Lesson 5: Category 2 — The Thirteenth Root

From the book Roots Outstretched by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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With God’s help.

The Thirteenth Root

The number of commandments is not multiplied by the number of days on which a given commandment is obligatory

The nature of circular time axes

This essay is the second and last in the second category, out of the five we defined in the introduction: roots that concern the halakhic meaning of time. In the previous essay, which dealt with the Third Root, we noted that in halakha (Jewish law) there are two kinds of time axes: linear and circular. We also saw there that there are mitzvot (commandments) that depend directly on those time axes—that is, merely being at a given point in time itself creates the obligation of the mitzvah, as opposed to indirect dependence on time, which exists almost always. The Third Root dealt with mitzvot that depend on the historical time axis, that is, the linear axis. In the present essay we will deal with dependence on circular time axes, and with the halakhic implications of those dependencies.

At first glance, this root too, like its predecessor, seems trivial, and certainly universally accepted—to the point that one wonders why Maimonides found it necessary to include it among his roots. See our remarks in the introductory essay about the fact that he did not include simple and universally accepted principles.

Accordingly, the most difficult question raised by this root is the very need for it. In the previous root we showed that it was indeed accepted and simple, yet it concealed important insights concerning the concept of a mitzvah, and with respect to those insights we even found various disputes among the medieval authorities. Apparently those disputes are what led Maimonides to discuss it. It seems that here too we must seek the explanation in that direction.

This root, of course, does not concern the discussion of the essence of the mitzvot, nor does it concern their halakhic force. No one thinks that there is no mitzvah to lay tefillin every day, or that the fact that we do not count 365 such mitzvot stems from any leniency in the halakhic status of tefillin. If so, this root does not belong to those roots that deal directly with the essence of the mitzvot. As we shall see, it does concern the character and essence of circular time axes, and from it one can draw various conclusions on meta-halakhic planes.

A. The Course of the Discussion

Maimonides’ words in this root are very brief, so the simplest way to open the discussion is to quote them here, with comments, in their own language:

It is clear that there are commandments that become obligatory during a fixed span of known time. Sometimes that span is continuous, so that the act of that commandment is required day after day, as with sukkah and lulav (positive commandments 168-169). At other times the obligation falls on specified days, as with the offerings. Thus, for example, the additional offering of each Rosh Hodesh is one commandment: the commandment that we were commanded to offer an additional sacrifice whenever the moon is renewed.

Up to this point Maimonides points to two kinds of mitzvot, both referring to commandments whose period of applicability is limited in time. For the sake of completeness, we should add here a third type: there are mitzvot whose obligation is one-time, on a particular day in the year; there are mitzvot that recur over several days, but not throughout all time, such as sukkah and lulav; and there are mitzvot that recur from time to time in cyclical fashion, such as the additional offerings of the New Moons, which recur at every Rosh Hodesh.

It is worth noting that Maimonides does not mention here commandments whose obligation rests on us every day, such as Torah study, laying tefillin, burning the incense, preparing the lamps, prayer, the recitation of the Shema, fear of God, and love of God.¹ These commandments too depend on time, except that the period during which they apply is the entire time axis. At first glance, that is only a special case of the mitzvot to which Maimonides is referring here, and yet it is noteworthy that he does not bring them into the discussion here.

Maimonides now arrives at the principal question with which this root is concerned:

If someone says: Why should not the additional offering of each and every month be counted as a separate commandment? we answer him: If that were so, then the daily burnt offering of each and every day should also be counted as a separate commandment, and the burning of incense on each day of the year as a separate commandment, and the preparation of the lamps each and every day as a separate commandment. But since what is counted is only the commanded matter, however often it becomes obligatory, the additional offering of Rosh Hodesh is only one commandment (positive commandment 42), the additional offering of Sabbath is one commandment (positive commandment 41), and likewise the additional offering of each festival among the five festivals (positive commandments 47-51), even though it becomes obligatory on many consecutive days.

First, let us note that within the framework of the reason Maimonides gives for not counting each such mitzvah separately, he does in fact refer to the continuous and daily mitzvot. He explains that if we were to count the commandment to bring a musaf on every Rosh Hodesh, or on every festival, as a separate mitzvah, then we would also have to count each of the daily commandments as 365 mitzvot—or 730, if there is an obligation twice each day, as with the Shema or the incense. And yet it remains true that Maimonides’ question did not address these mitzvot themselves; they are brought here only as part of the reasoning in the answer. The conclusion is that for Maimonides the principle that daily commandments are not counted separately was already clear before this discussion began. Here he merely uses it in order to justify the less obvious principle regarding mitzvot that recur from time to time.

Later in his remarks Maimonides adds another reason:

For it is like what was said: “And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days” (Leviticus 23), and likewise it says there: “Seven days you shall present an offering by fire.” Just as the commandment of lulav is one commandment (positive commandment 169), so too the commandment of the musaf of Passover is one commandment (positive commandment 43). And likewise the musaf of each festival period (positive commandments 45-51). From this it becomes clear that the festival peace-offering is also one commandment (positive commandment 52), though it becomes obligatory at three pilgrimage festivals; and so too the appearance-offering and rejoicing (positive commandments 53-54).

The verse “And you shall rejoice” apparently comes to show that the command concerning all the days of the festival was given in a single verse and a single command, and therefore all of them should be counted as one mitzvah. This also clarifies the continuation of his words, which at first glance is very puzzling. Maimonides concludes the passage by saying that from his principle we can understand why the commandments of rejoicing, the festival peace-offering, and the appearance-offering are counted as one commandment across the three pilgrimage festivals. This seems puzzling, because until this point he has taken pains to explain why it would be improper to count all the musaf offerings as one commandment, since one must distinguish between the different festivals. And now he says that from here it follows that the peace-offering, the appearance-offering, and rejoicing should indeed be counted as one commandment for all the festivals. How does that fit with what was said above, and why is it even derived from it?

Clearly Maimonides means to continue the criterion of the biblical formulation. In the preceding sentence he established that if Scripture commands us in a single command, then the content is counted as one mitzvah. If it commands us in three commands, as with the musaf offerings of the festivals, then these are three distinct mitzvot. He now concludes that accordingly the festival peace-offering, the appearance-offering—”Three times a year all your males shall appear”—and rejoicing—”And you shall rejoice on your festival”—which appear as a single command applying to all the festivals, must certainly be counted as one commandment. There is no contradiction here at all. This indeed follows from the criterion he established above: the count is determined by the number of commands.

Maimonides now explains why he nevertheless needed this root, despite its simplicity and despite the fact that all the early authorities accepted it:

This is not something in which any person erred or inclined to another view. But they erred in what depends on this root, in an exceedingly grave and ugly error, namely that they counted all the additional offerings as one commandment: the musaf of Sabbath, the musaf of Rosh Hodesh, and the musafim of the festivals. On the same logic, in their count they ought to have counted the cessation from labor on every festival as one commandment, yet they did not do so.

God knows that it is not fitting to seize upon them on account of any of this, for in their enumeration they committed themselves to no single order whatsoever, but ascend to the heavens and descend to the depths. The evident truth is what we have told you: each and every musaf is a separate commandment, just as the cessation from labor on each and every day is a separate commandment (positive commandments 159-167; negative commandments 323-329). This is the straight order.

Maimonides explains that there were those who erred in this root—he clearly means the author of Halakhot Gedolot (Behag), as usual—but in the opposite direction. They pushed its application too far, and therefore counted all the musaf offerings of all kinds of festivals and Sabbaths as one commandment. Maimonides argues that here they overreached. The proper count is to treat each type of musaf as a separate commandment, but not every individual application of the same musaf. For example, the musafim of Rosh Hodesh are counted as one commandment, but one certainly should not count separately the musaf of Rosh Hodesh Kislev, that of Heshvan, and so forth.

That is, Maimonides’ view is that there is some balance here between the similarity of these mitzvot and their differences. On the one hand, one might have seen the obligation to bring a musaf on Rosh Hodesh Kislev and on Rosh Hodesh Heshvan as two different obligations, since these are two different months and in both there is a mitzvah to bring a musaf. This Maimonides rejects. On the other hand, one might go to the opposite extreme and include all musaf offerings together as one mitzvah, as indeed Behag did—and so did Saadia Gaon, in his Book of Commandments. But Maimonides rejects that as well. In his view, the musafim of Rosh Hodesh are one type, but that type is different from the musafim of Passover; and the musafim of Passover differ from those of Sukkot, and certainly from those of Sabbath, and so on.

If so, Maimonides’ main purpose here was not really to argue that recurring commandments are not to be counted, for everyone agreed to that. His purpose was probably the opposite: to establish that in some cases similar commandments are indeed counted separately. He came to increase the count, not to reduce it.

To be sure, the way he formulates the principle discussed in this root does not point in that direction, but in the opposite one: to reduce the number of commandments in the count, by not counting recurring commandments. It seems that the reason for this inverted formulation lies in the fact that once Maimonides rejects the view of Behag, a hidden question arises: why not count each musaf as a separate mitzvah? What is the criterion by which we draw the line within the similarity among the mitzvot? It may be that Maimonides’ formulation of the principle in this root is intended to address precisely that hidden question.

We should conclude this section with an important remark. Maimonides does establish the principle here, but he does not explain it. Why indeed is the division made exactly as he presents it? It seems reasonable not to count the same commandment on every day as a separate mitzvah. But it is far from clear why he rejects the division of Behag. Why does he not apply the principle of this root fully? In the course of his remarks he even accuses Behag of having a doctrine that is not orderly or coherent at all, and therefore of using unfounded and illogical principles. Yet he himself presents no logical reason for rejecting Behag‘s position.

It should be noted that Nahmanides does not challenge Maimonides on this root, and it is clear that he too agrees with him.

B. The Problems in the Principle of This Root

Between Interpretation and Essence

Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla, in his discussion of this root, addresses the interpretive aspect. His basic assumption is that every command that appears in the Torah as a single command is counted as a single mitzvah in the enumeration of the commandments. By contrast, there are sometimes several commands that are nevertheless counted as one mitzvah, as with the sacrifices of Sukkot, which, unlike those of Passover, change on each day of the festival. It is clear that Maimonides too means this principle, as we explained above.

There is, however, another discussion, on a more essential plane, that we must clarify here. Even if the Torah hints to us, through the very way the different commandments are written, how we are to count them, it still requires explanation what the essential rule is here—what the Torah is teaching us by doing so. That is, even if Maimonides and Rabbi Perla are correct in their argument from the formulation of the verses, it is still not clear why the verses are formulated that way. Why are the musaf offerings of different festivals really considered separate commandments? And further, why, on this account, is there no parallel division among the days of each festival?

One must also ask why the festival peace-offering, the appearance-offering, and rejoicing across all the pilgrimage festivals are counted as one mitzvah, exactly like the sacrifices of all the New Moons, or the daily offering, whereas cessation from labor on a festival is counted separately for each day.

Beyond this, the author of Kena’at Soferim raises an objection against Nahmanides, who counts the daily offering, the incense, and the morning and evening recitation of the Shema as pairs of commandments—see Root 11—whereas commandments that recur every day are counted by him as one mitzvah. What exactly is the difference between them?

The common denominator of all these discussions is this: in what way does the time-dependence of the various mitzvot differ in all these cases? Why, for Behag and Saadia Gaon, are all the musafim one unit, while cessation from labor is separate for each festival? Why, for Maimonides, do the days of one particular festival join together, while all festivals together join for the appearance-offering and the peace-offering but not for musaf, whereas the New Moons do join?

Two Types of Continuous Commandments

There is room here to add a distinction regarding continuous commandments. As noted, Maimonides does not discuss commandments whose time is every day, except indirectly when he attacks those who say that the musafim of Rosh Hodesh are one commandment. Even there he brings the incense, the preparation of the lamps, and the daily offering, but not tefillin, Torah study, prayer, and the like, which also seem to be continuous mitzvot.

It appears that these latter are truly continuous commandments—that is, one commandment that applies at all times. Even tefillin, which does not apply at night, can be seen as one continuous commandment, except that at night this commandment does not apply. This apparently depends on various explanations of the talmudic discussion in tractate Menahot concerning tefillin at night and on Sabbath, but that is not our concern here. The discussion in this root does not pertain to continuous commandments, because there it is obvious that there is no room to split them into several commandments. They are clearly one mitzvah, only a continuous one. The issue here concerns commandments whose obligation is renewed anew every day, not one that is fixed across all times. Commandments such as the incense and the daily offering are clearly not continuous commandments; rather, the obligation in them is renewed every day. It is not plausible to say that we are commanded to prepare the lamps continuously, or to offer the daily offering continuously. It is far more reasonable to say that these obligations apply afresh each day, and therefore the question arises why they are not counted as separate commandments for each day. By contrast, prayer, tefillin, Torah study, and the like are commandments for which the reasonable understanding is that they apply continuously, as explained above.² In such mitzvot it is obvious that they should be counted as one, because we are dealing with one ongoing commandment.

With regard to commandments of this type, which apply every day, as well as commandments that apply every month or every year, the question arises why indeed we should not count them as separate commandments. At first glance, each day we become obligated in them anew, and if so they would seem to be genuinely different mitzvot. It therefore requires explanation why they are not counted separately.

A Philosophical Example: Continuity of Identity

To sharpen the problem, let us briefly present an extreme claim raised by Adi Tzemach as a possible philosophical foundation for a person’s obligation to act morally.³ Tzemach argues that the “I” of a human being is not sharply defined. We distinguish between different human beings by the fact that they are located in different places. We also distinguish between them by various differences they possess. If so, asks Tzemach, why should we not distinguish between them on the basis of differences along the time axis as well? The egoist’s moral consideration says that he need care only for himself. But, asks Tzemach, who is this “himself”? Is that same person at a later moment really the same self? If so, then why is a person who is in another place not also his same self? Why do we distinguish for this purpose between time and place? His claim is that the obligation to care for others is based on an egoistic argument, except that the “self” for whom the egoist is supposed to care is all of humanity, in graded fashion.⁴

Our intention here is not to address the dubious moral foundation that emerges from Tzemach’s claim, but only the underlying line of argument itself. His assumption is that there is no clear reason why we treat the same body at a later time—even though changes have occurred in it, and not only in time and place—as the same body itself.

This is an extreme way of presenting the difficulty that concerns us here. We are troubled by a fairly similar question: why should a commandment that applies at several different times not be classified as several separate commandments? Just as Tzemach was troubled by continuity of personhood, one may be troubled by the continuity of any object whatever. Here we are discussing the continuity of commandments.⁵

On the Character of the Count of the Commandments: Systematic versus Essential

Within Maimonides’ own method, one might have considered a technical explanation for this problem. In our essay on the Twelfth Root, a possibility will arise that, according to Maimonides, the system of commandments is arranged in light of systematic considerations—that is, the needs of optimal and orderly organization of the system of mitzvot—and not only in light of essential considerations. There it will appear that according to Maimonides every section in the “book of halakhic law,” even if its purpose is to explain a concept, such as impurity and the like—see, for example, Book of Commandments, positive commandments 95 and 96, and Maimonides’ remarks there—and even if it contains no command, will be regarded as a mitzvah and counted in the enumeration of the commandments.

According to that, perhaps here too Maimonides is operating from similar considerations. The different commandments are not truly identical on the essential plane, but the reasonable logic of composing a law code says that we ought to place all the commandments pertaining to Passover in one section, and all the commandments pertaining to each day in one section, rather than write an identical section for each day. In other words, on systematic grounds, even if not essential ones, the claim made in this root seems reasonable.

To be sure, within Maimonides’ method one could raise such an explanation, but as we have seen, all enumerators of the commandments agree with him on this root. If so, even Nahmanides, for example, who seems to disagree with him in Root 12—and who apparently holds that the enumeration of the commandments is determined only by essential considerations and has no systematic purposes—still needs an explanation why each commandment on each day, or each month and year, should not count as an independent mitzvah.

C. A Philosophical, Meta-Halakhic Analysis of the Spiral of Time

Introduction

In the previous essay we saw that, in Root 3, Maimonides determines that commandments that do not apply for all generations—such as the jar of manna and the making of the copper serpent—are not to be counted. There we distinguished between two kinds of time axes: linear time and circular time. Linear time is historical time, the one that moves from past to future and never returns to itself. There are several circular time axes: the axis of the individual day, which repeats every day and depends on the earth’s rotation on its axis; the axis of the month, which depends on the moon’s orbit around the earth; the week, which is not derived from cosmological events at all; the year, which depends on the earth’s orbit around the sun; and finally the sabbatical and jubilee cycles, which likewise are not derived from the motion of any heavenly bodies.

We saw there that the commandments known in halakha as positive and negative commandments that are caused by time are commandments whose causing time is circular time.⁶ Commandments that do not apply for all generations, which were the subject of the discussion in that root, are commandments caused by linear, historical time. Those commandments were imposed on us only once in history, and they do not recur again in any essential sense. This is unlike commandments such as the destruction of the seven Canaanite nations, which may not be expected to recur, but that is not essential; rather, it is because those nations were destroyed or assimilated, and therefore the applicability of the obligation does not depend on time. Commandments that do not apply for all generations are commandments that were essentially imposed only once on the historical time axis.

For our purposes here we will need two important basic assumptions:

1. The cause of the commandments discussed in this root is time itself. Time is the reason for our obligation in them, and not merely an external marker of the moment when they apply.
2. For every law or mitzvah in halakha there can be only one cause, and no more.

We will first establish these two assumptions, and afterward we will see the significance of combining them.

Time as the Cause of the Commandment

In the previous essay we saw that the reason such commandments are not counted within the enumeration of the commandments is that they are caused by time itself and not by the situation. If these commandments were caused by the situation, then they would be commandments applying for all generations, since every time a similar situation arose, we would again be obligated in those same commandments. Only commandments that depend explicitly on time cannot recur in any essential sense, and therefore only they were the subject of the discussion in Root 3. We saw there that the same is true of positive time-bound commandments. Those too are caused by the time axis itself and not by circumstances or events that occur on the time axis.

We brought there an example from Nahmanides’ discussion of the mitzvah of counting the Omer. Nahmanides establishes that only commandments caused by time itself, and not by some situation, can be called “positive time-bound commandments.” To be sure, that example concerns a circular time axis—the annual axis, the one of the festivals, in connection with the counting of the Omer—but he used it to emphasize the significance of dependence on time itself.

Later we will examine the significance of Nahmanides’ determination with respect to the circular time axis itself. Our claim here is that the commandments discussed in this root are positive time-bound commandments, and as such time is their cause; the relevant time with respect to them is, of course, the circular time axis. We have thus established the first assumption we need in order to understand the matter under discussion here: positive time-bound commandments are commandments whose cause is time and not merely the circumstances.

The One-to-One Relation Between the Cause of Obligation and the Obligation Itself: The “Common Feature”

Our goal now is to establish the second assumption mentioned above, according to which every mitzvah has only one cause. The reason for this claim can be theological or philosophical—for example, the argument that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not create anything without purpose. Therefore, if two states cause one law, then one of them is superfluous, and there would have been no reason to create it.⁷ We will bring to this claim a more direct proof from halakhic practice itself.⁸

Among the hermeneutical rules by which the Torah is interpreted there is a mode of reasoning called “the common feature.” In such an inference, we try to derive the existence of a halakhic characteristic A in subject C—the learned case—from two source cases, A and B, which also possess that halakhic characteristic. An example of this kind of reasoning is found in a great many talmudic discussions; see Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 6a, and many other places.

The reasoning works as follows. One begins with a derivation—whether by an a fortiori argument or by an argument from a paradigm—from source A, which has the halakhic characteristic A, to the learned case C, which should therefore also possess it. One then refutes the derivation: “What is special about A? It has property X, which C does not have.” If so, one cannot derive from A to C. One then proceeds to argue that source B proves the point, for B does not have property X and yet it still has the halakhic feature A. Therefore C too should possess that feature. One then refutes this second step: “What is special about B? It has property Y, which C does not have.” If so, the legal characteristics of the learned case C, which lacks property Y, cannot be derived from B. Finally, one returns to A and argues: A proves the point, for it does not have property Y and yet it possesses the halakhic characteristic A; therefore C too should be characterized by it.

The summary of this whole process is usually expressed as follows: “The the law returns; case A is not like case B, and case B is not like case A. The common feature is that both have property Z.” The conclusion is that C, which also has property Z, should possess the halakhic characteristic A.

In the world of talmudic learning we are accustomed to this complex logic, but we should notice that it contains a fundamental logical difficulty. At first glance, one could still refute the “common feature” derivation as follows: “What is special about A and B? They have property X or Y. Will you say the same about C, which has neither of these properties?” The point of this refutation is that in such an inference we assume the halakhic characteristic A derives from property Z, shared by the two source cases and the learned case. But, the refutation argues, there is another possibility: that characteristic A derives from either property X or property Y. The question is why we assume that halakhic characteristic A derives from property Z rather than from each of the two earlier properties separately, X or Y. If in fact A derives from one of those properties, then the derivation is invalid, because the learned case C has neither of those two properties.⁹

The only basis there can be for the form of reasoning called “the common feature” is the principle that a law or halakhic rule can have only one cause. The problem we raised is how to decide between two possibilities: either law A is caused by the existence of property X or by the existence of property Y—that is, wherever there is X or there is Y—or else A is caused by some common property Z that exists in both source cases. If the Torah instructs us to use the reasoning of the common feature, the meaning of this is that we adopt the assumption that it is impossible for one law to have several possible causes or grounds. Every law has only one cause. Therefore this mode of derivation is called “the common feature,” because it assumes that the law does not derive from property X or Y, but only from what is common to the two source cases, namely Z. That is why one can derive A with respect to C as well, even though C has neither X nor Y, because C does have Z. This is the logical basis of the common-feature derivation, and from it the second assumption we need for what follows is proven: every law has only one cause.

The Nature of Circular Time Axes

From the combination of the two assumptions set out above, we can now try to understand the essence of circular time axes. If the commandments caused by time are indeed caused by time as such, and if the cause of every law or mitzvah can only be one and no more, then it is clear that every time we reach the “station” on the time axis at which, for example, we become obligated in the musaf of Rosh Hodesh, we are actually at exactly the same point in time. That point is the cause of the application of the obligation, and that cause must be one only. Therefore, every time we become obligated in the same mitzvah, we are in fact standing at that very same point.

The Importance of Assumption 1

This conclusion follows from the assumption that time itself is the cause of the obligation in the mitzvah. If time were only an external marker of the moment of obligation, and the obligation were the result of the circumstances rather than directly of time, then there would be no need at all to conclude that two time-points that obligate the same mitzvah are the same point. The circumstances are what cause the obligation, and they are indeed identical at the two times. The fact that the time itself is different in the two cases does not matter, since time is not the cause of the mitzvah. Therefore, only because of the assumption that time itself is the cause of the mitzvah do we reach the conclusion that these time axes are genuinely circular. Each time we truly return to the same point.

What is discovered here is the true character of circular time axes. One might have said that the term “circular” is only a metaphorical description of such time axes. We supposedly return to the same time-point; that is, the axis is supposedly circular. But perhaps only the linear time axis is really real, while circularity is a fiction defined arbitrarily, or according to the movement of heavenly bodies. The week, after all, is not tied to astronomical events at all, and therefore it seems to be merely an arbitrary human definition.

In our essay on Root 3 we saw that the assumption that time itself constitutes the cause of certain commandments means, in effect, that time is a real existent and not merely a useful fiction for describing reality, as some philosophers may perhaps believe. In light of our discussion here, it follows that this existent is indeed circular. That is, we move along it, and at fixed intervals we truly return to the same real point on the same real axis of time. For example, on the monthly time axis, the lunar axis, every time we reach the station of Rosh Hodesh we are at that very same point, and therefore we again become obligated in the mitzvah that falls upon one who is at that point in time. The same is true of the festivals on the annual cycle. Every year we return to the same point in time, and therefore we become obligated anew in the duties that fall upon one who is at that point.

Conclusion: The Relation to Linear Time Axes

In that earlier essay we also pointed out that the two time axes intertwine with one another and together create a spiral picture of time. There are circular axes that unfold over the linear axis of time. Here we have seen that the commandments caused by time depend only on the circular time axis, while the linear axis is merely an external marker of their obligation.

If so, the necessity to which we arrived by force of assumptions 1 and 2 is relevant only to the circular axes. Only they repeat themselves. The linear axes, which are not the causes of obligation in these mitzvot, apparently continue to advance all the time and receive different values every time the circular axis returns to the same point. With respect to them, there is no necessity to reach a circular conclusion, because they are not the causes of these mitzvot but only external markers of their timing.

The conclusion is that when we arrive at Passover next year, there is not really a complete return to the earlier point in time from a year before. Only in the circular aspect do we return to the same point, because only circular time is the cause of the obligation in these mitzvot. The linear time axis is an external feature that merely determines the timing of the obligation in them, and therefore there is no need at all to posit identity between the timings of the two events on the linear axes.

The conclusion, then, is that time truly behaves as a spiral, as we concluded in the previous essay.

D. Meta-Halakhic Implications

Example: Matzah and Remembering the Exodus on Passover

The Sages in the Mishnah instruct us:

In every generation a person is obligated to see himself—or, according to another reading, to show himself—as if he had left Egypt.

This mitzvah instructs us that every time we return again to Passover we are to see ourselves as though we ourselves had gone out from Egypt. In light of what we said above, these words take on added meaning. At every Passover we really do return to that same point in time. True, we do not return to the events themselves, since they passed along the linear, historical axis; but we do return to that same point on the circular axis of time, and therefore we again become obligated in the halakhic obligations of Passover.

Against this background it is interesting to recall the command in the portion Bo, Exodus 13:8:

And you shall tell your son on that day, saying: It is because of this that the Lord acted for me when I went out of Egypt.

A number of commentators have already noted the difficulty in this verse. At first glance the wording is reversed. The verse should have said that I do this because of what the Holy One, blessed be He, did for me when I went out of Egypt. Instead, it makes the relationship the other way around: I went out of Egypt because of this—that is, because of the mitzvot that I am fulfilling.

The author of Beit Ha-Levi, in his Torah commentary, addresses this and explains that the verse comes to teach us that this really is the correct order. The Exodus took place in order that we should fulfill the mitzvot, and not the other way around. The reason is that the obligation in these mitzvot is not a result of the Exodus, for this is a time-dependent mitzvah. What obligates in this mitzvah is circular time—the dates of the fourteenth and fifteenth of Nisan—and not the circumstances. Theoretically, we would have been obligated in these mitzvot even before the Exodus from Egypt, every time the circular time axis reached those dates.

And indeed we find, in the narrative of the angels’ visit to Lot, that the verse says, Genesis 19:3:

And he urged them greatly, and they turned in to him and entered his house; and he made them a feast, and he baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

Lot baked matzah for his guests. And Rashi there brings a midrash (rabbinic interpretation) of the Sages:

“And he baked unleavened bread”—it was Passover.

Rashi does not even mention that this is an aggadic midrash, but explains it as though it were the plain sense of the verse. Yet this is very difficult. What reason was there to eat matzah on Passover hundreds of years before the Exodus from Egypt? What did they commemorate at that seder night? What did they recount? Did they also bring the Paschal offering, or tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt?

It must therefore be that the obligation to eat matzah on Passover is a consequence of the date itself, even without the circumstances that occurred on it. When the date of the fourteenth-fifteenth of Nisan arrives, we are obligated to eat matzah. In fact, the Exodus from Egypt occurred in order to give concrete meaning to this abstract obligation of eating matzah on that date. That is why every later time too we return to that point in time and become obligated ourselves in eating matzah, even though we ourselves did not really leave Egypt. This is a consequence of being at that time-point, and not of active participation in the events or circumstances that prevailed then.

And when we examine the verses in which we were commanded to eat matzah on Passover, we find that this is explicit in the Torah itself. The Holy One, blessed be He, appears to Moses on Rosh Hodesh Nisan and commands him as follows, in Exodus 12:

This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: On the tenth of this month they shall take for themselves, each man, a lamb according to the house of his fathers, a lamb for a household… And it shall be kept by you until the fourteenth day of this month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight… And thus shall you eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste—it is the Lord’s Passover… Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread, that person shall be cut off from Israel, from the first day until the seventh day… And you shall observe the unleavened bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt; and you shall keep this day throughout your generations as an everlasting statute. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month in the evening. For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, for whoever eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether a sojourner or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread.

Beyond the command to offer and eat the Paschal offering, there appears here a command to eat matzah, and even to eat it in haste, with our loins girded and our shoes on our feet and so on. Usually it is accepted that the eating of matzah was a result of the haste that happened by chance because Pharaoh pursued Israel as they left Egypt. When Israel wanted to bake bread, because of the haste it did not have time to leaven, and so they ate matzah and not bread. For that reason too, we are commanded for all generations to eat bread that did not become leavened, and we are forbidden to eat bread made from dough that did become leavened.

But the picture in these verses is exactly the opposite. One must notice that the command is given here on Rosh Hodesh Nisan, that is, two weeks before the plague of the firstborn, the Exodus, and Pharaoh’s pursuit. If so, already here, at the very place where we are commanded, one can see that the command to eat matzah did not come about accidentally because of haste. This was not a result of the circumstances. There was a plan in advance that on this date matzah was to be eaten, as Lot had already done, and even to be eaten in haste. The circumstances—Pharaoh’s pursuit, the haste, the fact that the dough did not have time to rise—all of these came in order that on this date we should eat matzah, bread that did not become leavened. The circumstances are the result of the will to command, and not the reason for the command.

If so, what is the reason for the obligation to eat matzah in haste? It is the date. Time is the reason for the obligation, and the circumstances come chiefly to pour concrete content into this abstract command.

This is also the meaning of the more general statement, common in ethical literature, that every time has a special quality—a quality that is present in every generation at that same point in time, and not only at the point on the historical axis at which the event supposedly occurred and caused the mitzvot that apply at that time. Usually this is understood as a result of the circumstances: since once we left Egypt, that was impressed upon the time axis, so that every year when we return to this date there is in it an element of freedom and haste. Here we see that it was not the circumstances that stamped those qualities on that point in time. They were already embedded in it from the very beginning. Those circumstances were created by virtue of the quality of that time-point; they did not create it.

A Note on the Relation to Temporary Commandments

In the previous essay we explained that commandments dependent on time repair things in the upper worlds. Therefore they are caused by time itself, which is nothing other than an entity belonging to a higher world. We also saw there that commandments that were spoken for their own historical time repair only things in the upper worlds, and therefore they are not included in the enumeration of the commandments. The reason is that the purpose of the mitzvot is the repair of our world, while the upper worlds are only a consequence.

Here we see that commandments caused by circular time also have their basis in the upper worlds, but the circumstances brought them down into our world and implanted them in human consciousness and in human history. That is why these mitzvot are counted, for in the end they do repair things in our world.

Perhaps this is the difference between the two time axes. Historical time flows from past to future, and its root and essence belong mainly to the upper worlds. Once it has passed, it is no longer connected to our world, and accordingly the commandments that arise from it are not connected to us. These are not mitzvot in the full sense. Circular time, by contrast, leaves the time-points of the past connected to us. We return to them all the time, because they were planted in our world. Thus circular time binds the upper worlds to our world, and therefore the commandments derived from it are indeed included in the count of the mitzvot.

A Proposal for Explaining Women’s Exemption from Positive Time-Bound Commandments

As is well known, women are exempt from positive time-bound commandments. The well-known reason given by Abudarham is that they are bound by their domestic responsibilities, and therefore the Torah did not wish to obligate them in commandments that force them to engage at fixed times in religious acts that would interfere with their family obligations.

This reason is problematic in a number of respects. In any event, it assumes that the exemption is technical. According to our analysis, the reason for women’s exemption is different. Positive time-bound commandments are commandments whose purpose is to bind the upper worlds to our world. These mitzvot deal with the concretization of the abstract. According to the Torah’s conception, these tasks are laid upon men and not upon women. Men are the ones who are to engage in the abstract and in connecting it to our world. This is probably also the reason that, according to halakha, women are exempt from Torah study. Torah study is the connection of the world of ideas to the practical world: to clarify abstract ideas, and to implement the conclusions of that clarification in the world of action. About this the Sages said: “Study is greater, because it leads to action.”

Some will expound this negatively and others positively. Some will say it is because women do not need this, and others will say that they are not intended for it—and perhaps also less suited to it, since their character is more concrete and practical, and less inclined toward the abstract. In any event, the fact remains. If so, there is here a deeper, not merely technical, perspective on the exemption of women from these commandments.

There is room to ask why women are nevertheless obligated in negative time-bound commandments. At first glance, these too are commandments connected to time, which would seem to reflect an obligation to engage in the abstract. If so, women should have been exempt from these as well. Perhaps the explanation is that negative commandments are about preventing a defect, flaw, or corruption, and not about performing positive repairs. This will be explained, God willing, in our essay on the Sixth Root. Women too are obligated to avoid problems and not to cause damage.

E. Back to the Count of the Commandments

Explaining the Difficulties in Maimonides’ Words in This Root

In light of what we have said above, one can perhaps explain why Maimonides did not address at all the question of why the festival of Passover in each year should not be counted as a separate commandment, or why daily commandments should not be counted as separate commandments. These questions did not stay outside the discussion merely for technical reasons, such as the huge multiplication of commandments that would result from such an approach, but also for an essential reason: these are not separate mitzvot because we are at the very same point in time. To Maimonides it was obvious that these should not be counted separately.

Maimonides’ question dealt only with mitzvot that apply, at least apparently, at different times, and not at identical times—commandments that do not appear in a clear cyclical pattern, such as the days of a particular festival, the eight days of Sukkot or the seven days of Passover, and the like. With regard to the New Moons, Maimonides had reason to think that different months constitute different time-points—hence the different names of the months, since they are located at different points on the annual circular axis—and therefore perhaps they should have been counted as separate commandments. Maimonides’ innovation is that although the months have different characteristics, the obligation of the musaf of Rosh Hodesh does not depend on their differing identities—Tishrei, Heshvan, Kislev, and so on—but precisely on their common feature, namely their being Rosh Hodesh.

By contrast, the commandments of cessation from labor on the festivals are not counted as one commandment, but as a separate commandment for each festival. So too with the musafim, according to Maimonides, unlike Behag and Saadia Gaon. The reason is that the different festivals do not constitute a return to the same point on any circular axis, and therefore it is clear that they must be counted separately.

And what about the appearance-offering and the festival peace-offering? As noted, they are not counted as separate commandments. As we saw, the appearance-offering and the peace-offering across all the pilgrimage festivals are counted as one commandment.

In our earlier terminology, we must conclude that two time axes underlie the treatment of the pilgrimage festivals. There is a pilgrimage-festival axis that brings us to the same point at each pilgrimage festival. That is, from the perspective of the pilgrimage-festival axis, to be at Passover, Sukkot, or Shavuot means to be at the same point in time. By contrast, from the perspective of the festival axis, which unfolds along the annual axis, to be at each festival means to be at a different time-point. On this axis Passover is different from Sukkot and Shavuot, and certainly from Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

It appears that Behag and Saadia Gaon disagree with Maimonides at precisely this point. They hold that the musafim too belong to the pilgrimage-festival axis and not to the festival axis, or else they do not distinguish between these two axes at all. That is why they count all the musafim as one commandment, just like the appearance-offering and the peace-offering.¹⁰

The Daily Commandments: Nahmanides’ Method

Let us now explain the matter of daily commandments that obligate twice each day, such as the daily offering, the incense, the preparation of the lamps, and the morning and evening Shema. We saw that the author of Kena’at Soferim asked why Nahmanides counts them as two commandments in each day, despite the fact that he does not count the obligation on each day as a separate commandment. On that point he agrees with Maimonides.

It seems that Nahmanides holds that time itself cannot be the cause of these mitzvot, because there is no time axis whose cycle is half a day. The proof of this is that returning to the same point on a circular time axis means being in the same state in every other relevant respect, aside from one’s location on the time axis. The fact that the mitzvah recurs in the morning and in the evening shows that what obligates here is not cyclical time as such, but morning and evening, which are two distinct time-points on all the axes.¹¹ For this reason Nahmanides counts these mitzvot as separate commandments. If the time that causes them is different, then necessarily these are two different mitzvot. As we have seen, every mitzvah must have only one cause. And if the causes are not identical, then the mitzvot caused by them must likewise be different.

The Daily Commandments: Maimonides’ Method

It seems that Maimonides too, who unlike Nahmanides counts these as single mitzvot and does not split them into two and two, does not disagree with Nahmanides on this point. He too holds that offering the daily sacrifice is a commandment on each day—that is, a commandment on the daily time axis—and in his view as well there is no half-day time axis. Maimonides’ position differs only in that this single mitzvah is defined as the bringing of two daily offerings. Both together are one mitzvah, and not, as we had thought, each one by itself, as Nahmanides held.

That is, even according to Maimonides this is not a mitzvah on a half-day axis, but a double mitzvah on the daily axis. The proof is that Maimonides discusses the status of these commandments in Root 11, the rule that one does not count parts of a commandment, and not in this root. That is, he assigns them to the category of mitzvot with several parts, and not to the category of commandments that recur cyclically. Therefore the daily offering is one mitzvah, and each such mitzvah includes the offering of two daily sacrifices.¹²

It seems that this is the root of the disagreement between Maimonides and Nahmanides. The disagreement is not about time axes, but about the nature of the obligation in double commandments: are these double acts within one mitzvah, or pairs of distinct commandments?

Back to Behag and Saadia Gaon

In light of these considerations, it may be possible to explain differently the fact that the obligations of the musafim of the festivals are counted by Behag and Saadia Gaon as one commandment. Above we explained this by saying that they are identical points on the festival axis, that is, a cycle shorter than a year and not fixed. This is an innovative claim, because intuition does not naturally see the different festivals as points that recur on one time axis.

But in light of our discussion here, one can say that all the pilgrimage festivals are one continuous commandment on the ordinary annual time axis. We are obligated in this ongoing commandment throughout the whole year, just as the commandment of prayer is an obligation that extends across the whole day, at least according to Maimonides, though it is spread over fixed times of day.

Perhaps the same can be said regarding the appearance-offering and the peace-offering, like the musafim according to Behag and Saadia Gaon, and perhaps here Maimonides too would agree. It is a continuous commandment on the ordinary annual axis.

In that sense, one can theoretically say that Behag and Saadia Gaon should have discussed this matter in the context of Root 11 rather than in the context of this root. That is not the case, however, with cessation from labor on the festivals, which is counted as separate commandments even by them, just as by Maimonides.

F. Halakhic Implications: The Character of Time on Sabbaths and Festivals¹³

The Relation Among the Days of a Festival

The conclusion from the discussion so far is that, in practice, the only subject Maimonides addresses in the Thirteenth Root is the subject of continuous commandments, that is, commandments whose observance repeats itself over several days, but not in cyclical fashion. For example, commandments that continue throughout the seven days of Passover. To be sure, these commandments recur each year, but Maimonides does not address that here. To him it seems self-evident that this is not a reason to count the appearance of each mitzvah in each year as a separate commandment. We explained this by saying that every year we return to the same point on the circular time axis, and therefore it is clear that this is really the very same mitzvah. More than that: even with regard to the different pilgrimage festivals we said that perhaps Maimonides’ conception is that they lie on one axis, the pilgrimage-festival axis, as opposed to the festival axis.

But precisely for that reason one cannot say anything similar regarding the seven days of Passover. Here there is no return to the same point, because this is not a circular axis at all. Therefore the question Maimonides chose to address in this root is why not count the seven days of Passover, or any other continuous commandment, as separate mitzvot, one commandment for each day. At first glance each day is a different point in time, and therefore the commandments connected to each of these days should also be different and should be counted separately. Continuous commandments are bound up with the different festivals. Therefore the question of how to count continuous commandments pertains to clarifying the nature of time on festivals and sacred days.

To be sure, as we have seen, the Torah itself commands those days in one command, and that is a sufficient source for Maimonides’ ruling. But the Torah’s own ruling itself requires explanation. Why does the Torah really regard all the days of a festival as one commandment, if this is not a return to the same point on a circular time axis, as in the earlier cases?

Thus, to conclude our clarification of Maimonides’ words in this root, we still need to examine the commandments that apply during one festival over several consecutive days. In these mitzvot there seems to be no cyclical time axis, and therefore Maimonides’ question arises: why not count these commandments separately? This section, among other things, will deal with that question. Naturally, the clarification will use halakhic tools, because the unique character of time on festivals is not a matter for general philosophy, but for halakhic-Torah analysis.

A General Direction

The most natural solution to this question is perhaps to view these commandments as broad “points” on the annual time axis—that is, a “point” that lasts several days. Something like this we already saw above with regard to the incense and the Shema, where the day is one continuous unit, and the basic obligation is to offer two sacrifices within one such unit. The question we raised assumes that, fundamentally, each act is a separate mitzvah—that is, that there cannot be a mitzvah that commands us to do several acts, or the same act over several days. But there are quite a few mitzvot that command a sequence of actions, such as the procedure for purifying a leper or offering a sacrifice. Would we really imagine that sprinkling seven times should be counted as seven different commandments? So too here, regarding the days of a festival, our proposal is that one should view them as one extended unit—a “point-like entity,” in the Rogatchover’s terminology—on the time axis, and not as a combination of different contiguous units.

A similar definition was proposed above regarding commandments such as Torah study or love of God, which apply to us every day, and yet the question does not arise with regard to them. The reason is that such a mitzvah does not apply anew each day. Rather, it is a mitzvah that applies continuously. All of time is one unit of time, and the command to study Torah throughout that time-unit is one continuous mitzvah. In light of this, it seems that the discussion of such commandments belongs more to Root 11 or Root 12, which deal with splitting the parts of a mitzvah. Maimonides’ innovation is that the festival commandments too have a similar character, and the basis of the matter lies in the character of the time axis on festivals, which differs from time on ordinary weekdays.

After illustrating this proposal, our eventual conclusion is that there are two kinds of considerations for unifying several commandments that appear at different times into one overarching mitzvah:

1. One consideration is that the recurring commandments appear at the same point in time on the circular axis, as with Passover this year and next year, or the New Moons. Therefore they are all essentially one mitzvah that recurs each time we return to that same moment on the circular axis.
2. The second consideration is the view of these commandments as a continuous obligation spanning a stretch of several days that constitutes one unit. Here all of them together form one mitzvah, but they are not repetitions of the same mitzvah as in the previous mechanism.

These two mechanisms correspond exactly to the two kinds of commandments with which Maimonides opens his remarks in the present root:

1. A mitzvah that recurs in some cycle, but whose appearances are not consecutive.
2. A mitzvah that recurs across several consecutive days.

The first type is explained by the first consideration above, and the second by the second mechanism.

“Since It Was Set Aside”

Time on Sabbaths and festivals is characterized by properties different from those of ordinary weekday time. We can illustrate this through the halakhic rule in the laws of muktzeh—an item set aside from use on Sabbath or a festival—which states: “Since it was set aside during twilight, it was set aside for the entire day” (see Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 46b, and parallels). This rule states that the status of any object, with respect to the laws of muktzeh, is determined at twilight. An object that was muktzeh at twilight remains in the status of muktzeh even if the reason for that status disappears during the Sabbath or festival: what was set aside during twilight is set aside for the whole day.

At first glance, this law seems to concern time itself, and it applies only on festivals and Sabbaths. Therefore it may help us clarify through it the nature of time on festivals as opposed to the nature of time on weekdays.

The simple and common explanation of this law completely disconnects it from concepts of time. For example, the author of Afikei Yam, when discussing the law of “since it was set aside”—see there, part 2, section 19—brings the explanation of Rashi, Babylonian Talmud, Beitzah 26b, who writes:

And if they were not fit—at twilight—they are certainly forbidden, for there is no preparation from before the day; and one who holds by muktzeh requires preparation from before the day, as it is written: “And on the sixth day they shall prepare what they bring” (Exodus 16).

Rashi explains that the law of muktzeh is derived from the fact that the object was not prepared for Sabbath. The time at which the object may be prepared is all of Friday, as long as we are still within the domain of weekday time. Therefore, when the object reaches twilight and is still not prepared for use on Sabbath, it becomes muktzeh. To be sure, from Rashi’s words here it emerges that the law of muktzeh is biblical, and that is indeed Rashi’s view. But the author of Afikei Yam adds that even the other early authorities, who regard muktzeh as a rabbinic prohibition, anchored it in the verse “and they shall prepare.” And Nahmanides indeed writes this in Milhamot Hashem at the beginning of tractate Beitzah.

According to this conception, there is nothing unique about twilight. It is simply the first point of the Sabbath day or festival, and therefore it is precisely there that the question is examined whether the object was prepared beforehand or not. “Since it was set aside,” according to this explanation, means: since the object is unprepared, as is seen at twilight, one may no longer use it throughout the Sabbath.

By contrast, one can see that there is also another approach to the explanation of the concept “since it was set aside,” an approach that understands it as a metaphysical principle of the spreading of prohibition through time: if the object was prohibited at one moment of the Sabbath, it is seized by prohibition for the whole Sabbath. That is, the Sabbath is one unit of time that cannot be split. We have indeed seen this cited in the name of Responsa Eretz Tzvi, section 44.¹⁴

“Set Aside Because of the Previous Day”

One of the clearest implications of this renewed conception appears in the dispute among the early authorities regarding “set aside because of the previous day.” The discussion concerns the status of an etrog on the eighth day after Sukkot. It is no longer muktzeh by virtue of its mitzvah, for on that day there is no longer a mitzvah of the four species. On the other hand, at twilight it was still set aside, because on the previous day it had been designated for the mitzvah, and twilight is in doubt whether it belongs to the previous day or to the present day.

The Gemara in Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 46b, brings a dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish on this point: Rabbi Yohanan says that the etrog is forbidden only on the seventh day and not on the eighth, while Resh Lakish permits the etrog even on the seventh day. The sukkah, by contrast, is forbidden even on the eighth according to all opinions. The Ritva there explains Rabbi Yohanan’s words and brings several interpretations of them:

Rabbi Yohanan said: An etrog is forbidden on the seventh day. That is, forbidden for eating, even though one has already fulfilled the mitzvah with it and its mitzvah is finished. On the eighth it is permitted. And Resh Lakish said: An etrog is permitted even on the seventh day. All agree, however, that a sukkah is forbidden on the eighth. Rabbi Yohanan’s reason with regard to the etrog, that it is forbidden throughout the seventh day, is explained by the Talmud because it was set aside for the whole day. But it is not forbidden on the eighth, because since the etrog was not fit at twilight, it was not set aside for the eighth. By contrast, the sukkah, which was fit at the twilight of the seventh day entering the eighth, since it was set aside at twilight, it was set aside for the whole day, as we say in tractate Shabbat 44b concerning a bed upon which there was money, that if the money was on it throughout twilight, since it was set aside at twilight, it was set aside for the whole day; and there are many such cases there. The reason is that since with respect to Sabbath and festival it is written “and they shall prepare,” the Sages relied on this to forbid muktzeh on Sabbath and festival if it had no real preparation from before the day, even though it has preparation on the festival or Sabbath itself. Therefore a sukkah that was set aside for its mitzvah on the seventh day had no preparation for the eighth from before the day, and it is forbidden for the whole day. But the etrog, since it was not fit at twilight, its status of being set aside departed while it was still before the eighth day, and it was prepared for the eighth, and therefore it is permitted.

This interpretation explains that the etrog is permitted on the eighth day because at twilight it was not forbidden at all, and therefore the rule of “since it was set aside” is not applied here to forbid it on the eighth. From his words it follows that if the etrog had been forbidden at twilight, it would have been forbidden on the eighth day as well.

Within his remarks, the Ritva mentions the reason for “since it was set aside” that we cited above from Rashi and Nahmanides, namely preparation. And indeed, according to that reason, there is no explanation for why one should not forbid something that was not prepared at the twilight of the eighth day.

He then brings another interpretation:

One may further explain that included in what Rabbi Yohanan said about the etrog is that it was set aside at twilight because of the doubt of the seventh day; and even so we do not say of it that, since it was set aside then, it was set aside for the entire eighth day. For we say that only with respect to something that was set aside at twilight by reason of its own law. But in this case, since the setting aside at twilight is not due to its own law but because of doubt concerning the seventh day, once twilight has passed and it becomes clear that it is the eighth, the doubt of the seventh day is removed, and the eighth day arrives with its preparation. And this is the reason that an egg laid on one festival day is permitted on the next, for it was forbidden at twilight only because of doubt concerning the first day, and that doubt has now been clarified.

This line of reasoning is called “set aside because of the previous day.” That is, an object whose entire prohibition exists only because there is a doubt whether twilight belongs to the previous day does not thereby forbid the next day. According to the explanation given above for the rule of “since it was set aside,” it is not clear why that should be so. At first glance, the object was not prepared at twilight, so why should it matter that its lack of preparation arose because of a doubt? Everything depends on the question whether there was permission to use it or not. The reason for the prohibition should not matter here.

It seems that this explanation assumes a different conception of “since it was set aside”—the metaphysical conception mentioned above. According to this conception, “since it was set aside” is the spreading of the prohibition that “touched” one moment of a given day, and from there it spreads through the whole day. The status of the object is fixed at twilight because that is the first moment of the day. According to this conception, it is clear that if at twilight the prohibition arises from the doubt whether twilight belongs to the previous day, then there is here a “whichever way you look at it” consideration. The object is forbidden only because of the possibility that twilight belongs to the previous day—but on that possibility, the prohibition never touched any moment of the next day. By contrast, if twilight belongs to the eighth day, then there is no prohibition on the etrog at all. Therefore, in any case, on either side of the doubt, there is no basis to forbid the etrog on the eighth day.

The earlier conception is not interested in the question why there is a prohibition, because the question is being asked on the practical plane: was use of the object in fact permitted or not? Here, by contrast, we are dealing with the metaphysical reality of the prohibition, and therefore the issue depends not on the human relation to the object, but on the object’s status in itself. Hence, in a case of doubt, no rule of “set aside because of the previous day” arises.

Another Example from Comparing the Laws of Mourning with the Laws of Sabbath

Another source that expresses such a conception of the nature of time on Sabbath as opposed to weekdays is found in the words of the Rosh at the end of chapter 3 of tractate Mo’ed Katan, section 96. There the Rosh cites the view of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg and disputes it:

Rabbi Meir, of blessed memory, wrote: If a person’s father or mother died and he was a minor at that time, and before the thirty days had passed he became thirteen years and one day old, it seems to me that once he becomes an adult he is obligated to observe the seven and the thirty. He does not count from the day of burial, but from when he becomes an adult; and it is like one who heard close-timed news during a festival, who mourns after the festival and counts seven and thirty.

Rabbi Meir deals with someone who heard of the death of his parents while he was still a minor, and the question is whether when he comes of age during the mourning period he must mourn or not. He rules that once he comes of age the obligation of mourning takes effect. He continues to discuss this a bit further and compares it to the law of close and distant reports, but that is not our topic.

Rabbi Meir then adds:

Although one may distinguish somewhat between one who heard during the festival and the case before us—for there the man is subject to obligation and only the day causes the delay, but here the man is not subject to obligation at all—and therefore one might say that since at the time of death he was not fit to mourn he should be exempt forever, this is not so, because there is no deferral with respect to commandments, as appears in tractate Hullin 87a. And so too it says in tractate Yevamot 33a, regarding a non-priestly minor who served in the Temple on Sabbath and developed the signs of adulthood in the middle of the Sabbath, that non-priestly service and Sabbath came upon him together; and although at Sabbath twilight he was a minor and not obligated in the Sabbath, we do not say: since he was deferred at twilight, he is deferred from the prohibition of that Sabbath for the whole day.

Rabbi Meir raises a possible distinction between one who heard the report during a festival—where there is a prohibition on mourning, though in principle he is subject to the obligation of mourning—and one who heard it while a minor, where he is not subject to obligation at all. He rejects that distinction because there is no deferral with respect to mitzvot. That is, if a minor was deferred with respect to some commandment, that does not exempt him from fulfilling it at the moment he becomes an adult.

His proof is from the talmudic discussion in Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 33a, where we find a minor non-priest who served in the Temple on Sabbath and, in the middle of the Sabbath, brought forth two pubic hairs, the signs of adulthood. Here the prohibition of working on Sabbath and the prohibition of non-priestly service in the Temple take effect upon him together, and he violates both. Now, with regard to the prohibition of Sabbath, one might have said that at twilight he was still a minor, and therefore Sabbath observance had been deferred with respect to him, yet the Gemara assumes that he is obligated to observe the Sabbath from the moment he becomes an adult. Rabbi Meir concludes from this that in mourning too, after he becomes an adult, he is obligated to mourn, even if when he heard the report he had been exempt from mourning.

Immediately after citing Rabbi Meir’s words, the Rosh himself disagrees and writes:

Although one does not answer the lion after his death, it is Torah and I must learn; and I hold fast to that very distinction, that one must distinguish between a case where the man is subject to obligation and only the day causes the delay, and a minor, where at the time when he ought to have mourned he was exempt because of his minority; in such a case the obligation of mourning falls away from him forever.

That is, the Rosh tends to adopt precisely the reasoning that Rabbi Meir had rejected: with regard to mourning there is deferral in mitzvot, and a minor who is not subject to mourning is not obligated to mourn, unlike a minor who becomes an adult on Sabbath, where even the Rosh agrees that there is no deferral in his obligation to keep Sabbath.

The Rosh continues:

And it is similar to what is said in tractate Pesahim 93a: “A convert who converted between the two Passovers, and likewise a minor who became an adult between the two Passovers, is obligated to offer the second Passover,” according to Rabbi. Rabbi Natan says: Whoever is subject to the first is subject to the second, and whoever is not subject to the first is not subject to the second. On what do they differ? Rabbi holds that the second is an independent festival, while Rabbi Natan holds that the second is compensation for the first.

He compares the matter to a minor who became an adult between the two Passovers, that is, after the first Passover and before the second, where we see that if the second is merely compensation for the first, the minor is not obligated to offer the second. Even Rabbi Natan does not dispute the principle itself, but only the claim that the second is an independent festival.

Why is the case of a minor who became an adult between the two Passovers similar specifically to a minor who became an adult in the middle of mourning, and not to a minor who became an adult on Sabbath? The Rosh answers:

So too, sitting the seven and the thirty for close-timed news is not a commandment in its own right, but a completion of the mourning that he should have observed immediately after the burial when he learned of it. But if he did not know, they established that he has compensation during all thirty days. Yet where he knew and did not become obligated, compensation does not apply to him—just as in the case of a lame person on the first day of the festival who became healthy on the second day, where compensation does not apply according to the view that all the days are compensation for the first, since he was not subject to obligation on the first day… What he brought as proof from the case of bringing forth two hairs on Sabbath is no proof, because the end is not compensation for the beginning, and it is like the second Passover according to Rabbi: since the end of the Sabbath encountered him in obligation, he is obligated to keep the Sabbath.

The Rosh explains that in mourning, what obligates mourning is what one heard about the death of the parent, and the later mourning too derives from that same event. By contrast, in Sabbath law, the obligation to observe Sabbath is an independent obligation at every single moment. Therefore, the fact that he was not obligated to keep Sabbath at twilight has no bearing at all on his obligation to keep the moments of the Sabbath during which he is already an adult. If the obligation to keep Sabbath arose from twilight, then there would indeed be room to compare these two cases. But with Sabbath that is not so. Hence there is no connection between the obligation to keep Sabbath on Sabbath morning and the obligation that existed at twilight. No one would imagine exempting every Jew from keeping all Sabbaths because when he was a minor he was exempt from keeping Sabbath. The reason is that there is no connection between one Sabbath and another, and the Rosh argues that the same is true even with respect to different moments within the same Sabbath.

Rabbi Meir’s words are indeed very difficult. What room is there to compare a minor who becomes an adult in the middle of Sabbath with a minor who becomes an adult in the middle of mourning? In mourning there is an event that creates the obligation to mourn, and all the mourning is generated by it. That moment is the death of the parent and hearing of it. When the obligating event occurred, he was not subject to obligation at all, and therefore he is altogether exempt from that mourning, and there is no reason for him to mourn over that same event later on. By contrast, with Sabbath there is no one moment that is the obligating moment for Sabbath observance. At every moment there is an independent obligation by virtue of the fact that that moment occurs on Sabbath. Therefore, one who was exempt from part of the moments of Sabbath is not thereby exempt from the obligation to observe the remaining moments. If so, the fact that the Gemara in Yevamot obligates the minor to observe Sabbath from the moment he becomes an adult is no proof that mourning should work in the same way.

The unavoidable conclusion is that Rabbi Meir holds that even on Sabbath there is an obligating moment, and that moment is twilight. In his opinion, Sabbath observance becomes obligatory from the moment of entry, that is, from twilight. One who was obligated at that moment is obligated to observe the rest of the Sabbath; one who was not should, in principle, be exempt, were it not for the rule that there is no deferral in mitzvot. From the fact that the Torah obligates him to observe the rest of the Sabbath, Rabbi Meir brings proof that there is indeed no deferral in mitzvot, and from that he infers the same regarding mourning.

The conclusion is that according to Rabbi Meir the entire Sabbath extends from the moment of twilight. This reminds us of the conception we saw regarding “since it was set aside,” where twilight determines the status of objects with respect to muktzeh. Here we see something much more far-reaching: even with respect to biblical laws, and entirely apart from the laws of muktzeh and “since it was set aside,” twilight is the determining moment for the whole Sabbath.¹⁵ The whole Sabbath is one unit of time, a kind of point; therefore what happens at twilight determines the course of the entire Sabbath.

Time on Yom Kippur¹⁶

A similar problem to those we have seen thus far arises with regard to Yom Kippur. The author of Binyan Tziyyon, section 34, discusses whether a person who ate on Yom Kippur must continue fasting, or whether, since he has already broken the fast, he can no longer complete it. The basis for the side that understands the obligation as a fast extending throughout the whole day is the verse “From evening to evening shall you keep your Sabbath,” which commands the fast of Yom Kippur and apparently speaks of a full day-long fast. From this some have inferred that a partial fast has no value, and therefore if someone ate during the day he is no longer obligated, and indeed no longer able, to continue fasting for the rest of the day. Although Rashba wrote explicitly that there is an obligation to continue fasting, Binyan Tziyyon cites a dispute and various sources on this issue.

There are later authorities who describe this inquiry in philosophical terms:¹⁷ Is Yom Kippur one unit of time, or is it composed of separate moments? If it is composed of separate moments, then clearly if we failed to fulfill our duty at one moment, that in no way detracts from our duty to continue fasting during the remaining moments. But if it is one unit, then by not fasting throughout the whole day we have not fulfilled the mitzvah at all, and there is no point in continuing to fast.

One obvious consequence of this question concerns a minor who becomes an adult in the middle of Yom Kippur. According to the definition that describes the obligation to fast as one unit of time, it is clear that there would be no point in that minor fasting for half a day, for even if he fasts, all he has is half a fast, and half a fast has no value. By contrast, if the obligation applies to each moment, then clearly he is obligated to fast for the rest of the day that remains.¹⁷

The Meaning of the Discussion: Back to Maimonides’ Considerations Regarding the Count of the Commandments

The dispute between the Rosh and Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg parallels, to some extent, the dispute among the early authorities that we saw regarding “since it was set aside,” and the dispute regarding affliction on Yom Kippur. There are two conceptions here of the nature of time on Sabbaths and festivals. The conclusion that emerges from the second conception is that on sacred days and on Sabbath, time is not a collection of moments but one unit. Once a status has been fixed for an object at one moment, it cannot be detached from its status at the other moments of that same festival or Sabbath. Everything is one unit.

On ordinary weekdays, by contrast, the character of time is different. There each moment stands on its own. To be sure, in mourning the moment of death, or of hearing about it, is what creates the obligation of mourning, but there this is not because of the nature of time. It is because of the substantive content of mourning law. Mourning is an obligation derived from death, even though it takes place in ordinary time, where each moment of time stands independently.

Let us now continue and, in light of this, consider the Gemara’s explanation that distinguishes between etrog and sukkah with respect to the laws of the blessing over sukkah and lulav, Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 45b:

Rav Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel: With lulav, seven; with sukkah, one day. What is the reason? With lulav, nights interrupt between the days, and therefore each day is a mitzvah in its own right. With sukkah, nights do not interrupt between the days, and therefore all seven are like one long day.

The Gemara explains why the blessing over the mitzvah of sukkah is one for all seven days, while the blessing over the mitzvah of lulav is recited anew each day. The explanation is that with lulav there is no obligation at night, and therefore the days are separated from one another. With sukkah there is obligation at night as well, and therefore all seven days are one unit.

This continues the conception we saw above, according to which all the moments of a festival or Sabbath combine into one unit. Here we see that this is said not only with respect to a single day, but even when the festival lasts seven days.

The implication for our issue is clear. Maimonides counts the mitzvot of the seven days as one mitzvah, even though the different days are not identical as a cyclical process on some circular time axis. Here we see a possible explanation of that: Maimonides sees all seven days as one unit of time, and therefore he treats the commandments pertaining to them as one mitzvah.

This brings us back to the question why Maimonides counts the musafim of the seven days of Passover as one commandment. We now see that these seven musaf offerings are one continuous obligation to bring musaf sacrifices throughout the seven days of the festival, which are one unit. Therefore it is clear that one should not count them as seven separate obligations. On the other hand, it is equally clear that the musafim of Sukkot and Shavuot cannot be joined with the musafim of Passover, as Behag and Saadia Gaon maintain. Maimonides does not accept that, because in his view the time axis is what determines the count of commandments in these contexts, and it is difficult to say that all the festivals together constitute one continuous unit.

A Homily on the Relation Between Weekday and Sacred Time on the Time Axis

We see that beyond the fact that these time axes are different—or at least different points on the same axis—they are also locations with different characteristics on a single time axis. On weekdays we live in a time axis composed of parts, and every week on Sabbath, or on the festivals, we as it were “ascend” into a different kind of time, to live within a spiritual time axis with different characteristics. At these points there is a connection between the two time axes.

Against this background it is interesting to refer the reader to a surprising midrash in the Mekhilta on the portion Ki Tissa, tractate de-Shabbata, section 1:

“And the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath”… Rabbi says: Whoever properly keeps one Sabbath, Scripture credits him as though he had kept all the Sabbaths from the day the Holy One, blessed be He, created His world until the dead will live again, as it is said: “And the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to make the Sabbath throughout their generations an everlasting covenant.”

The midrash says that one who keeps a single Sabbath is credited as if he had kept all Sabbaths, in the past and in the future. Why should that be so? What connection is there between the Sabbath he is now keeping and all the other Sabbaths that were and will be? It seems that here too we see that all Sabbaths are the very same moment, and what changes is the course of the weekday time axis. Every six weekdays we return, for one day, to live in the upper axis of Sabbath time. Each return occurs at a different point on the weekday axis, but when we ascend we encounter that same very moment at which we stood last week, at which our ancestors stood in the weeks before, and at which our descendants will stand in the Sabbaths yet to come. If so, all Sabbaths together are one moment on the spiritual time axis, and therefore it is obvious that the commandments of Sabbath are not to be counted separately for each Sabbath. This is a kind of “since it was set aside” applied to all Sabbaths together.

This picture presents life on two simultaneous planes. Each of us lives along two parallel time axes, one above and one below. On weekdays we live below, on the ordinary axis made of discrete parts. Once a week, and on every festival, we ascend to live on the upper time axis for a day or several days, and afterward return to the weekdays. The weekday axis advances spirally, but the axis of Sabbaths and festivals reflects exactly the principle we saw earlier with respect to circular time axes—Sabbath every week, Rosh Hodesh every month, and festivals every year—where each time we return to the very same point.

Every week, on the ordinary daily axis, a person ascends to another time axis, a Sabbatical axis that is nothing but one point, one day, which does not pass and does not change. In truth he ascends to that same very point in the upper time, which is the Sabbath.

Looking Back at the Problems We Saw in the Count of the Commandments by Way of Homily

According to this line of thought, there may be room to explain, by way of homily, that the commands on each festival and Sabbath are divided into two principal types. One type is a command that belongs to ordinary weekday time, namely the command to detach oneself and ascend to the point of Sabbath in the upper time. In addition, there are commands that apply once the person has already ascended and is now present in that upper time—on every Sabbath, when he lives in a world that is wholly Sabbath.

The commands to detach from ordinary weekday life are counted as separate commands, because on the lower axis these are separate time-points. But the commands that apply in that upper world are one command, because, as we saw above, on every Sabbath we are at exactly the same point in time on the upper axis. There is only one such point, called “Sabbath,” as the Mekhilta cited above states.

The command to cease from labor is precisely a command to detach from ordinary life, and therefore it is counted separately for each festival and each Sabbath. But the appearance-offering and the festival peace-offering are commands that apply to one who is already in that world and living according to the rules of the upper time axis, and therefore these mitzvot are counted as one commandment for all the pilgrimage festivals. The dispute between Maimonides and Behag and Saadia Gaon concerns how to understand the commands to offer the musafim: are they part of the way of detaching from the weekday time axis, or are they commands that apply to one who is already detached and “living” above?

In the same way, one may perhaps understand the determination that the musafim belonging to one festival are counted as one commandment, a matter we addressed above. The different days of Passover, or of Sukkot, are apparently different points on the time axis of the festivals. In Sukkot there are even different sacrifices on each day, which proves that the time-points causing them are different. If so, it is not clear why Maimonides determines that each of these—whether the sacrifices of Passover or of Sukkot—is one commandment.

But in light of our discussion, one can say that each festival is one unit of time, only an extended one. These mitzvot lie on the time axis of the festivals, that is, the annual axis, and the character of this time axis is that it is not composed of parts but is a “point-like entity.” If so, all the days of each festival are one indivisible unit on that axis. And this is exactly what we saw above in tractate Sukkah: all the days of Sukkot are one unit.¹⁸

The Two Time Axes in Halakha

Several broad studies have been written on the subject of time in halakha. See, for example, “The Concept of Time in the Torah, in the Literature of the Sages, and in the Early Authorities,” by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher, Talpiot, year 5, issues 3-4, pp. 799-829. Also in Rabbi Kasher’s book Mefa’ane’ah Tzefunot, Tzafnat Paneah Institute, Jerusalem, 1976, especially chapter 3. See also “The Concept of Time in Halakha,” by Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel, Sinai, issues 43-44; and in his book Ha-Middot le-Heker ha-Halakhah, Jerusalem, 1973, especially part 2, measure 16.

Now, in the introduction to the chapter mentioned in Mefa’ane’ah Tzefunot, Rabbi Kasher discusses, among other things, the question whether time is composed of parts or is one unit, a kind of point—as in the dispute between Maimonides and the theologians of the Kalam at the beginning of part 2 of the Guide of the Perplexed. He points to various contradictions on this matter and argues that one must not confuse inquiries into the halakhic concept of time with those into the physical concept of time. By means of this claim he resolves several contradictory statements of Maimonides in the Guide of the Perplexed as against what appears in the Talmud and in the Mishneh Torah, to which, in fact, the method of the Kalam seems more fitting. Here too there appears, at least superficially, to be a conception of one time axis “riding” upon another time axis.

But in our humble opinion such a distinction is implausible. Halakha does not have its own fictive time; it deals with ordinary physical time. Moreover, as we proved in the previous essay, the halakhic conception is that time is a real existent, and therefore its nature is not a matter of interpretations and ways of looking.

It seems that nearly all of these contradictions can be resolved by means of the distinction between the time axis of ordinary life, the one that belongs to our world and with which physics deals, and the axis of festivals and Sabbaths, with respect to which most of the contradictions Rabbi Kasher points to actually appear. If so, the contradiction disappears on its own once one accepts the existence of two distinct time axes. We will not dwell on this here, because it requires entering into a whole cluster of various halakhic sugyot. We refer the reader to the books and essays just mentioned.

A Source from Sefer Ha-Ikkarim and Guide of the Perplexed

The claim that there are two kinds of time—one made of parts and flowing, and the other static and point-like—is already found in the works of the medieval authorities. In Sefer Ha-Ikkarim, part 2, chapter 18, he writes—and the source is the Guide of the Perplexed, part 2, chapter 13; see also our previous essay:

…Accordingly, time will be of two kinds. One kind is counted and measured by the motion of the sphere, and in it there apply earlier and later, equal and unequal. The other kind is uncounted and unmeasured: it is the duration that existed before the existence of the sphere, to which equal and unequal do not apply, and this is what Maimonides of blessed memory called a “semblance of time” in the thirteenth chapter of part two. This kind may be eternal; what is generated or renewed is the order of time, not time itself. In this way all the doubts and perplexities concerning the essence of time—whether it comes to be in time or not—are removed, for although time itself is not renewed and does not come to be, the order of time can indeed exist in time.

Likewise, what they questioned about the “now,” by saying that the now is what divides earlier time from later time, and yet there would then be a time before the first now, so that time and the sphere would have to be eternal, is no difficulty according to this approach. For time in which there is motion has earlier and later, but time in which there is no motion has no earlier and later, and there is no measured time there. For measure cannot apply to time apart from motion, and one speaks there of earlier and later only by transference and looseness of language, just as one says that outside the world there is neither emptiness nor fullness, though if there is an outside, there must necessarily be either emptiness or fullness. Rather, the word “outside” is used by transference and looseness of language, and so too “earlier” and “later” when said of the imagined duration before the creation of the world.

And because understanding this matter is difficult—how one can conceive that the world should come to an end in relation to something that is neither emptiness nor fullness, and likewise how one can conceive of duration before the creation of the world without earlier and later, as in the order of time that exists today—our Sages, of blessed memory, therefore said: A person should not ask what is above, what is below, what was before, and what will be after. “What is above” and “what is below” refer to what is outside the world, while “what was before” and “what will be after” refer to duration before the creation of the world and after its destruction; and the meaning is that one should not ask whether earlier and later apply there or not.

The author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim explains that there is a static time axis, in which there is no before and after, and which does not flow and indeed always existed. Alongside it there is the time axis familiar to us, the flowing time in which there is before and after, and which exists only from the creation of the world onward, because it is governed by the motion of the sphere, which establishes before and after. The picture that emerges is that the familiar time axis flows across another, static time axis. One may perhaps identify the static axis with what we saw above in the time of the festivals—the upper axis, which is a kind of point—while the familiar axis is ordinary weekday time, which flows and is composed of discrete moments.

A Philosophical-Physical Source

That same conclusion also emerges from philosophical and physical considerations, which we will briefly mention here. Many of us feel that although time and space share several common properties—especially in light of Einstein’s theory of relativity, where they are presented as having almost identical character—nevertheless time differs from space in that it “flows.”¹⁹ We feel that time passes over us, or that we pass over it, whereas space is static. This was in fact one of Henri Bergson’s central arguments against the picture emerging from Einstein’s theory of relativity, according to which time is frozen and static like space.

A simple argument against this feeling is the following:²¹ “A changes” means that A is in one state at one time and in another state at another time. In particular, to say “A moves,” that is, its place changes, means that A is in one place at one time and in another place at another time. To place time itself in the subject-position of such sentences, as the A in question, is meaningless, since time is not in any state at some time. Therefore, at first glance, one cannot even make the claim that “time flows.”

The obvious way to rescue the intuition that feels the flow of time from this difficulty is to posit the existence of two different time axes. One of them is static, and the other flows across it. In other words, in order to ground the feeling that time flows, one must posit the existence of another time axis over which the first time passes.²⁰ If so, the feeling that time flows implicitly assumes a conception according to which there are two time axes: one time flows across the other. In fact, in physics and psychology several different time axes are defined, though this is not the place to discuss them.²¹

Footnotes