Commandments and Their Enumeration – Lecture 3

Table of Contents

• The enumeration of the commandments as a methodological field and its halakhic ramifications
• An analogy to philosophy of science and philosophy of Jewish law
• Maimonides, the principles, and Sefer HaMitzvot as the foundational stage for the code of the Mishneh Torah
• The Mishneh Torah as a code, the question of classification, and thematic versus categorical divisions
• The 613 commandments as a tool for building the structure of the Mishneh Torah and the problems in enumeration
• The source of the principles, Maimonides’ critique of the Halakhot Gedolot, and the structure of the fourteen principles
• The 613 as a binding number, Nachmanides, and the emergence of halakhic disputes
• The language of the works, accessibility, and Sefer HaMitzvot as an intermediate stage
• Explanatory commandments, a law code, and commandments that are not commandments of action
• Opening the study of the Tanya and some initial background

Summary

General Overview

The text presents the enumeration of the commandments as a field that seems, at first glance, to have no practical consequence and therefore received little attention, but in fact it generates many halakhic ramifications and expresses a reflective awareness of halakhic methodology. It presents Maimonides as an unusual figure who systematically built the “principles” and Sefer HaMitzvot in order to establish a comprehensive halakhic code, and explains how the constraint of the number 613 creates halakhic disputes with Nachmanides and others. In the end, the text opens a transition to the study of the Tanya and presents it as a foundational, systematic work of Chabad Hasidism that guides the service of God through an analysis of the powers of the soul and the definition of the figure of the “beinoni,” the intermediate person.

The Enumeration of the Commandments as a Methodological Field and Its Halakhic Ramifications

Counting the commandments is perceived as an area that seems dead, and therefore the Vilna Gaon did not deal with it, but in fact many practical halakhic implications emerge from it, and most of the later authorities’ discussion of Maimonides’ principles is connected to halakhic ramifications. The disputes between Maimonides and Nachmanides in the glosses often boil down to a halakhic dispute, even though on the face of it there should be no practical consequence, and that requires explanation. Dealing with the enumeration of the commandments reflects a self-aware look at halakhic methodology and at the structure of Jewish law, and very few medieval authorities (Rishonim) or later authorities (Acharonim) give an account of how Jewish law works, unlike Maimonides, who devoted systematic principles to that.

An Analogy to Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Jewish Law

The text divides philosophy of science into two fields: methodology of science versus the philosophical meaning of scientific disciplines, and explains that the second field falls between the cracks because it requires both scientific understanding and philosophical tools. It describes a conference at which Itamar Pitowsky remarked to a physicist that “philosophy is also a profession,” to illustrate that scientists speak nonsense when they enter philosophy without training, and that philosophers have trouble speaking about the meaning of the sciences without scientific understanding. It compares this to the philosophy of Jewish law, which is divided into methodology of Jewish law versus the philosophical meaning of halakhic topics, and explains that here too a double expertise and a rare kind of motivation are required, whereas most halakhic scholars simply work and do not engage in reflection on the method itself.

Maimonides, the Principles, and Sefer HaMitzvot as the Foundational Stage for the Code of the Mishneh Torah

Maimonides is presented as unusual because he was both a clearly outstanding halakhic authority and someone with philosophical tools and reflective motivation, and therefore Sefer HaMitzvot and the principles are a rare and important work. The text argues that few dealt with the “technology” of counting the commandments, both in the halakhic world and in academia, where people focus more on the reasons for the commandments and less on the technical questions of how one counts and what such counting means. Yerucham Fishel Perla is presented as a rare later figure with “the soul of a researcher,” who wrote three volumes on Rav Saadia Gaon’s Sefer HaMitzvot and examined in a systematic and empirical way how Maimonides’ principles work in relation to different enumerations of the commandments.

The Mishneh Torah as a Code, the Question of Classification, and Thematic Versus Categorical Divisions

The Mishneh Torah is defined as the only halakhic code ever written in the full sense of classification, distillation, and decision across all areas of Jewish law in a complete law book, and Maimonides did this on his own. Creating a code requires methodology and raises the difficult problem of classification: creating “slots” that cover the entire field without overlaps and without holes, and the text illustrates this through the almost unsolvable idea of an “encyclopedia of modes of analysis,” where the key problem is how to classify lines of reasoning. The Tur’s division into four sections is presented as a categorical division that distinguishes between legal rules in the judicial sense and laws that are not based on rights-corresponding-to-obligations, and the text explains why charity and interest appear in Yoreh De’ah and not in Choshen Mishpat. The story about Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky is used to show that fixed interest is “recoverable in court” by virtue of coercing commandment observance, and therefore the borrower is not actually a litigant but a witness, and this demonstrates that halakhic classification is conceptual work. Maimonides is described as classifying mainly by subject matter rather than categorically, unlike the Tur, who for the first time established the conceptual category of “laws with a legal-judicial character.”

The 613 Commandments as a Tool for Building the Structure of the Mishneh Torah and the Problems in Enumeration

Maimonides chooses the 613 commandments as a tool that ensures comprehensive coverage of Jewish law, while excluding independent rabbinic commandments such as Hanukkah and Purim, which require a unique collection of laws. The text emphasizes that counting the 613 is not trivial, because the Sages hardly dealt with enumeration, and exegetical interpretations and derivations make it possible to arrive at either more or fewer commandments, and questions such as whether the four species are one commandment or four are not resolved by the plain sense alone. The example of “violating two prohibitions” in the laws of interest shows that even when the Talmud speaks in the language of multiple prohibitions, Maimonides can still count this as one prohibition in Sefer HaMitzvot, so there is no simple correspondence between Talmudic formulations and the rules of enumeration.

The Source of the Principles, Maimonides’ Critique of the Halakhot Gedolot, and the Structure of the Fourteen Principles

Maimonides is unwilling to accept the enumerations of commandments that preceded him, and especially attacks the Halakhot Gedolot, which everyone had followed, and therefore he is obligated to give a public accounting and to establish orderly rules of enumeration. The fourteen principles are determined according to a criterion of novelty or dispute, particularly where someone “erred,” mainly the Halakhot Gedolot, and Maimonides bases many of them on reasoning, with only secondary use of rabbinic sources. The text presents an internal division between substantive principles, such as the first principle that rabbinic commandments are not counted, and the second principle concerning commandments derived from interpretation that are considered rabbinic in status, and principles of classification, such as unifying parts of a commandment like the four species, or cases in which the same command is repeated many times. It notes Maimonides’ fondness for the number fourteen according to Rabbi Daniel HaBavli, including the fourteen books of the Mishneh Torah and the fourteen principles, and raises additional divisions, such as time-dependent principles like one-time commandments and the question whether a daily commandment is counted once.

The 613 as a Binding Number, Nachmanides, and the Emergence of Halakhic Disputes

Nachmanides, Ralbag, and Tashbetz raise the question of who says there are 613 commandments, and why an aggadic exposition of Rabbi Simlai should obligate the structure of Jewish law, but Nachmanides accepts it as a binding tradition because of the way the generations accepted the number. The constraint of 613 requires Nachmanides to remove commandments from Maimonides’ count and insert others in order to remain within the number, and therefore disputes about counting sometimes give rise to necessary halakhic claims. The example of separating terumah and giving it to the priest is presented as a dispute over whether this is one commandment or two, where the split in Nachmanides reflects a halakhic conception of the independent status of the giving itself, and a need arises to ground that halakhically in order to justify the count. The text states that it is difficult to infer from the enumeration of commandments what is Torah-level and what is rabbinic, because there are Torah-level laws that are not counted, such as half-measure prohibitions and beautifying a commandment, and therefore the halakhic implications of the count are indirect and depend mainly on the constraint of 613 and on structural decisions.

The Language of the Works, Accessibility, and Sefer HaMitzvot as an Intermediate Stage

Maimonides wrote the Mishneh Torah in Hebrew so that it would be accessible throughout the Jewish diaspora, whereas the Commentary on the Mishnah, Sefer HaMitzvot, and the principles were written in Arabic, and the text suggests that this question depends on their status as intermediate stages. The text describes the principles and Sefer HaMitzvot as a methodological ladder intended to move away from the Halakhot Gedolot and prepare the ground for the Mishneh Torah, and not as a central focus in their own right, and therefore their accessibility to the entire Jewish world was less critical. It connects this to the fact that some of Maimonides’ commentaries on the Talmud did not survive, whereas the Mishneh Torah attained a central status, and emphasizes that the placement of a law in Maimonides is meaningful because it was built from the outset with methodological thought, unlike empty pilpul generated by attempts to infer things from location and wording in other medieval authorities (Rishonim).

Explanatory Commandments, a Law Code, and Commandments That Are Not Commandments of Action

Maimonides counts positive commandments such as annulment of vows and impurity, even though these are not commandments to perform an action but define statuses and procedures, and he himself writes that there is no obligation to annul and no prohibition against annulling, and there is no prohibition against becoming impure and no commandment to become impure. The text explains this through a conception of Sefer HaMitzvot as a law book that contains explanatory clauses and definitions, as in civil law, and therefore there is room for “explanatory commandments” that provide a conceptual framework for the code. It raises a similar suspicion regarding the commandments of faith / belief as a basic normative heading that establishes the “grundnorm” from which obligation to obey begins, because in Sefer HaMitzvot there are no sections, only commandments, and therefore the presentation is made in the form of positive commandments. It concludes that Maimonides’ methodological tendency requires him to include such definitions as well, so that no halakhic category will fall between the slots of the Mishneh Torah.

Opening the Study of the Tanya and Some Initial Background

The text opens the study of the Tanya from the title page: Sefer Likutei Amarim, Part One, called the Book of the Intermediate Ones, founded on the verse “For the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it,” to explain clearly how it is indeed very near, by a path that is long and short, with God’s help, may He be blessed. The Tanya was first printed in the year 5557 in Slavita, and it is the foundational book of Chabad Hasidism, and its author, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the author of the Tanya, or the Alter Rebbe, seeks to create a systematic guide to the service of God. The book is presented as different from the collections of Hasidic homilies of its period because it is built as an orderly psychological structure that examines the powers of the soul, the struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul, and redefines the righteous person, the wicked person, and the intermediate person, while claiming that every person can reach the level of controlling his actions, speech, and thoughts.

I said that counting the commandments is something that apparently has no practical implication at all, which is why the Vilna Gaon didn’t deal with it, but indirectly a great many practical implications do come out of it. In fact, most of the later authorities’ discussion of the count of the commandments and of Maimonides’ roots—which I’ll get to in a moment—concerns the halakhic implications of these discussions. The disputes between Maimonides and Nachmanides in the glosses often do boil down to a halakhic dispute, and that’s an interesting question: why? Because in principle it shouldn’t have any implication at all. So we’ll deal with that too. I’ll just say that this topic is a bit—it’s a bit of a neglected corpse. No, not quite such a corpse, I don’t know whether it’s a commandment or not, but it’s dead. Meaning, whether it’s a commandment or not is exactly the current discussion, because the question is whether there’s any value in dealing with this corpse. Yes, I think there is, it does have significance, but that needs explanation.

And the discussion really—the discussion of counting the commandments—is part of a kind of reflective perspective, a kind of self-observation about halakhic methodology, about the structure of Jewish law, and so on. And that’s why I think we really find very little discussion, among both the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the later authorities (Acharonim), very little discussion of these topics. Even those who counted commandments didn’t make a big issue out of it. The Halakhot Gedolot counted the commandments and moved on. Maimonides decided to devote roots to it, to deal with it in a very systematic way, but that’s rare. That usually isn’t what happens. Even Sefer HaChinukh wrote something for his son and never imagined that afterward we’d be splitting hairs over it to the end of the generations.

So involvement in this field reflects a certain awareness—I’d even say a modern awareness—of taking a look at the methodology of the field I myself am engaged in. That’s something you usually don’t find very much. Very few medieval authorities (Rishonim) gave themselves an account of how Jewish law works; they simply worked. They didn’t look back and say: there are rules, there are principles, it works this way and not that way. That’s a very modern kind of perspective.

More than that: even in the modern world, think for example about philosophy of science. Philosophy of science is basically divided into two subfields, I think. What people usually study in philosophy-of-science courses is the methodology of science: how science works—falsification, generalizations, observations, and the like. But there’s another field, which is the philosophical meaning of particular scientific fields—quantum theory, neuroscience, biology, relativity, whatever. Those are two completely different fields. Usually, philosophy of science deals with the first and not the second. And the reason is that in order to deal with the second, you have to understand science, and philosophers often don’t really understand science.

To say something about the meaning of quantum theory, you need to understand quantum theory well; or neuroscience, or whatever scientific field it may be. And so that second kind of field falls between the cracks. Because on the one hand, the ones who can talk there are mainly scientists. On the other hand, scientists often say nonsense there when they don’t understand philosophy. So yes, I was once here at a conference—even before I got here, I came to some conference here, I don’t even remember the topic anymore—and some retired American physicist came and spoke there about something, I don’t remember what, some philosophical idea in physics. And then someone in the audience, Itamar Pitowsky from Hebrew University, who died relatively young, raised his hand at the end of the lecture and said to him: listen, philosophy is also a profession. He felt that if he was a physicist he could say whatever he wanted, but no—people often say nonsense in these areas. I think I have lots of examples of that.

In any case, what this reflects is that in order to deal with fields of this kind, you need scientific knowledge, philosophical knowledge, and motivation—that is, this interface has to interest you—which is actually pretty rare. Very few people can deal with these fields. And even when people do deal with them, as I said, in this area of the philosophical meaning of scientific fields, there’s little engagement. As a field, as a discipline, philosophy of science deals with the first part, the methodology of science. And the people who deal with that are usually philosophers, not scientists. Scientists don’t even know what the philosophers are talking about when they engage in these fields; scientists just work.

Philosophers live with a bit of the same feeling as in game theory. In game theory, whenever you hear a lecture, they explain what a wonderful field it is and how practical it is and how it can be used. Nonsense. It has virtually no use, except in truly rare cases. In places where it can be used, it’s mostly just common sense; you don’t need to be a mathematician for that. The prisoner’s dilemma or the basic things in game theory—anyone with common sense understands them, you don’t need mathematics. What? The Nobel Prize has nothing to do with it. Applicability and a Nobel Prize are not necessarily connected. Game theory isn’t—listen to Aumann when he got the Nobel Prize and see that when he talks and explains what game theory says about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whether you agree or disagree, what he says is trivial. There’s nothing mathematical there. And without belittling him—he’s a smart man—but these are not practical fields in that sense, except in genuinely exceptional cases. There are cases where yes, but it’s rare.

And in fact there’s also a big debate in game theory about what the goal of engaging in game theory is supposed to be. Because game theory is basically a mathematical theory. Now human beings don’t operate according to mathematical theories; they usually don’t even match the findings. People do stupid things, in short. And the debate in game theory is whether this really is a branch of mathematics, as is usually accepted—but then it isn’t supposed to predict anything that will happen in the world, because in order to predict that you need to assume what are called rational agents. That is, people who act rationally to maximize their utility function. That doesn’t happen very often, and therefore there are indeed people who argue that this is really a branch of psychology and not mathematics. You’re trying to see how human beings actually operate, not how they ought to operate. In mathematics you discuss how human beings ought to operate. Here, if you want to know what really happens, you need to discuss how human beings do operate, not how they should operate—and that’s definitely not the same thing.

Anyway, for our purposes, you also need a kind of—in philosophy of science too, philosophers of science are convinced that they are guiding scientists on how one ought to work and how one ought not to work. Except that none of the scientists reads what they write at all; it interests no one except those engaged in philosophy of science. Usually the situation is the opposite: scientists do what they do, and afterward philosophers come and explain what they did. Afterward.

Now for our purposes: the same thing happens in the halakhic context too. In the halakhic context too, one can talk about the philosophy of Jewish law and divide it into two similar subfields. One can talk about the methodology of Jewish law: what is a dispute, is there halakhic truth, what is a halakhic ruling, and all sorts of things of that kind. And one can talk about the philosophical meaning of particular halakhic fields or particular halakhic passages. And here too, by the way, it’s the same. The people who deal with philosophy of Jewish law are usually people who come more from the world of philosophy; they often don’t really understand Jewish law, and therefore they deal with the first kind of questions. And there too they don’t always say sensible things. But with the second kind of questions you have to understand Jewish law well, and also have philosophical tools, and that is already rarer. And of course you need a certain motivation. You have to be a person who has an interest in the methodology of the field he himself is engaged in, and that’s not something you find either among scientists or among halakhic authorities. Even in the modern world, but certainly if it exists at all, it’s a modern trait. You find it more in later generations. It existed occasionally before too, but it awakened in a more significant way in later generations, and therefore it became a discipline in its own right. Philosophy of science, for example, okay? There are people now trying to establish a philosophy of Jewish law too; there have even been a few conferences and a few such essays, but it’s still in its infancy.

In any case, Maimonides in this sense is an exceptional person. He’s exceptional because first of all he understood both fields. That is, he was both a clear halakhic man and also had the philosophical tools, the philosophical mode of looking at things, the interest, the motivation, in the methodology of Jewish law—yes, the reflection, the reflective perspective. He had all of that, and therefore his work Sefer HaMitzvot and what precedes it, the roots, is a very unique work, very rare in the halakhic world, if there is anything else like it at all. And in that sense it is, first, very rare, but second, precisely because of that, very important. And somehow, for some reason, very few have dealt with it.

So in the halakhic world very few dealt with it because people in the halakhic world aren’t so interested in the methodology of Jewish law, in how Jewish law works. You need to have a researcher’s soul for that. But what’s surprising is that even in the research world outside the halakhic world, very few dealt with the technology of counting the commandments. They dealt with the meaning of the commandments, the reasons for the commandments, things like that. If you look at the books that deal with Maimonides’ Sefer HaMitzvot, they usually classify it according to types of commandments and reasons for the commandments and things of that sort, and much less with the technical questions of how one counts commandments, what it means if a commandment is counted or not counted—in short, the roots. There is almost no engagement with the roots in the academic world, and that really surprised me when I discovered it for the first time, when I was asked to write an article for a volume for Rabbi Rabinovitch’s eightieth jubilee. I surveyed the literature on this topic and found that it was truly extremely sparse. Something I would have expected to be perhaps the most popular thing in the world of Talmudic scholarship, because apparently this is really the meat and wine of the field—the meat and bread of the field. But no, it’s quite rare.

So it seems to me one has to understand what the significance is, generally speaking, of counting commandments and of the roots. But if one is interested in this field, then I think that Maimonides’ work, the roots, and his counting of the commandments are foundational areas or foundational works, and it is very important to deal with them in order to understand this field.

Now, how exactly does this story work? First of all, you have to know: I’m now focusing on Maimonides. Through Maimonides we’ll see a bit more what the significance of counting commandments is and so on. But since Maimonides gave us a kind of report on how he worked and how he thought, it’s worthwhile to do it through him, to focus on what he wrote.

Yerucham Fishel Perla, in his work on Saadia Gaon’s Sefer HaMitzvot—does he deal with counting commandments, or did he just hitch a ride on it? No, no, he definitely deals with it. One of the only people in the later generations who really had a researcher’s soul was Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla. You know the Sefer HaMitzvot of Saadia Gaon? It’s worth knowing. By the way, there are Saadia Gaon’s Azharot and Saadia Gaon’s Sefer HaMitzvot, which are two very similar compositions and yet two different compositions. There’s an article by Rabbi Sabato on this, I think, in the volume for Rabbi Rabinovitch that I mentioned earlier. Saadia Gaon wrote two words on every commandment—I mean, his Sefer HaMitzvot is, I don’t know, four or five pages. But Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla—three volumes like this. In the yeshivot they joke that it’s Yerucham Fishel Perla’s Sefer HaMitzvot with Saadia Gaon’s notes. And there he deals completely with methodology, with a very very rare awareness in the learned world of methodology, of broad questions—very rare. An amazing book, by the way, in my opinion, Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla’s work on Saadia Gaon, a fascinating book, truly exceptionally rare.

In any case, yes, I’ll also make some use of him, because at the beginning of the book he has a section on every root. That is, on each root he comments and discusses whether Saadia Gaon agreed with this root or not, which of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) agree, which do not agree, what the significance of the root is. He is almost the only one who dealt with this in a systematic and empirical way—that is, he simply checked it against the actual counts of the commandments to see whether his generalizations work.

Anyway, in order to understand Maimonides’ project, you have to understand what he wanted to achieve, that is, how exactly he worked. As he himself describes it—I’m expanding a little, but by and large the framework is in his words—his ultimate goal was to write the Mishneh Torah. Now with the Mishneh Torah, people don’t realize this: it is the only halakhic codex ever written. By codex I mean taking all of Jewish law, classifying it by topics, gathering all the material, selecting, refining, deciding the law in each of these matters, and writing an orderly, complete law book that covers all areas of Jewish law in a systematic and classified way, with bottom-line rulings. That’s what is called a codex project in the legal world, and it’s quite rare to find codices. There are a few famous codices throughout history, and not for nothing are they famous, because this is work considered monumental. It’s work that usually involves dozens of experts working for decades.

Take the civil code they tried to make here in Israel until a few years ago. A team of dozens of jurists sat on it, worked for not a few years, and produced something—I don’t even know if they finished it—a civil code, meaning they tried to propose some sort of codex for part of Israeli law. Meaning: classify, organize, select, cover all the topics, and present it in an orderly way. And that’s not even for all of Israeli law, only a certain part of it.

Now Maimonides, alongside all his other extensive activities, did this alone. He had to go through a great deal of material for this, but that wasn’t enough. He had to decide on a methodology: how does one even do such a thing? That, by the way, is one of the difficult questions in creating a codex. After you are already clear on what you want to do and in what order and in what form, you need to go through the materials, classify them, and put each one into the right slot. And creating the slots is a very non-simple question.

To illustrate this: for years I had an old dream of trying to create an encyclopedia of modes of analysis. You know the Talmudic Encyclopedia? It is arranged by entries, A-B-C, by topics; you can find any topic according to a clear order. Now if I want to make an encyclopedia of conceptual distinctions, of analytic methods, of modes of differentiation—here there’s a problem beyond collecting all these methods. One can go through all the halakhic literature and distill, in every place, certain techniques of how one asks, how one answers, how one distinguishes, how one differentiates, and so on. But the hardest question in this field is how to create the classification. Try to think: okay, I have many arguments and distinctions, I’ve arranged them, organized them, now I need to write them into an encyclopedia. Okay? According to what key? How do I build the order of this encyclopedia? After all, this encyclopedia needs to be such that when someone is looking for an argument—say he’s stuck on a question and says, let’s see what kinds of arguments might be relevant to answer this question—he’ll open my encyclopedia and look. Now how will he search for the arguments? By what? What are they called? I mean, how do you classify these arguments? What will the order of classification be? That’s a problem. I don’t even know whether it’s solvable.

Once someone approached me—he had both funding and motivation to do this from Otzar Mefarshei HaTalmud—and he asked me, looked for ideas for projects. I proposed this project to him. To this day I haven’t heard from him. But not for nothing. Not because I’m smarter than he is; I also don’t know how to do it. In other words, the question of classification is a hard question.

Now in the context of Jewish law it’s easier. It isn’t like an encyclopedia of arguments, because by and large you can classify by topics. Say, we know the classification of the Shulchan Arukh. The classification of the Shulchan Arukh is divided into four columns—really the classification of the Tur; the Shulchan Arukh follows it—and it is divided into four columns. In each such column there is a certain set of laws belonging to that category of the column: Orach Chayim, Yoreh De’ah, Choshen Mishpat, and Even HaEzer. And you know where to look, more or less. If you want the laws of tithes, the laws of the Sabbath, the laws of honoring father and mother, Torah study, whatever, ritual impurity and purity, all kinds of things like that. The Shulchan Arukh doesn’t have impurity and purity, but never mind, Maimonides does. So you know where to look more or less; you look at the headings, at the table of contents, you know where to look. The classification is relatively, relatively, relatively simple.

But it’s not such a simple thing. I’ll speak a little about the question of classification because it’s an interesting question. For example, a question that I’ve also written about and dealt with not a little—I also have a reflective tendency: how do you define Choshen Mishpat? What is Choshen Mishpat, really? Now when you look at Choshen Mishpat, people, when I ask this question, say: monetary law, between one person and another, something like that. And then I ask: wait a second, what about interest and charity? Those appear in Yoreh De’ah, not in Choshen Mishpat. But these too are monetary laws between one person and another. So why do they appear in Yoreh De’ah and not in Choshen Mishpat?

Now I think everyone understands the difference, but very few people have actually paid attention to it and formulated the distinction and definition for themselves. And the first one who did this, it seems to me, was the Tur. And therefore the classification of the Tur, which we are so used to and which seems obvious to us, is very far from obvious. The Tur essentially gathered a whole collection of laws and called all these kinds of laws Choshen Mishpat. What does Choshen Mishpat mean? It means laws of a legal character. And laws of a legal character means laws in which the obligation imposed on me is founded on a right that you have. That is what is called legal laws.

In the legal world they call this Hohfeld’s table. Hohfeld’s table places opposite one person’s right the duty of another person or of others, and it’s always corresponding. There is no right without a duty opposite it and no duty without a right opposite it. Now what is confusing in Jewish law—to the point that some claim there is no language of rights in Jewish law at all, only a language of duties, which is of course a mistake—is that in Jewish law it is not always like that. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. For example, in Yoreh De’ah the obligations are not obligations matched by rights. When I have to give charity to a poor person, the poor person does not have a right to receive charity from me. If I don’t give him the charity, he cannot take me to a religious court and sue me for not giving him what is due him, because it isn’t due him. He has no right to receive charity. I have an obligation to give him charity. Some would formulate this as an obligation between man and God; that’s not precise. It is a commandment between one person and another, but it is not an obligation toward the other person. He has no right, and therefore he cannot take me to court.

By contrast, if I damaged him or borrowed from him and didn’t repay him, he can take me to court and sue me. Why? Because he has a right to receive the money from me. And by virtue of that right I have an obligation to pay him. That right creates my obligation to pay him, not to infringe his rights. And if I do not do that, then his rights have been violated; he goes to the religious court and asks for protection. The religious court is supposed to protect people whose rights have been infringed.

By contrast, what happens in Yoreh De’ah is not the concern of the religious court. It may interest a halakhic decisor, not a judge, not a religious court. Why? Because Yoreh De’ah is not about violating your rights. Yoreh De’ah is about my failure to fulfill my obligations. And my failure to fulfill my obligations is my business, not your grandmother’s business. And if you’re a poor person who didn’t get charity from me, that’s not your business. You have no right to sue me for the charity. The religious court can coerce me regarding commandments, force me to give charity, because the religious court is supposed to make sure I do what I am obligated to do. But here the religious court is not acting as a protector of your rights; it is acting as one who ensures the fulfillment of my obligations.

Exploitation appears in Choshen Mishpat because there it really is a right. There you really can sue me; if there was exploitation, you can sue me. And regarding interest, there is also the aspect of returning the interest, and there too it is only by way of coercion regarding commandments. Yes, and therefore it appears in Yoreh De’ah, and that is exactly the point. These are exactly the tricky things, where after you formulate things properly for yourself, you suddenly discover that things that seem terribly puzzling on the surface are self-evident. And the Tur had to do that work from the outset; we are trying to understand what the Tur did. The Tur created these categories. When he created the category of Choshen Mishpat and Yoreh De’ah, he decided to place charity and interest in Yoreh De’ah and not in Choshen Mishpat. And that is based on a very fundamental halakhic conception, one we perhaps would not even have noticed before someone made this division for us.

There’s a very interesting story—I’m digressing a bit, but never mind, these are interesting things—about Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky, who was chief rabbinical judge of London, the author of Chazon Yechezkel on the Tosefta, a very interesting Torah scholar. In a pamphlet he has on monetary law, he tells there that once a Jew came to him in London—he was the head of the great religious court of London; there were a number of religious courts in the city and he was the head of the great one—on appeal from a court that had judged him on matters of interest. The court had obligated him to return the interest; fixed Torah-level interest is extracted by judges. Torah-level interest—they force you to return the interest to the borrower.

Okay, with avak ribbit or rabbinic interest they do not force repayment. So he sued in religious court against a lender who had lent to him and he had paid him interest, and he demanded the interest back, saying fixed interest is extracted by judges, and he petitioned the court to extract the interest. The court said no, this is not fixed interest; it is not extracted by judges. So he said to them: From what source did you judge me? Write me the reasoning. On what basis, why did you judge me like this? Usually “from what source did you judge me” is so that I can take it and appeal. With the reasoning of the lower court, I go to the higher court and say: here is the reasoning, I don’t accept it, it isn’t right. Well, the whole concept of appeal in Jewish law is itself problematic, but never mind that now.

They told him: we don’t want to give you the reasoning, we don’t want to write it. And he came to Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky and got a third slap in the face there. Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky said: they’re right. He was stunned. Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky said to him: look, the question of returning interest is, in my terminology, a question of Yoreh De’ah and not of Choshen Mishpat. So the fact that fixed interest is extracted by judges—you, when you come to the religious court, come as a witness, not as a plaintiff. You testify that he lent with interest. You are not a plaintiff; the money is not due to you. You have a contract: you agreed with him on a loan with interest and you paid what you undertook in the contract. What do you want? The fact that he violated a prohibition—that is a matter between him and God; what does it have to do with you? Therefore, apart from the question why this wasn’t fixed interest—he didn’t detail that there—but as to the question why they didn’t write you the reasoning: because they didn’t judge you. A litigant can request the reasoning of the ruling, but you are not a litigant, you are a witness. Therefore they were right not to write you the reasoning.

That’s a great example of the fact that even fixed interest, which is extracted by judges and would seemingly belong to Choshen Mishpat, no—it belongs to Yoreh De’ah. It is extracted by judges by virtue of coercion regarding commandments, not as in a loan or tort damages where you owe because I have a right.

I bring all this to show you that classification is not trivial. And the classification made by the Tur into Choshen Mishpat, Yoreh De’ah, and his four sections is a classification that has conceptions behind it. It requires a certain conceptual labor. And again, he didn’t invent it from nothing. Already in the Talmud we find “we do not derive monetary law from ritual prohibition,” and there are categorical divisions in the Talmud too. But not the sharp conceptualization that the Tur made.

Even in Maimonides, who also made a classification—and here I come to Maimonides and our topic—he did so before the Tur and the Shulchan Arukh, but Maimonides’ classification is more primitive. Maimonides did not gather all the legal laws under one heading and allow us to understand that he really grasped the category called “the legal category,” the legal laws, laws in which duties correspond to rights. I assume he did understand it, even if perhaps he didn’t formulate it to himself, but the one who first put it on the table and conceptualized it was the Tur.

What did Maimonides do? Maimonides tried to make a division that was topic-based, not categorical. And in that sense it is essentially different from the division of the Tur. The division of the Tur is categorical, the large division into four columns. Within the columns, fine, there is division by topics. But the division into four columns is categorical. In Maimonides there are no categorical divisions. In Maimonides there is a division that is basically topic-based. It isn’t one hundred percent clear, because Sefer Mishpatim—what does Sefer Mishpatim contain? It has all sorts of things in it, laws of claims and counterclaims, lender and borrower, and things like that, but it is not the Tur’s conceptualization. It’s still more or less by topic, I would say. But it is not Rabbi Judah the Prince’s division. It is not the division into the six orders of the Mishnah and tractates within each order as Rabbi Judah the Prince did. It is a different division. It is a division according to halakhic topics, without the associativeness of the Mishnah; all the laws are found in the one place where they ought to appear, without the associative connections found in the Mishnah. Yes, a chapter called “There is no difference” in tractate Megillah—everywhere there is “there is no difference” in all areas of Jewish law, it appears in the same chapter. In Maimonides that will not happen.

You can also ask what the distinction is between a category and a topic. A topic is according to content. Say, you have the laws of a Jewish holiday. Then you write “laws of a Jewish holiday.” If you want to know what to do on a holiday, you look in the laws of a Jewish holiday. That’s a topic. A category means legal laws. Legal laws are laws where my duties correspond to your rights. You see? It’s not by topic. When you look for a law of that sort, you won’t even know whether your law is of that sort or not. You’ll look for the laws of a Jewish holiday—you know, you’re on a Jewish holiday and you want to know whether you can do this or whether it’s forbidden to do that—so the division is relatively simple, simply by topics. It’s very easy to build that division and communicate with the reader. As I said before about the encyclopedia of conceptual distinctions, when the reader is looking for a law he knows where to look. He knows there are laws of a Jewish holiday; if he’s looking for a law about a holiday, he flips through the laws of a Jewish holiday. Or the laws of impurity and purity, or the laws of honoring parents. The division is topic-based, a natural division, a simple division.

The division of the Tur is categorical. When you want to find a law, you usually won’t look for a “legal law”; you won’t know to look in Choshen Mishpat if you don’t know what Choshen Mishpat is. So it isn’t natural. Someone who didn’t know, who didn’t know the Tur, wouldn’t know how to navigate it. You won’t know where to look for the relevant law in the Tur. Choshen Mishpat, Orach Chayim, Yoreh De’ah, Even HaEzer. Okay, where do I look for the laws of tithes? No idea. If there is a Sefer Zera’im, as in Maimonides, land-dependent laws, then you know: tithes are land-dependent laws. That’s topic-based. So that division is simple, okay?

So Maimonides made his own division, but it is still topic-based and not categorical. Why did I say that his is the only codex in the history of Jewish law? Maybe Arukh HaShulchan together with the future Arukh HaShulchan is something like that too, but not exactly, and of course he also used Maimonides. First, because it contains everything: he went over every halakhic topic, went through all the halakhic sources before him, classified and refined what was there, and of course decided every question, gave a halakhic ruling in all of them. In that sense this is truly a unique codex. And in order to build such a codex—you need classification. This classification’s role is to create an effective division.

An effective division means, in mathematical terms, a division where on the one hand there are no overlaps—the different sets are disjoint—and on the other hand they cover the whole space. There are no holes either. There’s no overlap between them, but there are no gaps between them either, so they cover everything. That means there is no law that gets missed and falls between the books or between the topics. So to create such a division—think for a moment, if you had to create such a division—it is very unclear how one does it. How do you make sure you didn’t miss anything? How do you make sure no gap remains uncovered? So to create such a division, even if it is topic-based and not categorical, is not trivial work.

Now in order to create this thing, Maimonides decided to use the 613 commandments. A very sensible decision, and one that seems almost inevitable, because once you cover 613 commandments, you know you’ve covered everything. Within the commandments there are details, but broadly speaking you’ve covered everything. Now that isn’t entirely precise. There are rabbinic commandments that won’t enter into the 613 commandments, and they themselves are divided into several types. There are rabbinic commandments that do fall under a Torah-level commandment. For example, in the laws of the Sabbath, there are rabbinic restrictions. Those restrictions can be an expansion of the categories of labor on the Sabbath. So no problem, you don’t need a separate section in the Mishneh Torah for that. You can include it in the laws of the Sabbath. But there are commandments like Hanukkah and Purim, for example, which are rabbinic commandments that do not branch out of some Torah-level commandment, but are rabbinic commandments that are a category unto themselves. And therefore in Maimonides there is indeed one book, or one collection of laws, that is exceptional, all of it rabbinic laws: the laws of Hanukkah and Purim. Because in the overall division of Jewish law, you have to make sure you don’t miss anything. So all the rabbinic laws, laws given to Moses at Sinai, and all things of that sort, you can put under the classification of Torah-level commandments. They won’t necessarily be Torah-level commandments, but the classification will cover these topics. Okay? But there are rabbinic commandments that are independent commandments, and there you won’t cover them by that topic-division; you need to create legal units that are rabbinic laws.

So Maimonides essentially chose the 613 commandments in order to generate his division. And here he enters project number two. Or project minus one, if you like—going backward. The project before the project of the Mishneh Torah, or before creating the tree, the topic-tree of the Mishneh Torah: how do you count commandments? A very non-trivial question.

Now the Talmud gives us a hint that there are 613 commandments. Rabbi Simlai, at the end of tractate Makkot: 613 commandments, “Moses commanded us the Torah”—Torah is 611—and “I am the Lord” and “You shall have no other gods” we heard directly from the Almighty, making 613. Okay? So we already have a kind of framework that gives us a hint for the work. But that’s all. The question is how do you collect the 613 commandments? Try going through the Torah and gathering all the commandments. Either you’ll get many more or many fewer. In the Torah itself you won’t find many of these things; there are expositions, there are interpretations, there are… What? The Chinukh? First of all, the Chinukh copied Maimonides. He copied Maimonides, yes. Except for two commandments. Never mind; he arranged it according to the Torah portions, but the count of the commandments in the Chinukh is the count of Maimonides, except for one or two, I think, where there’s a deviation. And even there he didn’t go through the portions and extract the commandments from them. He went through Maimonides’ commandments and divided them according to the portions. That is, he printed it in a different order. But the question of how you decide what the 613 commandments are is a very difficult question.

Almost all the halakhot and Torah-level commandments we have are not things plainly written in the Torah. They are interpretations and expositions of the sages. How should you know? The four species—is that four commandments or one? I don’t know. In Saadia Gaon it isn’t 613? What? In Saadia Gaon it isn’t 613? No, 613, 613. Is it also 613? Yes, for everyone it’s 613. There were many before Maimonides—I’ll talk about those who came before him.

In any case, this project of counting commandments is a very non-simple project. The question of how to extract it from the Torah, the Talmud, and all the earlier literature is hard enough. The bigger problem is that even if you want to use and summarize what the sages said, you won’t succeed, because the sages hardly dealt at all with counting commandments. There aren’t statements of the sages in the Talmud about what enters the count of the commandments and what does not. Sometimes there are side remarks like “he violates two prohibitions,” and things like that, and even there it’s not entirely clear to what extent that really speaks about the counting of the commandments.

For example, “he violates two prohibitions”—I already mentioned this—at the beginning of tractate Bava Metzia, in “Eizehu Neshekh,” there are two prohibitions regarding interest: neshekh and tarbit. Okay? Now these prohibitions overlap. In every place where there is the prohibition of neshekh there is the prohibition of tarbit, and vice versa. The Talmud itself says there’s no practical difference between them. Among the later authorities there’s a sport of trying to create a practical difference, situations where you violate neshekh but not tarbit, or the reverse, but in principle they overlap completely. The Talmud asks why it said this in “Eizehu Neshekh”: in order that one violate two prohibitions.

Now Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah brings this—that there are two prohibitions, neshekh and tarbit, and one who violates it violates two prohibitions. But if you look in Sefer HaMitzvot you’ll see that it is one prohibition. So even in a place where the Talmud says “in order that one violate two prohibitions,” Maimonides does not use that; for him it is one prohibition. Which means there is a huge gap here. How do you even approach this project? You have to invent it from nothing. You can’t rely on what preceded you—I mean in the sages. There were counters of the commandments before Maimonides, but in the sages themselves—so you have to decide for yourself what the rules of counting are. How do you decide what enters the count and what does not?

Now, how do you decide that? We’ve moved to the next question. How does one decide the rules of counting? Where do you get the rules of counting from? So yes, as Doron mentioned earlier, there were counters of the commandments before Maimonides: Al-Bargeloni, Saadia Gaon, and Halakhot Gedolot. Halakhot Gedolot was the main one for them all; Maimonides says they all followed him. By the way, Saadia Gaon did not follow him, and there’s good reason to think that Maimonides did not know Saadia Gaon’s count of the commandments; there’s also an article by Rabbi Sabato about that. But he apparently did not know Saadia Gaon’s count of the commandments.

Maimonides also writes that all the counters of the commandments before him were liturgical poets, with a kind of dismissiveness. No need to take them too seriously. Yes, he knew Halakhot Gedolot, and therefore this is a bit surprising. But he had… he had a harsh criticism of Halakhot Gedolot, even a mocking one. But Saadia Gaon he apparently did not know. And he was not willing to accept the counts of the commandments that preceded him; he decided to create a count of his own. For several reasons, which I’ll discuss later, but first of all because he simply disagreed with them. And once you disagree with someone, and that someone is dominant and considered the authority in this field of counting commandments—Halakhot Gedolot, whom everyone follows—you have to give an account, both to yourself and to the public, if you decide to count commandments differently. So you need to give rules, to explain where you agree with Halakhot Gedolot, where you disagree and why, bring proofs, persuade the public. You have to persuade people that your count is the correct one.

And therefore Maimonides’ next step was to create a set of rules that determine how commandments are counted. And that is what is called, in the translation that became standard, the roots—the 14 roots of Maimonides that are printed before Sefer HaMitzvot, where Maimonides determines the rules by which he counts or does not count a commandment. Where did he draw those rules from? There are two main sources, two kinds of sources. The more secondary kind is the sages, or at least how Maimonides understands them. The main kind is simply reason, Maimonides’ own logic. Maimonides was a very optimistic type, decisive and self-confident. As far as he was concerned, what his intellect said—if someone didn’t understand it, he was an idiot. Meaning, it was obvious. He was not a great skeptic. And therefore a large part of the roots, you can see, are based on his own logic. And naturally that doesn’t stop him from going after Halakhot Gedolot very sharply if he disagrees with the root in question.

And indeed, in Maimonides you can see in at least one place that he writes—in the first root he writes, and the first root is that one does not count rabbinic commandments—he says, you’ll ask why I bring this root at all. It’s obvious that one does not count rabbinic commandments; after all, 613 commandments are from Sinai, so why count rabbinic commandments? So he says: although this is obvious, I brought it because there are those who erred in this root. And whenever he speaks of “those who erred,” that means Halakhot Gedolot. He doesn’t mention Halakhot Gedolot by name in the roots—though I think he mentions him once—but all the disputes he has in the roots are with Halakhot Gedolot. That is the address.

What do we learn from this? That in Maimonides’ 14 roots he has two criteria for what will enter there—which rules. There were more rules than those 14. What enters into these rules? Things that either are not simple and contain some novelty, or even if they are simple, if there is someone who erred about them—mainly Halakhot Gedolot. That is the criterion. So the 14 rules Maimonides brings here are rules that are either not simple and must be introduced and established, or are not agreed upon. Okay? But besides these there are other rules that do not appear here because they are agreed upon or simple, and therefore there is no need. In fact, they probably have to be both agreed upon and simple in order not to appear among the 14 roots. So there are more than 14 such rules. But these 14 were important enough for Maimonides to detail and formulate in an orderly way.

And that is really the thought process going backward. Now only Maimonides’ project begins. Because now he starts working. Okay, the methodological framework is clear; now we begin the work itself. In order to do the work, you have to go through all the sources that preceded you. Maimonides wrote the Commentary on the Mishnah at a young age. He also wrote commentaries on large parts of the Talmud. Apparently not on all of it, but at least two orders of the Talmud he commented on. Almost nothing has remained for us: there is Rosh Hashanah, and there is some manuscript with a commentary of Maimonides, and maybe one more tractate, I think. But of course he went through all the material, all the Geonic literature, all the halakhic midrashim, Sifra, Sifrei, Mekhilta, and the like.

And from these things he tried to derive several kinds of things. First, the principles of the count. After you determine the principles of the count, you use those principles somehow to arrive at 613 commandments. And of course this is a puzzle you have to play with a bit until you get to 613—248 positive commandments and 365 prohibitions. And after you build the 613 commandments, you have to find a topic-based division that will divide the set of commandments into an effective division. What I said earlier: without overlaps and without gaps. A complete partition, as set theory would call it.

And after you’ve done that, you take all the materials you have gone through, all the conclusions that are there, derive the conclusions in every passage, and insert them into the slots you have organized. You have now organized the slots of the Mishneh Torah through the count of the commandments: the roots, the count of the commandments, the division of the count of the commandments—you built the tree, the classificatory tree of the Mishneh Torah. And now you need to take all the sources you went through and slot all the conclusions into each of those places. After you’ve put them on index cards, in every box there are cards with all the laws relevant to that topic, and in each such legal unit you classify the laws that are there and build them in some orderly sequence. That’s how he worked.

But he concealed one thing. The verses from which the commandment is learned. That, in my opinion, Maimonides did less himself, because there he relied on the sages already. He didn’t make expositions of his own; he relied on… after all, his Sefer HaMitzvot is arranged according to the Torah, right? Maimonides? No, no, no. It is arranged into positive commandments and prohibitions in topic-based divisions. By the way, that is exactly why. Because that was his purpose. The entire purpose of Maimonides’ Sefer HaMitzvot, unlike other books of commandments, was to create a topic-based division of Jewish law. Therefore, if you look at Sefer HaMitzvot, it is divided topic-wise. All the laws of impurity and purity appear in one collection of commandments, land-dependent commandments appear in one collection of commandments—it is divided by topics. Sefer HaChinukh took this and scattered it across the Torah portions, according to the order of the portions.

And even there one had to decide to which verse to attach a commandment, because a commandment can appear in several verses in several places in the Torah. The verses themselves didn’t interest Maimonides so much, but they did interest him in the Mishneh Torah. Almost every topic in the Mishneh Torah begins with where we learn it from in the Torah. That’s also not precise: it begins with the commandments elaborated in that legal unit. From where do we learn it? There is even a rule in Maimonides that Maimonides is not particular about literal accuracy here. That is, he will bring a verse as the source for a commandment if it seems to him fitting, or nice, or called for, even though the conclusion of the Talmud was that the commandment is not learned from that verse. So it is quite clear that there his goal was not to show you from which verse this is derived; the verses are illustrations for him. The verses simply say: okay, this is written in the Torah. If you want to begin methodologically in an orderly way, there is Torah, commandments counted by the sages, and then elaboration. Okay? But he is not really committed to the Talmudic conclusion as to from which verse this is derived. There are no direct halakhic implications to that. It is only about how he presents it in the Mishneh Torah.

By the way, many have erred on this because they do not know this rule in Maimonides. For example, at the beginning of the laws of leaven and matzah, Maimonides brings there—and in my opinion the Kesef Mishneh is not right there—but the Kesef Mishneh comments that Maimonides there brings: there is a dispute between Hezekiah and Rabbi Abbahu in tractate Pesachim 22 about prohibitions of eating. According to Rabbi Abbahu, every prohibition of eating is also a prohibition of benefit unless the Torah specifies otherwise. According to Hezekiah, no: a prohibition of eating needs a separate source for the prohibition of benefit. The law follows Rabbi Abbahu, and Maimonides also rules like Rabbi Abbahu. Now at the beginning of the laws of leaven and matzah Maimonides brings a source for the prohibition of eating from “leaven shall not be eaten,” and from “leaven shall not be eaten” he derives the prohibition of benefit—which is exactly Hezekiah—while he rules like Rabbi Abbahu. So the Kesef Mishneh there brings this rule in Maimonides and says: Maimonides is not particular about the sources, but about what seems to him more methodologically fitting, clearer, more memorable, and things of that sort. By the way, there in my opinion it’s not like that; in my opinion there Maimonides means it specifically. But that’s just an example that came to mind now.

You devoted several good classes to where Maimonides learns the commandments of Yom Kippur from—the prohibition and the positive commandment regarding labor. Whether there is a prohibition and a positive commandment—not specifically where he learns it from, but whether there is. Because it isn’t clear that there is. Where he learns it from—through the Talmudic passages you get there. But Maimonides was not so occupied with the question of where.

More than that, Maimonides—for example, this is another question that troubled me—you know that there is a dispute in methods of exposition between the school of Rabbi Ishmael and the school of Rabbi Akiva. The school of Rabbi Akiva expounded inclusions and exclusions, and the school of Rabbi Ishmael expounded generalizations and specifications. The Talmud itself says this in many places. It started already with Nechunya ben HaKanah and Nachum of Gimzo; they began this, and then it passed to Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael and so on. Now there are different passages that link tannaitic disputes to this dispute about methods of exposition: this tanna expounded inclusions and exclusions; that tanna expounded generalizations and specifications.

Now if you look in Maimonides, you’ll see that he is not consistent. There are certain passages where he rules like a particular tanna, and you look in the Talmud and see that this tanna expounded generalizations and specifications. In other passages Maimonides rules like a particular tanna, and you go to the Talmud and see that it is based on expositions of inclusions and exclusions, while the exposition of generalizations and specifications disputes it. Maimonides was not strict about consistency in methods of exposition. He was strict about consistency in halakhic content—there should not be laws that contradict one another. But there is no consistency in methods of exposition. Deriving from the verses is not an area that Maimonides dealt with, in my opinion, or at least it does not seem so.

He was careful about substantive consistency: that you not write two laws that contradict one another. But if this law came from an exposition of generalization and specification, and that law came from an exposition of inclusion and exclusion, while the schools that use those methods are disputing schools, Maimonides can still rule both this and that. And he did do it—not only can he, he actually did. Did he deal with logic, for example? He dealt with logic, or with rules of deciding the law that seemed right to him, yes. He ignored the biblical infrastructure of these laws. That is how it comes out. He doesn’t write this, but I see it. It is unequivocal; there are contradictions on this matter.

Okay, so basically Maimonides’ project was this: after he builds these slots, he puts into each slot the laws relevant to it, and in the end he only arranges them in a way that will be systematic—more systematic and clear within each legal unit. Each legal unit opens with the commandments that will be elaborated in that legal unit. The count of the commandments essentially serves as a reservoir from which you take a number of commandments and place them at the heading of the laws of the Sabbath, or the laws of a Jewish holiday, or the laws of the Yom Kippur Temple service, and things like that, until you see that you have covered all 613 commandments and everything is divided in the Mishneh Torah in a complete partition—non-overlapping and without gaps—except for rabbinic laws. As I said, the laws of Hanukkah and Purim are a separate unit, and there he indeed writes that they contain two rabbinic laws, Hanukkah and Purim, that’s all. There are no Torah-level commandments there. It’s the only one. I don’t think there is another such legal unit, and in every other legal unit there are also Torah-level laws and of course rabbinic expansions as well.

What did he write first, Sefer HaMitzvot or the Mishneh Torah? Sefer HaMitzvot. That is, he worked according to this methodology. Without this methodology there is no chance at all of doing what Maimonides did. It’s impossible. This is work that an ordinary mortal cannot do. It is inconceivable what he did there. And if he hadn’t had this methodological awareness, these reflective capacities, I don’t know how one could do such a thing.

The Rif and the Rosh, for example, wrote the conclusions in the order of the Talmud. That one can do: you go through the order of the Talmud, arrive at your conclusion, and write the halakhic conclusion. To do the codex work Maimonides did—that codex work is impossible if you do not build for yourself the methodology in a very careful way. And therefore it is the only codex ever written, and he is the only person who did such methodological work: Maimonides. One must understand that.

What? Yalkut Yosef? No. Yalkut Yosef is a topic-based division where he gathers and uses existing topic-based divisions, and simply collects laws. He didn’t do any of the earlier stages there. Again, there is a great deal of knowledge and work there, all true, but it is not Maimonides’ methodological work.

More than that, in Maimonides there is even a rule that the location of a law in Maimonides is significant. That is, one can derive conclusions from it. If a particular law is located in the laws of a Jewish holiday and not in the laws of sacrifices, say, then that means it is a law in the laws of the holiday and not a law in the laws of sacrifices. This is a rule. The authors of rule-books write this. Some book by whom—perhaps HaKetav VeHaKabbalah? Maybe? I don’t know. Perhaps the Rema of Fano in Shiltei Gibborim, I think, speaks about the difference between the order in the Tur and the order in Maimonides regarding the placement of commandments. Could be, I’m not familiar.

In any case, this is a rule. And this rule wasn’t created for nothing, because that is how Maimonides built the thing. When he places a certain law in a certain book, it is out of that same methodological thought. Therefore in Maimonides we infer from his wording; in Maimonides we infer from the placement of the law in the book—something it is forbidden to do with other medieval authorities (Rishonim). Anyone who does that with other medieval authorities is engaging in empty hair-splitting. Because the other medieval authorities were not particular either about formulation or about arrangement. Many times they do things because it works out nicely, but that’s just pilpul. With other medieval authorities, making such inferences is usually a mistake. But not with Maimonides. This is how he built it; it was built from the outset with thought behind everything. One has to understand the significance of the work he did here.

And therefore, this set of 613 commandments is divided and creates the slots of the Mishneh Torah. For Maimonides, the goal of counting the commandments was a methodological goal. And that differs from other counters of the commandments, by the way. Other counters of the commandments—for example the Chafetz Chaim, with his concise count of the commandments, the commandments that apply in our time, and so on—these are counts perhaps intended to remember Jewish law, perhaps there is some idea of “and you shall remember all My commandments,” some claim one really needs to remember the commandments, to engage in counting commandments as an activity of value in itself, not as a means to something else. There are different motivations for why to count commandments. According to Maimonides, the motivation was methodological. And that can affect the question of how you count, why you include a particular commandment and not another, how you divide them, because his entire perspective was really directed toward the Mishneh Torah.

Now, years passed between Sefer HaMitzvot and the Mishneh Torah, so it does not always fit, because Maimonides sometimes changed his mind, and there are even erasures in the Commentary on the Mishnah and so on. But in principle it is one project, one ongoing project, and of course there are corrections.

Another thing to remember in the background—and Nachmanides speaks about this in his glosses to the first root, and Gersonides and the Tashbetz raise it too in Zohar HaRakia—is: who says there are 613 commandments? You assume there are 613 commandments, but who says there are 613 commandments? So the Talmud at the end of tractate Makkot says: Rabbi Simlai said, 613 commandments were said to Moses at Sinai. What verse? “Moses commanded us the Torah”—Torah is 611—and “I am the Lord” and “You shall have no other gods” we heard from the Almighty, making 613.

Fine, so we have some one amora who wrote us some number in an aggadic passage. Because of that, are we now going to reshape all of Jewish law and the whole picture? On that are we going to build the entire Mishneh Torah? Is this the foundation for everything? I don’t know. Maybe there’s even a dispute about it. More than that, Nachmanides raises this question. Maybe Rabbi Simlai counted his commandments and arrived at 613, but others who disagree with him about one commandment or another could arrive at a different number. Who says everyone has to arrive at 613? There is another assumption here, that the number 613 is a number transmitted from Sinai, a binding number. That means that if you disagree with Rabbi Simlai in his count, then instead of one commandment you have to insert another, because in the end you must arrive at 613. And at 248 and 365, not only 613, but also the internal division between prohibitions and positive commandments. Who says that’s right? Why 248 and 365? Rabbi Simlai doesn’t say that. No, but there are midrashim about it—248 and 365 corresponding to the days of the year and to the limbs. What? I can’t hear. What’s the source? Midrashim. Midrashic statements of the sages. Yes, I don’t even remember whether in the Talmud or in midrash, but there are midrashic statements about it.

Again, this whole story seems highly questionable. These are aggadic midrashim, and who knows whether this isn’t just Rabbi Simlai’s own count and someone else disagrees. Nachmanides says: I have no idea, I don’t know why everyone assumes there are 613, but somehow it seems this is probably a tradition, that there really were 613. We don’t learn it from Rabbi Simlai; we learn it from the fact that the entire tradition, all the generations, relate to Rabbi Simlai in a way that shows they take this number seriously. Therefore Nachmanides says: I have no choice, I too bow to this number, because apparently there was such a tradition, even though on the face of it he doesn’t see why.

And therefore Nachmanides, for example, when he disputes Maimonides—and he disputes him quite a lot—he removes commandments from Maimonides’ count, adds commandments to Maimonides’ count, and in the end he too has to finish with 613 commandments. And when you look at the end of Sefer HaMitzvot, where the commandments Nachmanides removed from and added to Maimonides are printed, then opposite every commandment he removes, he inserts another commandment, because he has to remain with the number 613. And therefore, in the end, this number is taken as binding by almost all counters of the commandments. There are a few who raise doubts about it; there are a few who say it need not be 613. But the accepted tradition is that indeed the number is 613, and Maimonides accepts this too—the fact is that he works under this constraint.

And this also explains for us why there are halakhic implications to the count of the commandments. Because, as I said earlier, in the count of the commandments there are a great many Torah-level laws that you will not find in the count of the commandments. There are Torah-level laws like half a measure. The dispute between Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish; the law follows Rabbi Yochanan: half a measure is prohibited by Torah law. The prohibition of half a measure does not appear in the count of the commandments. For various reasons—it may be a detail within existing commandments; that doesn’t matter right now. Beautifying a commandment also does not appear in the count of the commandments. “This is my God and I will glorify Him.” That’s a question; not a simple one. It may be true and may be not, but it is still a Torah-level law. Okay? There is beautifying a commandment. Some want to claim there isn’t, but plainly it is a Torah-level law, a Torah-level commandment.

There are of course commandments that don’t enter because of rules of classification. The four species, as I mentioned earlier, are for Maimonides one commandment, not four commandments. Okay? So there are many many things. It is very hard to derive conclusions from what appears or does not appear in Sefer HaMitzvot regarding whether something is Torah-level or rabbinic. There is no direct halakhic significance to the question of what enters the count of the commandments. And therefore, as I said earlier, the Vilna Gaon, for example, ignored this whole topic of counting the commandments.

But anyone who reads Maimonides and Nachmanides’ glosses on Sefer HaMitzvot—and even more on the roots—sees that there are many halakhic disputes between them that emerge from disputes about the count of the commandments. And why? Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla noticed this point. He argues that it is because of this datum of 613. What happens? Suppose you disagree with Maimonides. You say this commandment is rabbinic, so it cannot be in the count of the commandments. Fine. Now you are missing a commandment. You have to get to 613. Fine, so you insert another commandment, because in the end you have to get to 613. You look for where there is a commandment that Maimonides did not count and about which you disagree and think it should be counted. In order to explain why you count it, sometimes you have to present some learned halakhic argument, to explain why this is Torah-level and not rabbinic, to explain why it is not just a detail within another commandment but an independent commandment.

For example, Maimonides and Nachmanides disagree on the question of the relationship between separating terumah and giving it to the priest. Are these two commandments or one commandment? You could say this and you could say that. Nachmanides counts them as two commandments. Maimonides counts them as one commandment. Now behind this dispute there is a halakhic dispute. The question is whether giving it to the priest is part of the commandment of separation, or whether it is independent. That is, one separates, and beyond that one must give to the priest. According to Maimonides, it may be that one need not give to the priest at all; the priest acquires it from the divine table. I am not required to give to the priest. There is no commandment of giving in terumah specifically. But these disputes reflect different halakhic conceptions.

But the motivation for producing this is that I have to get to 613. So Nachmanides says: then I will split the commandment of separating terumah from the commandment of giving terumah, and thus I get to 613. But in order to split them, you have to make a halakhic claim: why really is this not one commandment but two? And thus a halakhic dispute suddenly arises between Maimonides and Nachmanides.

The later authorities deal mostly with these halakhic disputes, and hardly deal with the rules of counting themselves. These disputes are products of the arguments about counting, but there are very many such disputes. Nachmanides’ glosses on the roots are an amazing work. An amazing work. You see there Nachmanides’ absolute mastery of the material; it is simply inconceivable. The way he glides across all the literature of the sages, chiefly the Talmud but not only. All the literature of the sages, attacking Maimonides from every direction. Hundreds of sources, dozens of possibilities, really possibilities from tractate… his breadth of knowledge and control are simply frightening. And very many of these arguments ultimately map onto halakhic disputes, even though they begin as questions of counting commandments. And therefore this also has halakhic importance, and the decisors, the later authorities, the scholars basically, when they deal with the roots, deal mainly with these halakhic disputes and less with the rules of counting.

Okay. Okay. Now when I want to—maybe one more sentence on the language. Maimonides writes the Mishneh Torah in Hebrew, but the Commentary on the Mishnah and Sefer HaMitzvot he writes in Arabic. And that’s an interesting question: why? These are also earlier stages in his biography. I don’t know, maybe at that stage he had less command of Hebrew, I don’t know. But there are hints in his words about considerations as to why he does this. It isn’t explicit, but there are hints. And I have an article—I may upload it to Moodle; whoever wants can look there—the article from the volume for Rabbi Rabinovitch, where there are all the things I spoke about today, including the language issue.

Maimonides writes the Mishneh Torah in Hebrew. Why? Because if he wrote it in Arabic it would not be accessible to a large part of the Jewish world. Those living in Ashkenaz who do not read or speak Arabic could not read it. And Maimonides wants this book to attain some central standing in the Jewish world, so he has to write it in Hebrew. But precisely because of that, the question arises: why did he write the Commentary on the Mishnah, Sefer HaMitzvot, and the roots in Arabic? The feeling is somehow—and he writes this in the introduction to the Mishneh Torah—that all of these are intermediate stages, a ladder that he uses and then throws away. In the end, he writes the roots and Sefer HaMitzvot in order to get rid of Halakhot Gedolot, to explain why Halakhot Gedolot is not right. Once he convinces everyone that Halakhot Gedolot is not right and builds the Mishneh Torah on that basis, he no longer needs it. It doesn’t interest him. Those are not the subjects that really interest him. They’re drafts. They are methodological intermediate stages before he writes the Mishneh Torah. And therefore perhaps it mattered less to him that it be accessible to the whole Jewish world. He wrote it in Arabic to persuade the relevant people. Once he succeeded with them, everything was fine. They would then accept the Mishneh Torah, and once they accept the Mishneh Torah, it no longer matters. He uses the ladder and throws it away. It’s less important.

And indeed, not for nothing Maimonides’ commentaries on the Talmud were not preserved. The Commentary on the Mishnah too—parts disappeared, parts were discovered, and it was not so well preserved. Sefer HaMitzvot—no tricks, it is found everywhere. That is, Maimonides succeeded in his project. Sefer HaMitzvot attained a place of honor throughout the Jewish world. The intermediate stages less so. And apparently that too was intentional. What? Sefer HaMitzvot or the Mishneh Torah? The Mishneh Torah. Did I say Sefer HaMitzvot? Yes—the Mishneh Torah. The intermediate stages less so, and I think from the outset Maimonides intended that this would not happen to the intermediate stages. So Sefer HaMitzvot was only a means for Maimonides? Yes, a methodological means—that is my claim—and therefore this whole story mattered less to him.

So in the roots, which we’ll touch on a bit further on, one can distinguish several kinds of rules, types of rules. There are 14 rules. One of Maimonides’ descendants writes there that the number 14 was very dear to Maimonides. The Mishneh Torah—yad is 14. Fourteen books. Fourteen roots. There are—yes—13 hermeneutic principles plus one expansion at the beginning of the second root, making 14 interpretive principles. And there are more—I don’t remember right now—but there are more. He says that 248 and 365 in reduced gematria equal 14. Count it: 248 gives you 14, two plus four plus eight. As for 365, I don’t know. A nice homiletic flourish. It may be true; it may not be. Rabbi Daniel the Babylonian, one of Maimonides’ descendants, writes that the number 14 was dear to him.

In any case, there are 14 roots. One can divide these roots into a number of kinds, kinds of rules. Some of the rules are substantive rules, chiefly the first and second roots. The first root says one does not count rabbinic commandments. I mentioned earlier: Maimonides says, why is this root needed at all? It is self-evident. But Halakhot Gedolot did count rabbinic commandments. Therefore Maimonides took the trouble to write this root and establish it. So this is a substantive root, because it says of a certain law that it is not counted because of its halakhic status. It is a halakhic statement that this is a rabbinic law and not a Torah-level law.

The second root is a root that says commandments derived from expositions are not counted, because they are of rabbinic status. This is Maimonides’ well-known and unusual approach, which Nachmanides attacks strongly: laws learned from exposition are laws of rabbinic status. Yes, here the issue is the source of the commandment. Is it an explicit verse or an exposition? Yes, but from which verse? He was not occupied with biblical interpretation. If it comes from exposition, especially an exposition given by the sages, then it is rabbinic in status. There are major disputes about what “of rabbinic status” means; we’ll speak about that further. But this too is a substantive root.

By contrast, there is the eleventh root, which speaks about parts of a commandment, like the four species for example. This is not a substantive root; it is a classificatory root. I classify it as one commandment and not four commandments on classificatory grounds. But it is obvious that all of it is Torah-level—the citron, the willow, the myrtle, everything. There is no halakhic statement behind the determination that the four species are one commandment. It is a matter of classification. Okay?

There are roots that deal with interpretation, interpretation of verses in the sense of whether these are verses of command or verses of obligation. So we saw the eighth root with the negation of obligation: that is a verse of obligation and not a verse of command. There is, for example, the fifth root, which deals with explanatory verses. “He shall not multiply wives, lest his heart turn away.” “He shall not multiply wives” is the king’s prohibition, and “lest his heart turn away” is the reason. Why should he not multiply wives? So that his heart not turn away. Maimonides says this is not counted because it is a reason, not a command. So this too is similar to negating obligation. This verse is not a commandment verse, and therefore it will not enter the count of the commandments. Okay? So perhaps one could call this a substantive or interpretive root—it doesn’t matter—but it is not classification. It is something substantive.

Or for example, how to relate to preparations for a commandment. Building a sukkah, for example. Is building a sukkah a preparation for a commandment, or making the incense, preparing its ingredients and mixing them and so on—is that a commandment or not? One could say: these are preparations for a commandment. In the end one has to offer the incense. You have to prepare the incense so there is something to offer. You have to build the sukkah so there is something to sit in. But it is preparation for a commandment; it is not itself a commandment. Therefore it is not counted. This too in Maimonides is a root, I think the tenth root. The tenth root says one does not count things that are preparations for a commandment. Here too this is not classification. It is a more substantive root. He is basically saying that these things are not commandments, and therefore are not counted. If someone were to say that building the sukkah is a commandment, for example, then he would not be arguing with Maimonides only about the counting of the commandments; he would also be arguing halakhically. He would be saying: this is a commandment. For example, in the Jerusalem Talmud there are those who want to claim it is a commandment. I don’t think they’re right, but there are those who want to claim it is a commandment because one recites a blessing on building the sukkah. So here it becomes a substantive dispute. Therefore it is indeed a root.

In short, there are substantive roots and classificatory roots. There are roots about which one can argue whether they are substantive or classificatory. For example, in the… then it is not counted in the count of the commandments, even though in formulation it looks like a command. Why is it not counted? Because it merely repeats once again the obligation to fulfill the commandments. There are already commandments in the Torah; why do I need an obligation to fulfill the commandments? It is not a commandment in its own right. Now on the face of it this looks like a classificatory root. It is a commandment, but you don’t need it because it is duplicative. I already know there is a commandment to take the lulav; I don’t need another commandment that I have to fulfill commandments, because the commandments themselves say they are to be fulfilled. So this is a problem of duplication. At first glance the fourth root is a classificatory root, just a matter of duplication. But no, one can explain it there differently too. It may be that “and you shall keep all My commandments” is not a command but an expectation, like “and you shall do what is right and good” or “you shall be holy.” And therefore it is not counted, and then it becomes a substantive root and not a classificatory one.

So when we speak about the roots later, or at least some of them, I’ll ask about some of the roots whether they are classificatory or substantive. There are also roots that concern the time axis. The third root says commandments that are one-time commandments are not counted. For example, “make for yourself a fiery serpent and place it on the pole,” or collecting manna, not leaving the manna until the next day, things like that. These are not counted because they were commandments for their time only. So that is dependence on the time axis. Okay?

There is root 13 as well; it too involves dependence on the time axis. When a commandment obligates every day, we count it once and not according to the number of days on which it obligates. Commandments that obligate all 365 days—that indeed sounds strange. But on Sukkot, for example, where one has to sit in the sukkah for seven days, one could have said that there are seven commandments here: to sit in the sukkah on the 15th, on the 16th, on the 17th, and so on. No, it is one commandment. This too is, in principle, a classificatory root, not a substantive one. It is obvious that there is a commandment to sit on each of the days; the only question is whether to call that seven commandments or one commandment. That is a classificatory root. Okay?

There are more classificatory roots, like the ninth root. The ninth root speaks of the fact that, for example, the Torah repeats the obligation to keep the Sabbath twelve times, but we count one commandment, once, as I mentioned in one of the earlier classes—the ninth root, the contradiction in the ninth root. So there are twelve times the Torah repeats the obligation to keep the Sabbath, but we count one commandment. Why? Because in terms of content it is one thing. So at the classificatory level, although there are twelve commands, only one commandment appears in the count of the commandments. That is a classificatory root. Okay? So there are roots of this kind and roots of that kind. In the substantive roots, the halakhic implications are more direct. It says straightaway: this is not a commandment, therefore it is not counted, so there will be a halakhic implication. But as I said earlier, even in the classificatory roots halakhic implications can emerge indirectly.

Maybe one last point, on which I’ll stop. Because of Maimonides’ methodological aim, it was important to him to set down the roots of how to classify and what to do in order to determine the 613 commandments. Classification was very important to Maimonides, because the whole purpose of counting the commandments was in essence to organize his halakhic book by sections. This can also explain another interesting phenomenon. In Maimonides there are several commandments—in positive commandment 95 and 96—Maimonides writes this explicitly. Commandment 95 is the commandment of annulment of vows, and commandment 96 is the commandment of impurity—impurity from a corpse or impurity from a creeping thing, I don’t remember now, one of the impurities. In both these commandments Maimonides writes: don’t think this commandment commands you to do something or not to do something. There is no obligation to annul vows and no prohibition against annulling vows. Do whatever you want. If you want to annul, annul; if you don’t want to, don’t. Whatever you want. So why is there a positive commandment to annul vows? Or, one who touches a corpse becomes impure. For an ordinary Jew there is no prohibition against becoming impure and certainly no commandment to become impure. Do whatever you want. It defines for you that if you touch a corpse, you become impure.

In these two commandments—and he says this is a paradigm for other commandments too—Maimonides writes that these are counted as positive commandments even though they command nothing. So if they command nothing, why are they counted? Here is the interesting point. Look, in a law code there are some laws that are definitions; they are not commands. Say: a minor for the purposes of this law is anyone who has reached such-and-such an age and not yet reached such-and-such an age, and so on. How should we treat such a clause in a law book? Is it a law? It is a definition. It does not tell me this is permitted, this is forbidden, or this must be done. So is it a law or not? Yes, it is a law. In a law book there are clauses that define or explain. Naturally, you need that in a law book; you need to explain the concepts with which the laws deal.

Now in Sefer HaMitzvot there are such clauses too. Like annulment of vows, or impurity from a corpse. There are consequences to the question whether you are impure or not impure—whether it’s permitted or forbidden to become impure, all that is fine. After all, if you are impure it has consequences. You touch something in impurity, you render it impure, you may not enter the Temple, and various things like that. It has consequences. Each such consequence, by the way, is a counted commandment in its own right, so it’s not that we need this because of the consequences; the consequences are counted separately. But there is a clause that determines when and how you become impure. That is an explanatory clause. “Impure,” for this purpose, is anyone who touched a corpse or was under the same roof, or whatever—contact, carrying, and so on. Okay? So this is an explanatory clause. But Sefer HaMitzvot, in Maimonides’ terms translated into our language, is the law book. The commandments are the laws. And just as in a law book there are explanatory laws, so too in Sefer HaMitzvot there are explanatory commandments. They command nothing, but they explain concepts.

Some would say—though in my opinion not rightly—this about the commandment of divorce or the commandment of slaughter. No, if you want to slaughter, slaughter; if you don’t want to slaughter, don’t. If you slaughtered, one may eat; if you didn’t slaughter, one may not eat. That is a definition. Apparently there is no commandment to slaughter. We infer there is one because one recites a blessing on slaughter, but in principle one could have said there is no commandment here; it’s just a procedure, just a definition. The same with divorce. There is no commandment to divorce one’s wife. But if you divorced her, she is divorced; if you did not, she is not. Okay? That is a definition. But these things appear in Sefer HaMitzvot.

Now those two specifically are not good examples, in my opinion, of actual commandments. But in principle there are commandments that appear in Sefer HaMitzvot because Sefer HaMitzvot, for Maimonides, is the law book. It isn’t really “the book of commandments.” And just as in a law book there are explanatory clauses, so in Sefer HaMitzvot there are explanatory clauses. Therefore this will appear there. Now you place it either among the positive commandments or among the prohibitions, because those are the only two categories you have, even though it commands you nothing.

I once suspected—I don’t know if I’m right—that the commandment of faith is also like this. Positive commandment no. 1: to know that there is a First Being, yes, the commandment to believe in the Holy One, blessed be He. Okay? That is a very problematic commandment; it cannot be a positive commandment for many reasons. People have already elaborated at length in questioning Maimonides on this matter. I suspect it appears there as the heading of the law book. The heading of the law book is that one must believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, and that begins the whole story. That is what is called the basic norm in Kelsen’s theory of law—the Grundnorm, in German, or the basic norm—the thing from which everything begins. The thing from which everything begins is commitment to the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, at Sinai. So that is fitting to write as the opening clause of the law book.

Now there are no “clauses” in the law book of the commandments; there are commandments. The clauses in the law book are commandments. So Maimonides calls this positive commandment no. 1: to believe. But he does not really mean that there is a commandment to believe. If you don’t believe, there’s no point in commanding you, right? The problems with this commandment are well known. And that is only one of the problems. So all these kinds of so-called commandments that appear in Maimonides are also explained through his methodological aim. You understand that if Maimonides wants to cover all of Jewish law and he uses Sefer HaMitzvot as the rubrics, as the tree of classification, then he has to include these things too. He has to write a legal unit in which it is determined how a person becomes impure and how a person does not become impure, when he is impure, when he is first-degree impurity, when he is second-degree impurity, and so on. If there is no commandment of impurity, then you will miss a whole category of laws. You won’t include it. He must not miss anything. Therefore, for Maimonides, everything that will be in the law book has some root in Sefer HaMitzvot, even if it is not something that is a commandment, even if it is not a commandment in the ordinary sense of the word. And that is because of his classificatory goal. Because of his classificatory goal, he has to include these things in Sefer HaMitzvot as well.

All right, I’ll stop here. And as I said earlier, the recordings go up to Moodle, so anyone who wants to listen—if you missed something, or just want to hear it again—you can listen there. And when there are articles or sources that anyone who wants can read and see more about what we discussed, I’ll upload that to Moodle too. So take a look there from time to time.

On my website there are all the recordings, but not the materials—that is, all my articles are on the website, but not under this course. All my articles are on the website, but not under this course. There you’ll find all the previous courses. There is a whole course there on the Maharal, a whole course on Rabbi Kook, a whole course on Hasidism, on modern Jewish thought. Here, on the site for this course, you’ll find only the materials for this course.

Today we’ll open Sefer HaTanya. We’ll start from the beginning, from the title page of the book. “Sefer Likkutei Amarim, Part One, known by the name Sefer Shel Beinonim. Based on the verse, ‘For the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it,’ to explain well how it is indeed very near by a long and short path. With God’s help, it will be explained.”

We’ll say a little about the background of the book before we begin reading inside. Sefer HaTanya, first printed in 1797 in Slavita, is the foundational book of Chabad Hasidism. The author, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, known as the author of the Tanya or the Alter Rebbe, sought here to create a systematic guide to the service of God. This book differs from other Hasidic works of that period, which were usually collections of homilies or brief sayings. Here there is an ordered psychological structure that examines the powers of the human soul, the struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul, and lays out a path for that person who is not a complete righteous person, but rather the intermediate person. We will see throughout the chapters how the author of the Tanya redefines concepts like righteous person, wicked person, and intermediate person, and how he explains that every person can reach a level in which he controls his actions, his speech, and his thoughts.