too warning.” And it is impossible in language for command to be in the past. And indeed command very much resembles future tense expressions. Do something, or you shall do something—it’s as if it is in the future, but really “do” does not speak about the future; “do” speaks about command. It commands you. It commands you, but generally a command expects you to go and do something, therefore it turns to the future, command does. I don’t command you about the past, except for the king in The Little Prince, where he also commands the stars to do what they do anyway. But ordinary command is a command that expects you to go and do something, therefore it turns to the future. And then he continues and says: “And there is no way to insert command into narration.” Right, he says command and narration are two things. Negation—what is called negation of obligation—is narration, not command. Therefore it does not belong to the world of commands, “for narration requires subject and predicate, whereas command is a complete utterance,” as explained in the books composed for this. What does he mean? If I say to you, “Go.” When I say “Go,” that is a complete sentence. I am commanding you, but that is a complete sentence—the term “Go,” period. You don’t need a subject, you don’t need a predicate, you don’t need anything. When you describe something, when you describe facts, when you tell something, the sentence has to have subject, predicate, and so on. So there is also a difference between command and narration in their linguistic or grammatical appearance. “And all this is self-evident to one who exerts himself. And since this is so, it is not fitting in any way to count prohibitions that are negation among the prohibitions.” “Prohibitions” meaning the word “not” when it comes to negate, not to warn. Obviously such things should not be counted among the prohibitions, because it is a negating “not” and not a warning “not.” “And this is a demonstrated matter; it requires no witness”—it is clear, a simple matter—“apart from what we have mentioned concerning the understanding of the meanings of words, so that one distinguish between warning and negation.” Anyone who understands a little grammar, a little language, knows that these are two different functions of the word “not.” And this has already escaped others. Up to this point it sounds trivial, right? What is there to argue about? What, would someone count “Reuven did not eat breakfast” as a prohibition? Or “And there arose not a prophet in Israel like Moses” as a prohibition? No. That “not” negates; it does not warn, and therefore there is no reason to include it as a prohibition, to count it as a prohibition. So what is Maimonides arguing about here? What is he coming to innovate? So he says this: “And this has escaped others, to the point that they counted ‘She shall not go out as the slaves go out.’” There is a verse: “She shall not go out as the slaves go out.” The Baal Halakhot Gedolot counted this in his enumeration of the commandments. “She shall not go out as the slaves go out” means that a Hebrew maidservant who was injured in tooth or eye does not go free, unlike a Canaanite slave or maidservant. “And he did not know that this is negation and not warning. And the explanation of this is as I shall tell. And that is because God has already judged regarding one who strikes his Canaanite slave or maidservant and causes him, at the time of the blow, to lose one of the extremities of the limbs, that he goes free.” A Canaanite slave or maidservant whom you strike in one of the twenty-four extremities goes free. “And it might have arisen in our minds that if this is the rule with a Canaanite slave, then all the more so with a Hebrew maidservant, and that when one of the extremities of her limbs is impaired she should go free. And He negated this law from her by saying, ‘She shall not go out as the slaves go out,’ as though to say: it is not incumbent that she go free by loss of one of her limbs. And this is negation of a law from her, and not warning.” Therefore the Baal Halakhot Gedolot is mistaken in counting this in his enumeration of the commandments, because what there is here is negation of obligation and not warning. Now notice, this is a subtle point, because the negations of obligation he brought above—“Reuven didn’t eat that food”—that’s obvious. Even the Baal Halakhot Gedolot wouldn’t see that as a prohibition; there’s nothing to discuss, it’s simple. Here Maimonides takes a verse, a halakhic / of Jewish law verse—it establishes Jewish law—and it uses the word “not.” Maimonides says: the “not” here is not a negating “not” and not a warning “not,” and therefore this should not be counted among the commandments under prohibitions. Why? Because this verse does not say there is a prohibition on releasing a Hebrew maidservant. “She shall not go out as the slaves go out,” right? Is there a prohibition on releasing the Hebrew maidservant after she was injured in one of the extremities? It’s not a prohibition. Rather, the law that a Canaanite slave goes free through tooth and eye is denied with respect to the Hebrew maidservant. So the “not” here is not a “not” that comes to warn you; it comes to deny. It comes to say: that law does not exist with a Hebrew maidservant.

[Speaker B] You’re not obligated.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Notice, this is a subtle point, because this sentence is a sentence that establishes Jewish law. It’s not like “and there arose not again in Israel a prophet like Moses,” where that is description; it’s obvious that the “not” there has nothing to do with Jewish law at all. It’s factual narration; it’s a description of a fact, okay?

[Speaker B] Here the verse—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —deals with Jewish law.

[Speaker B] But Maimonides would also agree here that if you want to release her, you can release her. I didn’t understand. Maimonides would also agree here that if you want to release her—you injured her somehow and you want to release her—you can release her; it’s just that you’re not obligated, as with the Canaanite slave.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can release her whenever you want; that has nothing to do with this, even without extremities.

[Speaker C] Yes, not only because of this.

[Speaker B] If so, then “she shall not go out”—because it’s not forbidden for you to release her as a result of such a thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is what I’m saying: clearly there’s no prohibition here. All you have here is a negation of the command that was said regarding a Canaanite slave. So Maimonides is basically saying that even though this verse is a verse that establishes Jewish law, the word “not” is not a word that comes to warn; it’s a word that comes to negate. And since that’s so, it is not a prohibition. That’s already not so simple.

[Speaker D] Wait, so basically—you could ask—Maimonides is formulating something here as an instruction that limits a positive commandment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct.

[Speaker D] Meaning, he’s saying this is a statement that comes to limit the positive commandment somewhere else.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To negate a law so that it won’t apply in another situation. But the word “not” is a word that negates, not one that warns, and therefore it won’t enter the count of the commandments, okay? Now this point—I’ll stop here—is an interesting example of this point, that in order to explain why “she shall not go out as the slaves go out” does not enter the count of the commandments, you have to define well the concept of a commandment, understand the relation between prohibitions and positive commandments, and show it step by step. And he really does it in a beautifully graded way. It’s really built like a paper in analytic philosophy, and he really shows you on several levels the negation of obligation. There’s the trivial negation of obligation: Reuven didn’t eat breakfast. Fine, even the Halakhot Gedolot would agree to that. Now he says to you: I’ll bring you a negation of obligation that exists within the halakhic world. It’s a verse that comes to speak, to state Jewish law, but the “not” that appears in the verse does not negate—it does not warn—and therefore it is still not a prohibition. And I once thought—once I thought—why are there positive commandments that are merely fulfillable, but no prohibitions that are merely fulfillable? With positive commandments, after all, we distinguish between an obligatory positive commandment and a fulfillable positive commandment. An obligatory positive commandment is one that has to be done. A fulfillable positive commandment is one where, if you did it, you’ve performed a commandment, and if not, then not; you don’t have to do it. If you did it, you have a commandment. But that exists only with positive commandments; it doesn’t exist with prohibitions. A prohibition—what would the analogy be, supposedly? It would have to be that if you, you don’t—how would that work there? How could that work there? Well, we’d have to think how exactly to define the analogy in prohibitions so that there would be a fulfillable prohibition. But it just popped into my head now, because I thought maybe “she shall not go out as the slaves go out,” according to the Halakhot Gedolot, could be a fulfillable prohibition. After all, he too doesn’t say there is a prohibition against sending out the Hebrew maidservant, right? That’s clear; he too would agree on that point. So it turns out that what you have here is basically a fulfillable prohibition. Meaning, it’s not that there is a prohibition in the matter; there’s just no obligation. Because if that’s the—well, I don’t know, we need to think more about exactly how to define that analogy. In any case, for our purposes, this introduction of Maimonides—once he analyzed the concept of a commandment and of a prohibition, from that he was able to show a claim. Which is basically a claim connected to the issue of the commandments, or perhaps indirectly even to Jewish law: why “you shall not return a slave to his master” does not enter the count of the commandments. Maybe one more remark connected to this matter: what exactly is the genus that includes both positive commandments and prohibitions? I’m not talking about the word; the word is “decree.” Okay? Decree. The antithesis of decree is statement of fact, right? Statement of fact versus decree, where under decree, say, the classification—we spoke about genera and species, right? What did I do here? Statement of fact and decree. No, Rabbi. Yes.

[Speaker B] Can’t we maybe say that Maimonides really—like the Rabbi wanted to say, fulfillable and obligatory—here it’s a positive commandment that Maimonides understands as though the Halakhot Gedolot is saying: you’re forbidden to send her out even if you want to.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t check the Halakhot Gedolot, but I don’t think that’s what he says. It’s not likely. Because a Hebrew maidservant—you can send her out even if you haven’t harmed her, so why, if you did harm her, would it suddenly be forbidden to send her out?

[Speaker B] No, in this case, as if you’re forbidden to equate her with a Canaanite slave, because then according to the Halakhot Gedolot you’re sort of bringing her to the level of a Canaanite slave.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand, but I’m saying that it’s unlikely. Because it’s not plausible that I’d be allowed to send her out if I didn’t harm her, but if I did harm her then I’m forbidden to. That doesn’t sound plausible to me. But you’d have to check the wording in the Halakhot Gedolot; I don’t know.

[Speaker E] So look, can we go over the words of the Halakhot Gedolot again? I didn’t remember well what the Halakhot Gedolot said.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Halakhot Gedolot counted “she shall not go out as the slaves go out” in its count of the commandments.

[Speaker B] As a prohibition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, I don’t think the Halakhot Gedolot divides between positive commandments and prohibitions. I think—I don’t remember right now, but I think so. In any case, look, I just drew the diagram here so you can see how this relates to genera and species. Maimonides is basically saying this: these are the genera—decree and statement, okay? These are two genera. Under this genus sit two species: positive commandment and prohibition, okay? These are two species that are subsets of the genus. Now I ask: what exactly is the relation between these two? What defines the difference between them, between these two genera? A statement is basically a factual claim, right? It describes something about the world. To test it, you have to check whether the statement is true or false; you compare it to the facts it describes and see whether it’s an accurate description or not. A decree is not a factual claim. A decree is a normative instruction—to do or not to do—but it is a normative instruction. Meaning, what we’re dealing with here is really a different conceptual or linguistic sphere. Decree is the normative sphere; statement is the factual sphere. And there’s also the is-ought fallacy, yes? Of David Hume, the gap that exists between facts and norms—that you can’t derive a norm from facts, because it really belongs to a different conceptual sphere. And within this conceptual sphere, the normative one, there is a division into two species: prohibitions and positive commandments. That is basically what Maimonides is claiming. Okay? Therefore this is the conceptual analysis he does of the concept of commandment. He is basically saying: first of all I want to distinguish the concept of commandment or decree from what is not a commandment, and then enter into it and distinguish between the two species within it, prohibition and positive commandment. This is conceptual analysis in the clearest possible sense: to place the concept against other concepts that are not it, and to try to see how many concepts fall under it. That is basically what we are supposed to do when we engage in conceptual analysis. So if we go back to the previous examples I gave, then even when I spoke, say, about the concept of change, with the concept of change I tried to distinguish several levels of changes. I spoke about simplistic conservatism and midrashic conservatism—or simplistic conservatism and midrashic conservatism, sorry. Simplistic conservatism is not change; midrashic conservatism is change, and heresy is also change. Those are two kinds of change, and you can fit that into this schema. There’s someone who doesn’t change, there’s someone who does change, and the one who changes can change in this way or in that way. Again, we are doing conceptual analysis of the concept. The concept of change. Same thing with the concept of authority. So the concept of authority—I would put that too into this category. Then I say: there is formal authority and substantive authority, which actually isn’t really authority; that is what parallels statement in our context. Okay? Under formal authority I now ask: authority regarding facts, authority regarding norms. You see, this is a recurring pattern: when we do conceptual analysis, what we really need to look for is, first, what does not belong to this concept, what lies outside it, and second, what falls under it, or how many different things fall under it sometimes. We need to distinguish among them. Okay? Because they will have different manifestations. That is basically what we are supposed to do in conceptual analysis. And in that sense, this Maimonides is really almost a paradigm of conceptual analysis. That’s how it’s done. All right? Now let’s move on a bit. Since we’re already in the topic of commandments, let’s formulate it this way—maybe before I continue. In Arabic, where there is no common word for positive commandments and prohibitions, then really what we’re supposed to understand is that someone who understands that there is a connection between these two things, that they are two species of the same genus, is basically understanding the concept of a normative matter. The normative sphere is basically what Maimonides calls a decree. A decree doesn’t come to describe something—that’s a statement of fact for Maimonides—but rather to decree something upon me. It’s a norm. To decree that I should do, or to decree that I should not do. Okay? The commandment is the decree to do. A prohibition is the decree not to do. Okay? So the concept of decree reflects something; it’s not just some random thing that connects positive commandments and prohibitions. It has meaning in itself. Decree is a translation of what I earlier called the normative sphere. The normative world is the world of decrees. Okay? So when I compare a normative statement with a factual statement, there is a conceptual distinction here, which if I didn’t have the right word for it, maybe it would be hard for me to put my finger on. By the way, in very many places people, even within halakhic interpretation and Torah study and all sorts of such contexts, don’t really understand the distinction between norm and fact. And a great many questions about the Torah and about one ruling or another stem from this kind of misunderstanding. People, I don’t know, ask: why did it need to say “you shall not murder”? What, isn’t that obvious? For example. That’s a question based on a mistake. Why? Because the concept of a commandment means that there is an obligation. Now what does obligation mean? Where does obligation come from? Obligation comes from a command. If there were no command, then there would be a moral prohibition against murder. But a halakhic prohibition does not exist without a command. Therefore there’s no point in asking why the Torah writes “you shall not murder,” since it’s obvious that murder is forbidden. When the Torah wrote “you shall not murder,” it did not come to tell me that murder is forbidden—I know that on my own. It came to say that besides the moral prohibition against murder, there is also a halakhic prohibition against murder. And for there to be such a prohibition, there has to be a decree, or command in the Torah, telling me that there is a halakhic prohibition. I cannot decide on my own that there is a halakhic prohibition. I can understand that there is a moral prohibition against murder. But how would I know that there is a halakhic prohibition here?

[Speaker E] Why was there a need to add a halakhic prohibition to a moral prohibition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not a question of need; it’s a fact. There is a halakhic prohibition besides the moral one. That’s all.

[Speaker E] So I’m violating on two planes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, obviously. Although the concept itself says—we discussed this in the series on Jewish law and morality, I think the series before the previous one. If, say, you commit murder with your left hand, by, I don’t know, in a way that exempts you—confining someone, bringing the matter near, exposing him to the sun to die, all sorts of things like that—the whole topic there in Sanhedrin. So if you do it in that way, on the moral level you are a complete murderer. Completely. There is no difference whatsoever between you and a murderer with a gun. But on the halakhic level you are exempt. Because you did not violate the halakhic prohibition. The moral prohibition certainly exists. Jewish law is a category that stands on its own.

[Speaker B] Morality is sometimes more than Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sometimes stricter, sometimes more lenient. Yes.

[Speaker F] Is this connected to the fact that greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, it is definitely connected. “Greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does.” So the Ritva and Tosafot Rosh write in different places that one who is commanded and does is greater because the one who is commanded and does, besides the benefit that exists in the very act itself—which also exists if he is not commanded—he is also responding to a command. Meaning, for him this is also a decree; it’s not just a good deed. So clearly, from his standpoint, there are two positive things happening when he does it. First, he obeys a command; second, he does something that apparently has the positive consequences because of which it is a positive act. Therefore one who is commanded and does is greater than one who is not commanded and does. Think about women regarding positive commandments dependent on time, okay? So let’s say—I don’t know—waving the lulav rectifies the sefirah of netzach within hod, okay? So now when a woman waves the lulav, it could be that she rectifies that sefirah. But there is no command upon her. So the benefit that comes from the act, the positivity that there is in the act, could also exist in the woman. There’s some disagreement about this, but according to the overwhelming majority of halakhic decisors, that’s how it is. It exists for the woman as well. But there is no commandment here.

[Speaker E] Because a commandment requires a command. It’s not—maybe, maybe we need to connect it—I think only once there is a halakhic command can the act be associated with the sefirot as you mentioned. It doesn’t make sense to say that without a command—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no, I don’t agree with you—at least not necessarily—but that’s not important. I only wanted to illustrate, so I’m not going to get into right now what rectifies netzach within hod and what doesn’t. I don’t know what netzach within hod is, or what those rectifications are called. I’m just giving an example to illustrate my point, that’s all. Yes, I understand. Fine, leave it—let’s say, I don’t know, someone who gave charity to another person. Forget netzach within hod. Okay? He gave charity to another person, so obviously he did a good act; we can point to the good result of the act. The person now has something to eat, right? That exists even without the command. If there’s someone who is not commanded in the commandment of charity, okay? A gentile is not obligated—a gentile is not obligated to give charity to a Jew. Okay? Now the gentile gives charity to a poor Jew. Clearly he has the positive result of the act. He gave charity to a person who needs food, and now that person has food. He did not fulfill a commandment. Why? Because in order to fulfill a commandment you need to obey a command, and he has no command. It’s like—yes? When you—if there were no law forbidding running a red light. It would still make sense not to run a red light because it’s dangerous. Let’s say all the others do obey it, never mind, okay? So it would be dangerous. But there would be no obligation. As long as there is no command, you can’t make a claim against him if he ran the red light. Even though the benefit—the benefit of the act exists even without the command. Two completely different things. The purpose of the commands in the Torah is to define actions as actions that have a halakhic dimension. They do not come to tell me stories that these actions are positive actions. And that is the difference between decree and statement of fact. People think that when the Torah says “you shall not steal,” that is a statement of fact. It is basically telling me that theft is a negative thing. That is not what the Torah is doing. When the Torah says “you shall not steal,” it commands me not to steal. It is not telling me anything; it is commanding. The “not” is not warning—it is not a descriptive “not,” what Maimonides calls negation of obligation. Otherwise it would be negation of obligation and they wouldn’t count it in the count of the commandments. It would basically be telling me that theft is a bad thing. Okay, I understand. And if I nevertheless want to do it, then maybe I’m immoral—but there is no halakhic prohibition here. A halakhic prohibition is created only because the “not” that appears here is a warning “not.” It is a “not” that commands you not to steal. It is not merely telling you that theft is a bad thing. It is not conveying information to you; it is not a statement of fact. Now you see that the distinction Maimonides makes is not trivial, even for Hebrew speakers. Even for people who study Torah and know very well the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment, the connection between them—and still a great many questions of this kind arise simply because of a lack of understanding of this passage in Maimonides. Here’s another example of the lessons one can gain from doing conceptual analysis. Let’s continue a bit further. I’m continuing with the concept of commandment. And let’s take another root of Maimonides, the sixth root. The sixth root: a commandment that contains both a positive commandment and a prohibition—it is proper to count the positive commandment in the list of positive commandments, and the prohibition in the list of prohibitions. The background to this requires knowing the ninth root of Maimonides, where he writes that if the Torah repeats something—repeats the same commandment or the same prohibition many times—we count it in the tally of commandments only once. For example, the Torah writes twelve times the commandment to keep the Sabbath—an example Maimonides gives. In the count of the commandments it will of course appear only once, even though the Torah repeats it many times. A good question is why it did that, but I’m not going to count twelve commandments there. When the Torah repeats the same thing several times, we count it once. That is the ninth root. In the sixth root—this root—Maimonides says that if there is a commandment that includes both a positive commandment and a prohibition, then we do count both. The positive among the positive commandments, and the prohibition among the prohibitions. There are two innovations here. One innovation is that in such a case, even though there is repetition, we nevertheless count both commandments, unlike what happens in the ninth root. When the repetition is between two positive commandments or between two prohibitions, we count once; when the repetition is between a positive commandment and a prohibition, we count twice. That’s the first innovation. The second innovation of Maimonides is that the positive commandment is counted in the list of positive commandments, and the prohibition is counted in the list of prohibitions. And that is an additional innovation. Let’s take an example so it will be clearer. Know that one thing may contain both a positive commandment and a prohibition in one of three ways. One is where an act among the acts is a positive commandment, and one who transgresses it transgresses a prohibition, like Sabbath and a Jewish holiday and the Sabbatical year, where doing labor on them is a prohibition and resting on them is a positive commandment, as was explained. Likewise afflicting oneself by fasting on Yom Kippur is a positive commandment and eating on it is a prohibition, and so on. The continuation isn’t important for us now. Maimonides says, for example, let’s take the Sabbath, okay? In the laws of Sabbath, in the count of the commandments of Sabbath, not doing labor is a prohibition—meaning, one who does labor violates a prohibition—and one who refrains from labor fulfills the positive commandment of resting on the Sabbath. So this is basically repetition. There is a prohibition of “you shall not do any labor,” and a commandment of “remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it,” yes? These are two commandments with the same content. Both require me not to do labor on the Sabbath. One of them is a prohibition, because it says that if you did labor you violated an offense, and the other is a positive commandment; it says that if you refrained from labor then you fulfilled a positive commandment. But basically there is repetition here. These two commandments require the same thing of me: not to do labor on the Sabbath. So why count both? There is repetition here. Maimonides says: because here the repetition is between a positive commandment and a prohibition. When two commandments with identical content, one of them is a positive commandment and the other is a prohibition, then we do count them both. It’s not like when there are two positive commandments to keep the Sabbath or two prohibitions on doing labor on the Sabbath. When there is a positive commandment and a prohibition regarding doing labor on the Sabbath, both are counted. But Maimonides says more than that: one could have said that we count them both for some reason, because the Torah hinted to us, made both a positive commandment and a prohibition, saying here these are two commandments, not one. Still, though, perhaps I should have counted them both as prohibitions, both of them. Because after all, what do these commandments require of me? Not to do labor, right? Even the positive commandment basically requires non-action. It requires me to refrain from labor, right? So in practice these two commandments are really both prohibitions. So Maimonides has an additional innovation: not only when the repetition is between a positive commandment and a prohibition do we count two commandments, but the positive commandment is counted among the positive commandments and the prohibition among the prohibitions. It’s not two prohibitions; it’s a positive commandment and a prohibition. That’s the innovation.

[Speaker B] Because a positive commandment is a fulfillable commandment. Resting is a fulfillable commandment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. The positive commandment to rest is—you—

[Speaker B] You fulfill it even if you don’t do anything; you’re fulfilling a commandment.

[Speaker E] That’s not true; you are commanded regarding Sabbath rest.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, you are required not to do labor on the Sabbath. So what’s the difference between that and the prohibition?

[Speaker B] So then what is “you shall rest”? Why is that called a positive commandment? Why is that called a positive commandment? What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To rest from labor. So is that a positive commandment?

[Speaker D] Maimonides, already in his wording, is drawing you into the idea that this commandment—so you won’t think it’s a prohibition—is already a positive commandment; he calls it rest.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, and it’s not only Maimonides; the Torah calls it “to rest.”

[Speaker D] Right, no, but he calls it rest, not non-performance of labor.

[Speaker B] The Torah calls it rest—“so that he may rest.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To rest is non-performance of labor, period. That is rest, that’s all, only that. There is no additional content here. If there were additional content, there would be no need for this root. Because if there were a difference between the positive commandment and the prohibition, then the question whether to count them both wouldn’t even arise—it would be obvious. Everything Maimonides is talking about is only when I have a positive commandment and a prohibition with absolutely no difference in content. And his innovation is that nevertheless we count them as two commandments, one a positive commandment and the other a prohibition—but there is no difference in content. Both commandments tell me not to do labor on the Sabbath. Now the question that arises in this context is of course—before I ask myself why Maimonides writes what he writes—and this is the question Rabbi Yerucham Perla, for example, asks. Rabbi Yerucham Perla, yes, in the Book of Commandments of Saadia Gaon in the edition of Rabbi Yerucham Perla—that’s three thick volumes like that—and there, in the introduction, he also goes through the roots of Maimonides and checks which ones Saadia Gaon matches, agrees with, and which ones Saadia Gaon disagrees with. So Rabbi Yerucham Perla, on the sixth root, asks about Maimonides: he doesn’t understand what he wants. If this is repetition and there is no difference at all between the two commandments, then why are you counting two commandments here? How is this different from what you said in the ninth root? Accordingly, he argues that Saadia Gaon really counts only one commandment and not two, because after all they are duplicates. What difference does it make that one is phrased in positive language and one in negative language? It’s the same—they have the same content. Duplicate commandments are counted once. That’s no different from a case where the Torah commands me twelve—

[Speaker B] times to keep the Sabbath, where Maimonides says you count it once. What difference does it make whether it uses positive wording or negative wording? Bottom line, it tells me the same thing twice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why did the Torah say it twice? That much? Then maybe that itself—why did the Torah say it twice? You could ask the same thing about saying it twelve times in positive language. No, but why once in negative language and once in positive? I don’t understand. When the Torah repeats something several times, you can understand that it’s the same commandment, it’s just emphasizing it again and again. But when it commands once in negative form and once in positive form, there’s some significance to that, no? It emphasizes the opposite side. It emphasizes it in a better literary way. Both “you shall rest” and “do not do labor,” because it’s boring to repeat the same thing every time.

[Speaker B] But once we’ve defined that there are positive commandments and prohibitions, then it’s already not the same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but I’m saying again—that’s exactly the question. In what sense is this a positive commandment? After all, Maimonides, you said, has two innovations. First, that two commandments are counted here, and second, that refraining from labor is a positive commandment. It is counted among the positive commandments. I would be willing to accept the first innovation for some reason—because if the Torah, as you said earlier, formulates it once positively and once negatively, maybe it wants to tell me to count both. But how did you turn the commandment of resting into a positive commandment? It requires me not to do labor. That is the definition of a prohibition.

[Speaker F] Maybe because this commandment requires intention—to be aware of the rest.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a consequence, but I’m asking prior to that. In what sense is it a positive commandment? There could be a consequence, once we define it as a positive commandment, that positive commandments require intention. Though even there one has to discuss it, because commandments that involve no action at all—it’s not at all clear that they require intention.

[Speaker D] Or let’s say that a positive commandment has to involve some active action. Meaning, there is no such thing as a positive commandment without active action.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But here you see that there is.

[Speaker D] Right, no—here that’s exactly how he corners himself a bit, creating some sort of internal contradiction in Maimonides. And that’s why Rabbi Perla asks this question, because he says it’s not logical; there’s some—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] some—

[Speaker D] loop that closes, doesn’t close on itself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand why Rabbi Yerucham Perla asks this question; that’s obvious. I’m asking what Maimonides says, not what Rabbi Yerucham Perla says.

[Speaker D] No, so here Maimonides is introducing an innovation here that there is also—meaning there’s apparently a dispute in interpretation about what a positive commandment is. There are those who would say a positive commandment exists only where you do an active action, and there are those who would say no, no, no—if there’s no active action then it’s not a positive commandment.

[Speaker B] You said the same thing twice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are those who say X, and others who say X.

[Speaker D] Right, right, you’re correct, but I think my intention was understood.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, your intention was not understood, because that is exactly the point we are asking. The topic I’m talking about is mentioned in the Talmudic literature. The question is how Maimonides defines the concept of a positive commandment.

[Speaker D] Even passivity is a positive commandment. Passivity too.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so then “you shall not do any labor” is also a positive commandment?

[Speaker D] No, but passivity that of course has a statement written in the Torah, not passivity from—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you’re proposing a definition according to the wording in the Torah. Yes.

[Speaker D] There has to be wording. Based on the wording, I can latch onto something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Well then, in an article by the late Aharon Shemesh—he was a Talmud scholar at Bar-Ilan—in Tarbiz. He once published an article on this matter, and he indeed argued that there are two possible definitions for the distinction between positive commandments and prohibitions. One definition is practical: if you are required to perform something, that is a positive commandment; if you are required to refrain—the omission, non-action—that is a prohibition. And there is a linguistic definition, according to the wording in which it appears in the Torah. Then it doesn’t have to be connected to the practical mode; rather, if it is phrased in the Torah in an active way, it is a positive commandment, and if it is phrased in a passive way, it is a prohibition, regardless of whether in practice the mode of carrying it out is the same. Except that then I ask myself the question. He showed that, by the way, in the early generations of the Talmud, in the earlier strata of the Talmud, the distinction really was a practical one. And the later generations—and by the way this is a process that happens in many topics—the later generations made a kind of abstraction and severed the connection between the mode of performance and the definition of the commandment as a positive commandment or a prohibition. And now it became a matter of linguistic definition, not practical definition. But I once wrote about this in the context of the difference between Talmudic research and analytic learning. The Talmudic researcher describes the facts, and I think this is a correct and good description of the facts. But what he offers as an explanation cannot be an explanation. Because if the Torah phrases something positively in order to tell me that this is a positive commandment, now I would ask the Holy One, blessed be He: why do You treat this as a positive commandment? Not how do I know that it is a positive commandment. I know it is a positive commandment because the wording in the Torah is positive. And I ask why the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote it in positive wording in the Torah—what did He want to say? What defines it as a positive commandment? There has to be some definition behind this wording. And I’m asking what it is. It cannot be that something has an answer only on the linguistic plane. Language reflects some difference in the thing itself. The linguistic difference describes it. But there has to be some real difference between positive commandments and prohibitions that the linguistic description expresses. So now you’ve shown me that the linguistic criterion is a substitute for the practical criterion. Meaning, the practical criterion is not what distinguishes positive commandments from prohibitions. But the linguistic criterion cannot be the criterion that defines what a positive commandment and a prohibition are. It is an indication. If it is written in positive language, that is an indication that it is a positive commandment. I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, who wrote the Torah: why did You write it in positive language? In what sense, from our standpoint—how do You define a positive commandment, You, the Holy One, blessed be He? In the end, this commandment requires from me exactly the same thing that the prohibition requires from me. This is such a basic question that I have found no one who dealt with it. No one.

[Speaker E] The Talmudic passage that says, “he sat and did not commit a transgression, it is as though he fulfilled a commandment”—doesn’t that solve your problem?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. No?

[Speaker B] No, in what sense? Why does—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] it solve it?

[Speaker E] If I assume that in order to fulfill a commandment I can also do so by negating all action, and that in that too there is supposedly a commandment—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean “supposedly a commandment”? But this commandment requires me not to do labor. In what way is that different from the prohibition of “you shall not do any labor”? Why is this a positive commandment? In what sense is it a positive commandment? These are just words; what it requires from me is not to do labor, that’s all. If they had phrased the prohibition differently—don’t—there is a prohibition against not resting on the Sabbath. A prohibition against not resting. Fine? What would that be—a prohibition or a positive commandment?

[Speaker E] It would apparently be a prohibition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A prohibition, right? But basically you understand that’s a double negation of a positive commandment. It’s a commandment to rest. What?

[Speaker E] It’s a bit similar to the rule that minus minus equals plus, and so on.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Double negation. So once you tell me it’s a double negation of a positive commandment, how did it become a prohibition? A double negation of a positive commandment is the same positive commandment; it’s a logical identity. To say “I want you to rest,” and to say “I do not want you not to rest,” is to say the same thing. So how can it be that the first is a positive commandment and the second is a prohibition?

[Speaker E] So do you have an explanation for Maimonides?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I have an explanation for Maimonides. My claim is the claim—now here, here this is an important point for our purposes, because the explanation I’m going to suggest here is not conceptual analysis; it is a result of the conceptual analysis. The conceptual analysis is basically this: I look at the concept of a positive commandment—which people never do—and I ask myself what its definition is. What is a positive commandment? And I discover, to my surprise, that the practical definition is not the definition. There are positive commandments that require from me non-action. And by the way, the reverse too: there are prohibitions that require action from me. For example, “you shall not place blood in your house.” What, right? You have to put up a guardrail, but it’s a prohibition. The prohibition requires action from me. Or “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” When I see my friend drowning in the river, I have to get up and save him, but it’s a prohibition: “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” The prohibition requires action from me. What we see clearly is that the difference between positive commandments and prohibitions is not a difference connected to their mode of performance—whether it is performance through action or through omission. So then I ask myself—that’s the conceptual analysis—so what is it? What defines a commandment as a positive commandment or a prohibition as a prohibition? And then I—the claim, and now what I’m suggesting—I’m not going to go into it at length, I’ve done that elsewhere—but just so you can see the significance of the matter, what I’m basically suggesting is the following: I want to claim that a positive commandment means pointing to a positive state. A prohibition is pointing to a negative state. Meaning, when the Torah tells me not to eat pork, then it is telling me that a state in which you eat pork is a negative state. Therefore it is a prohibition.

[Speaker E] That’s a different concept.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, look. Therefore it is a prohibition. When the Torah tells me to put on tefillin, then it is basically telling me that when you put on tefillin, that is a positive state. Okay? Now my claim is that a positive state or a negative state, either one can be a state of action or a state of omission. Meaning, let’s say the Torah tells me “you shall not do any labor on the Sabbath.” Then it is really telling me that doing labor is a negative state. Therefore it is defined as a prohibition. When the Torah tells me “on the seventh day you shall rest,” then it is telling me that the state of resting on the Sabbath is a positive state. But notice: this is a state that from the standpoint of action is passive. True—but from the standpoint of value it is a positive state. And since it points out that state to me as a positive state, that is a positive commandment.

[Speaker D] In terms of value or in terms of consequence? What do you mean, in terms of value or consequence? You—it sounds like you’re describing the result of every action or inaction.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, in terms of value. I’m talking—this prohibition against doing labor has no interest whatsoever in my resting. It doesn’t care whether I rest or not. What matters to it is that I not do labor. If I could find a situation in which I don’t do labor but this is not rest, it would have no problem with that. The positive commandment of rest says: I don’t care if you do labor—that’s not the negative state. Resting from labor is a positive state. Let me give you an example—for example the commandment of a guardrail. Okay? There is “you shall not place blood in your house,” and “you shall make a guardrail for your roof.” “You shall make a guardrail for your roof” is a positive commandment. “You shall not place blood in your house” is a prohibition. According to my interpretation, these are two different statements. “You shall not place blood in your house” means: a house without a guardrail is a negative state. Right? “You shall make a guardrail for your roof” says: a house on which you put a guardrail is a positive state. Okay? Now suppose I have no house at all. Is there any value in buying a house and putting up a guardrail? Not that I have to spend all my money on it, but just in principle—is there some halakhic value in that? No. From the standpoint of the positive commandment, yes. Because the positive commandment says that if I build a house and I put a guardrail on it, I am in a positive state. There is no claim against me when I have no house; it’s not that I have annulled a positive commandment.

[Speaker E] I’m not claiming that I annul a positive commandment when I have no house. I am claiming that there is value in buying a house and putting up a guardrail—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because then I will be in a positive state. If I’m without a house—wait—if I’m without a house and have no house at all, then I’m in a neutral state, the zero state. If I buy a house and put a guardrail on it, I’m in a positive state. If I buy a house and there is no guardrail, then if there were only the positive commandment of “you shall make a guardrail for your roof,” then I would not be in a positive state, because a house with a guardrail is a positive state. But since there is also a prohibition, “you shall not place blood in your house,” then when I have a house without a guardrail, I am in a negative state. Being in a negative state is not the same thing as not being in a positive state. The practical implication, for example, is what happens in neutral situations. When I’m in a neutral state, I am also not in a positive state, but I am also not in a negative state.

[Speaker E] But then you contradict the entire notion of a fulfillable commandment according to your distinction.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an excellent question, but in order to answer it I need a lot of time. If you want, read my article on the sixth root.

[Speaker E] Send it to me—I don’t have access; I’m blocked.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then send me an email and I’ll send it to you if you want, okay? There I speak exactly about that; it’s a very good question. Because according to how I’m describing it here, apparently a fulfillable commandment has nothing to it because basically—sorry—all positive commandments are fulfillable commandments and not obligatory commandments, because basically I’m saying that you are not in the positive state but nothing happened. In one word I’ll just say this: obligatory commandments are commandments in which I am required to be in the positive state. There is a claim against me if I am in the zero state. But that is not the same as a prohibition, which tells me: don’t be in a negative state. Obviously these are only words; you have to look there, but that’s the short answer. Okay? Didn’t catch it. No—there are situations in which, when I’m not in the positive state, there is a claim against me. There are areas where every person is required not to be average, but to be righteous. If you’re not righteous, there is a claim against you. You’re not wicked, you’re average, but there is still a claim against you. That is an obligatory commandment. A fulfillable commandment says: if you want, be righteous; if you don’t want to, average is also fine. A prohibition says: don’t be wicked, don’t be in a negative state. Okay?

[Speaker B] In this case of the house, of building a guardrail, it says, “when you build a new house.” Now if I buy a house without a guardrail, then maybe I don’t have an obligatory commandment, but if I fulfill it—if I make a guardrail—then did I perform a commandment? Because only someone who builds a new house is obligated in it? Or also someone who bought a house?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is a fully obligatory commandment: if you bought a house, you have to build a guardrail around it, even though it says, “when you build.” Okay. Good, so once again—I’m not going to get into all of this, because it really isn’t our topic, and it’s a broad topic; I wrote a very long article about it. What I just want to show here is, once again, the issue of conceptual analysis. I’m continuing the concept of commandment that we saw in Maimonides, and I’m describing this normative scheme, which contains this normative category, within which there are positive commandments and prohibitions, and what I did in the last part was try to explain the difference between them. And what I’m arguing is—I’m going back to Maimonides—basically I’m now summarizing the two parts of the lecture, and I’m saying this: a factual account is a description of facts. Facts are something neutral; they are not positive, not negative, not intermediate, not anything. They are not connected to value concepts. They are something neutral. A fact is a fact. Okay? Decrees, or the normative world, are connected to attaching values to situations. That is what defines the concept of the normative. Positive values, negative values, or neutral values, or zero. Okay? And that is the difference between positive commandments and prohibitions. Positive commandments attach a positive value to situations. Prohibitions attach a negative value to other situations. These are the two species within this genus of decrees—yes, of normative statements. Now we understand that normative statements mean statements that attach value to situations. And the difference is whether the value is positive or the value is negative. Okay. Good. By the way, this has a great many implications. I don’t have enough room here to get into it, but this conceptual analysis yields a great many implications and also answers a great many questions, some of which were never even asked. People who don’t do conceptual analysis also don’t ask the questions; they don’t notice that there’s a problem here. Okay, good, I’ll stop here.

[Speaker C] What’s the name of the article? And is it in the book “Shalach Roots” or…?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the book “Shalach Roots,” correct, and also on my website—you can actually read it there.

[Speaker C] Okay, thank you.

[Speaker D] Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you very much. More power to you. Sabbath peace.

Conceptual Analysis – Lesson 4

Table of Contents

Summary

General overview

The purpose of conceptual analysis and opening examples

The concept of commandment as a foundational concept and the need to analyze it

Eighth root: warning, command, and negation of obligation

Negation that is not a command, and the example of “she shall not go out as the slaves go out”

Conceptual analysis as genus and species: decree versus factual narration, and then positive commandment versus prohibition

Implications for understanding Torah and the distinction between a moral prohibition and a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition

Sixth root: a commandment that contains both a positive commandment and a prohibition, and the difficulty of duplication

Two possible definitions and the critique of a linguistic criterion

A proposed definition: a positive commandment as a positive state and a prohibition as a negative state

Summary: the normative as attribution of values and the implications of conceptual analysis

Full Transcript

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Table of Contents

Summary

General overview

The purpose of conceptual analysis and opening examples

The concept of commandment as a foundational concept and the need to analyze it

Eighth root: warning, command, and negation of obligation

Negation that is not a command, and the example of “she shall not go out as the slaves go out”

Conceptual analysis as genus and species: decree versus factual narration, and then positive commandment versus prohibition

Implications for understanding Torah and the distinction between a moral prohibition and a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition

Sixth root: a commandment that contains both a positive commandment and a prohibition, and the difficulty of duplication

Two possible definitions and the critique of a linguistic criterion

A proposed definition: a positive commandment as a positive state and a prohibition as a negative state

Summary: the normative as attribution of values and the implications of conceptual analysis

Full Transcript

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