Lesson 6: Category 3 — The Fourth 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 Fourth Root

That it is improper to count commands that encompass the whole Torah

On the Meaning of Comprehensive Commands

This essay deals with the first root in the third category, out of the five categories we defined in the introduction: roots concerned with eliminating redundancies. This category includes the fourth, sixth, and ninth roots. We will argue that the very classification into categories, which assumes that this root concerns the elimination of redundancies, is itself not obvious.

In this root, Maimonides addresses several commands that appear in the Torah whose content is comprehensive rather than concrete, such as “You shall keep all My commandments,” and the like. Maimonides rules that they should not be included in the enumeration of the mitzvot (commandments).

With regard to this root as well, as with the previous one, there is room to wonder whether it is technical-interpretive or substantive. That is: are these mitzvot not counted for an interpretive-technical reason connected with Rabbi Simlai’s dictum, or are they not binding mitzvot at all?

As the discussion unfolds, it will seem that Maimonides is contending here with the view of the author of Halakhot Gedolot (Behag). Yet, as in the third root, here too it appears that all the commentators agree that even Behag does not dispute the principle established in this root. We shall see that there are different opinions about how to explain that principle, and these will indeed have practical implications.

This root, too, will involve the concept of a mitzvah, which we already began to discuss in the third root. The central question here will be the nature and essence of comprehensive mitzvot: are they mitzvot about something, and are they omitted from the count only because of considerations of duplication? Or is their content not imperative at all, so that they are not counted because they are not mitzvot in the first place?

A. A General Survey of Maimonides’ Remarks

The basic principle

Maimonides’ remarks in this root are very brief, so the simplest approach is to present them by way of a translated quotation, with some annotation. He opens as follows:

The fourth root: it is not proper to count commands that encompass the whole Torah. The Torah contains commands and warnings that do not concern any specific matter, but include all the commandments, as though it said: do everything I have commanded you to do, beware of everything about which I have warned you, or do not transgress anything that I have commanded you.

Up to this point, Maimonides has defined the subject under discussion. He is speaking here about mitzvot such as “My statutes you shall keep” and the like. A command of this sort does not tell us to do any particular thing; rather, it warns us to observe all the commandments.

He now turns to the question of counting such mitzvot:

It is not possible to count such a command as a mitzvah in its own right. For it does not command some specific act that would constitute a positive commandment, nor does it warn against some specific act that would constitute a prohibition. This is like the verse, “In all that I have said to you, take heed” (Exodus 23:13), and like, “My statutes you shall keep” (Leviticus 19:19), “My laws you shall do” (Leviticus 18:4), and “You shall keep My charge” (Leviticus 18:30), and many others like them.

The reason Maimonides gives for not counting these mitzvot is that they do not command any particular act, and therefore they are not positive commandments; nor do they warn against any particular act, and therefore they are not prohibitions. Even after reading such a verse, we have not added any new act to the list of acts forbidden or required before we encountered it.

From Maimonides’ language here, it is not entirely clear whether he means to argue that there is mere duplication here—that one should not count the comprehensive mitzvah because it simply repeats the specific commandments that have already been counted—or whether he means that this verse does not command anything at all, and therefore it is not really a mitzvah, which is why it should not be counted. His wording suggests the latter, and below we shall argue that this is indeed his view. We will spell this out in greater detail as we proceed.

The dispute with Behag

Maimonides continues by polemicizing against Behag on this principle:

People have also erred in this root and counted “You shall be holy” (Leviticus 19:2) among the positive commandments. They did not know that “You shall be holy” and “Sanctify yourselves and be holy” (Leviticus 20:7; 11:44) are commands to fulfill the entire Torah, as though it said: be holy by doing everything I commanded you and by guarding yourself from everything against which I warned you. And the language of the Sifra is: “‘You shall be holy’—you shall be separate.” That is to say, separate yourselves from all the disgraceful things against which I warned you.

Here Maimonides enters a specific dispute about the mitzvah “You shall be holy,” which Behag counts, whereas Maimonides argues that it should not be viewed as a specific mitzvah but as a general one. Beyond the question of how each understands the verse “You shall be holy,” it is not entirely clear whether Maimonides thought that Behag rejected the principle that general mitzvot are not counted, or whether Behag also accepted that principle and merely disagreed with Maimonides about the interpretation of “You shall be holy,” regarding it as a specific mitzvah and therefore including it in his count.

In light of the effort Maimonides devotes to clarifying the boundaries of the mitzvah “You shall be holy,” it would seem that he, too, understood that Behag was not disputing the principle itself. If so, we find here a structure similar to what we saw in the third and thirteenth roots: there too, the principles turned out to be ones that Behag basically accepted, with disagreement arising only in the application to particular mitzvot. Such disputes usually concern the interpretation of specific commandments, not the principle discussed in the root itself.

Yet a closer look at Maimonides’ language here suggests that he thought Behag did dispute the root itself. First, if we compare the formulation here with what Maimonides wrote in the thirteenth root, we see that there he explicitly says that Behag does not dispute the root itself, but only applies it incorrectly. Here, by contrast, Maimonides says that Behag erred in this root.

As for the substance of the matter: the fact that the other comprehensive commands mentioned in the previous passage were not included in Behag’s enumeration might seem to show that Behag, too, did not dispute the principle itself, and that the disagreement here is only about “You shall be holy.” But that is a mistake. The question why Behag does not count all comprehensive mitzvot presents no difficulty for his position. Even if one assumes that comprehensive mitzvot may in principle be included in the count, it is still obvious that it would make no sense to count several such mitzvot, if only because of the duplication among them. Therefore, if Behag did count “You shall be holy” and understood it as a comprehensive mitzvah, there would be no point in including additional comprehensive mitzvot in the count. It therefore seems clear that Maimonides thought Behag really did dispute this root itself.

To attack Behag’s understanding of “You shall be holy,” Maimonides brings proofs from tannaitic midrashim (rabbinic interpretive texts), in the Mekhilta and the Sifra, which treat this verse as a general command—in other words, a command lacking specific content, one that does not add any concrete prohibition or obligation beyond what we already knew without it. Maimonides also notes that the Torah contains several additional verses of this sort, which command us to be holy.

At this point the problem becomes sharper. Maimonides focuses on the mitzvah “You shall be holy,” but he does not explain the root itself. That is: if we were right that he viewed the dispute with Behag not as a dispute about the verse “You shall be holy” but as a dispute about the principle itself, then his effort to prove the nature of that particular verse seems rather superfluous. Even if Behag were to concede that this is indeed a general mitzvah, that would change nothing. He would still count it, since he counts general mitzvot. More than that: even if Maimonides were to “persuade” him not to count “You shall be holy,” for whatever reason, Behag would still have to count some other general mitzvah, such as “You shall keep My commandments,” because in his view the general character of a mitzvah does not disqualify it from inclusion in the count. Why, then, devote so much effort to arguing about the nature of “You shall be holy”?

It seems that Maimonides is trying to prove something here that goes beyond the specific character of “You shall be holy”—something that bears on the very principle discussed in this root. We can see this through the next proof he brings.

The proof from the Mekhilta

Maimonides now turns to another Mekhilta, from which he infers his position:

And in the Mekhilta, on the verse “You shall be holy people to Me,” they said: Isi ben Yehudah says, whenever the Holy One, blessed be He, gives Israel a new commandment, He adds holiness to them. That is to say, this command is not an independent command, but follows from another command that they were given, and one who fulfills that command is called holy.

At first glance, it seems that Maimonides is merely continuing to support his interpretation of the verse “You shall be holy,” and is not yet addressing the broader question of comprehensive mitzvot. That is why he brings another source dealing with the idea of holiness. But on closer inspection, the reference to holiness here is almost incidental. Maimonides’ primary intention is to bring a proof for his general claim, not merely for his interpretation of “You shall be holy.” His argument unfolds in two stages.

In the first stage, he infers from this Mekhilta that every mitzvah is supposed to add holiness to Israel. In addition, he seems to assume implicitly that holiness must find expression in action or in refraining from action. From this he apparently concludes that commands that do not impose any new obligation or prohibition beyond what we already had do not add holiness to us. Hence they are not mitzvot, and clearly they should not be counted among the mitzvot. At this stage, holiness is merely the angle from which Maimonides views comprehensive mitzvot, and there is no special connection to the particular verse “You shall be holy.” His claim is that “mitzvot” which do not add holiness have no place in the system of mitzvot. Ironically, in this sense, precisely the verse “You shall be holy” does not add holiness, and that is why Maimonides argues that it is not a mitzvah.

In the second stage of the argument, Maimonides returns from this interpretation to the verse “You shall be holy” and similar verses. He proves that these verses themselves do not come to introduce any new command, nor to add holiness. But here he adds what this “mitzvah” does come to teach: precisely this point itself—that every mitzvah adds holiness. That is, it teaches a meta-halakhic principle about halakha (Jewish law). But this also lets us see, from another angle, why it should not be included in the count of mitzvot. A mitzvah, by its very nature, is a practical directive. The revelation of a meta-halakhic principle, important as it may be, cannot be considered a mitzvah.¹ Therefore “You shall be holy” cannot be considered a mitzvah, not only because it adds no holiness, but also because it merely reveals a meta-halakhic principle rather than commanding anything. This second stage already bears directly on the verse “You shall be holy,” and here the discussion of holiness is no longer incidental, as it was in the previous stage.

Thus, after deriving from this Mekhilta a proof for the general principle of the root, Maimonides returns and proves his view specifically with regard to the mitzvah “You shall be holy.” This verse cannot be included in the enumeration of mitzvot because it teaches us a meta-halakhic principle, not an obligation or prohibition. In other words: it is a declarative verse, not an imperative verse. See also our discussion of this distinction at the beginning of the essay on the third root, and further below.

It is important to note the difference in character between the two arguments in these two stages. In the first stage, Maimonides argued that comprehensive mitzvot should not be counted because they add no practical obligation. At first glance, that sounds like a claim of duplication: they should not be counted because they are already counted through the specific mitzvot counted separately. The comprehensive command merely reiterates the obligation to obey the other commands, and therefore, because of redundancy, it should not be included in the count. But in the second stage, when he returns to discuss “You shall be holy,” a different reason emerges. This verse does in fact add something, and in that sense there is no duplication, because it introduces a new idea. But what it teaches is a meta-halakhic principle, not a halakhic obligation or prohibition. A verse that teaches us meta-halakhic principles—how to understand halakha, rather than what to do or not do—is not a command-verse but a declarative one. Below we will see some implications of the difference between these two reasons.

So two different reasons emerge here for not counting comprehensive mitzvot, and we have seen that they derive from two different roles played by the holiness-verses in Maimonides’ argument. These are the two stages in his argument from the Mekhilta of Isi ben Yehudah.

If so, this Mekhilta is not only about the verse “You shall be holy”; through it Maimonides proves the basic claim of the root itself, that comprehensive mitzvot should not be counted. This brings us back to our earlier discussion, where we wondered why Maimonides seemed to focus only on “You shall be holy” and not on the root itself, if he really thought Behag disagreed with him about the root as such rather than only about the meaning of that specific verse.

Interim summary: two ways to understand Maimonides in this root

As we already noted, there are two possible ways to understand the principle of the present root:

1. It is a principle aimed at preventing duplication. Comprehensive mitzvot are not counted because they are already included within the specific mitzvot.
2. They are not counted because they command us to do nothing at all; at most they reveal meta-halakhic principles. They are not mitzvot in the first place, and therefore there is no room to include them in the count.

We will return to these two understandings below, and we will also see an interesting practical implication of the difference between them.

The conclusion of Maimonides’ remarks

Maimonides now returns to discuss the holiness-verses themselves:

There is no difference between the statement “You shall be holy” and if it had said “Do My commandments.” Just as one would not say that such a statement is itself a positive commandment attached to the commandments to which it alludes, which we were already commanded to perform, so too one should not say about “You shall be holy” and the like that it is a mitzvah, for it did not command anything beyond what we already knew. And the language of the Sifrei, at the end of Shelach, is: “‘And you shall be holy’—this is the holiness of the commandments.”

Here too, both arguments are implicitly present. On the one hand, the verse adds nothing beyond what we were already commanded. On the other hand, the Sifrei says, “‘And you shall be holy’—this is the holiness of the commandments,” hinting at the meta-halakhic novelty contained in such verses.

Maimonides concludes this root by bringing several further examples:

This has already clarified the point around which we have been circling. From this root as well are the statements, “Circumcise the foreskin of your heart”—that is, accept and heed everything previously mentioned among the commandments—and “Do not stiffen your neck any longer”—that is, do not harden your heart, but accept everything I have commanded you and do not transgress it.

It is not entirely clear what these examples add. After “the point has already been clarified,” why does he bring two more examples? Even at first glance it is evident that, unlike the previous examples, all of which were phrased as positive commands—though for Maimonides they are only apparent commands—one of the examples here is formulated as a prohibition. There is an apparent prohibition against stiffening one’s neck, that is, against not observing the commandments. In any case, although the first example is phrased positively—“Circumcise the foreskin of your heart”—it is important to notice that both commandments appear in the very same verse, Deuteronomy 10:16:

Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and stiffen your neck no more.

As Nahmanides notes in his glosses here, Behag counts the prohibition “Do not stiffen your neck.” It may therefore be that after Maimonides concludes the discussion of the principle of the root, and more specifically of the verse “You shall be holy,” with respect to which he had proofs from the rabbinic midrashim, he points to yet another command that Behag counted, and infers from the preceding discussion that this verse too—and with it the beginning of the verse as well—should not be included in the enumeration of mitzvot.

B. Nahmanides’ Objections and His Approach

A general description of Nahmanides’ remarks

Nahmanides, in his comments, brings several additional examples of comprehensive commands that appear in the Torah, and begins by claiming that no one disputes the principle presented in this root. That is, unlike the understanding of Maimonides that emerged from our discussion above—namely, that Behag does not dispute him only about the nature of “You shall be holy,” but rather about the very principle of the root—Nahmanides argues that Behag disputes Maimonides only about the definition of “You shall be holy,” not about the root itself.

From there, Nahmanides turns to the ostensibly comprehensive mitzvot counted by Behag—even some that Maimonides does not mention in his polemic here—and explains one by one why they are not really comprehensive mitzvot. That in turn explains why Behag counted them.

1. With respect to the holiness-verses, Nahmanides says that Maimonides misunderstood Behag. Behag, he explains, did not count the mitzvah “You shall be holy” at the beginning of Parashat Kedoshim, but rather the mitzvah “Sanctify yourselves and be holy,” which appears in the context of swarming and creeping creatures. He explains that this verse is not a general directive to observe all the commandments, but rather a positive warning regarding the prohibition of eating such creatures. It is therefore unsurprising that Behag counts it. If so, Behag does not dispute Maimonides about the root itself at all; he merely adds a positive command concerning refraining from eating swarming and creeping creatures, nothing more.²
2. Later, Nahmanides cites two commands that Behag counted and that seem to be comprehensive commands: “Do not turn aside from all the things that I command you,” and “Do not stiffen your neck any longer.” Since Nahmanides assumes that Behag accepts this root, he explains the command “Do not stiffen your neck” as a specific prohibition against subjecting a prophet to obstructive testing. It has already been observed that this would fall under “You shall not test the Lord your God,” but this is not the place to elaborate.
3. The second prohibition is indeed explained by Nahmanides as a comprehensive prohibition, and yet he says that it is nevertheless rightly included in the enumeration of mitzvot. This claim sheds light on the whole discussion of the root, and we shall therefore explain it in more detail.

Between comprehensive prohibitions and comprehensive positive commands

Nahmanides writes at the end of his glosses as follows:

But the view of the author of Halakhot Gedolot with respect to the prohibition “Do not turn aside from all the words that I command you today, to the right or to the left” is that it constitutes a prohibition regarding all the mitzvot of the Torah.

Nahmanides introduces here another comprehensive mitzvah counted by Behag: “Do not turn aside from all the words that I command you today, to the right or to the left.” At the outset he says explicitly that this is indeed a comprehensive mitzvah, unlike the previous cases, which he had explained as not actually comprehensive according to Behag. Since Nahmanides maintains that Behag also accepts the principle of the present root, he must explain why this mitzvah is nevertheless included in Behag’s count, and he writes:

He counts it because of its severity with respect to them, for it adds a prohibition to the positive commandments in general, as in the matter of the verse, “Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this Torah to do them” (Deuteronomy 27:26). A similar expression is already found elsewhere: “Observe to do as the Lord your God commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left” (Deuteronomy 5:32). But he wrote this one because it seals the whole Torah, since he counted no other besides it.

In parentheses we should note that Nahmanides later argues that this verse is not a prohibition at all but a promise. In that respect, he disagrees both with Maimonides and with Behag, for both of them agree that it is a comprehensive command. We will return to this below.

In explaining Behag’s view, Nahmanides makes a surprising claim: there is room to count a comprehensive prohibition, because it adds a prohibition to all the positive commandments. In other words, the principle set forth in this root does not apply to comprehensive prohibitions, but only to comprehensive positive commands.

Where does this distinction come from? To understand that, we must briefly anticipate the sixth and ninth roots. As noted, both of those roots also belong to the category of principles concerning redundancy, and they will be discussed in our next two essays.

Duplication of a prohibition and a positive command

In the ninth root, Maimonides states that sometimes the Torah repeats the same mitzvah several times. For example, in twelve places the Torah warns us not to perform labor on Shabbat. In such cases, one should include no more than one mitzvah in the count, because we count the mitzvot—the forbidden and required contents—not the commands, that is, the verses that command them.

In the sixth root, Maimonides qualifies this rule and states that if the duplication is between a prohibition and a positive command, then both are counted separately, one prohibition and one positive command. Thus, with respect to the prohibition of labor on Shabbat, there is both a prohibition and a positive command, and both are included in the count of mitzvot. Therefore, someone who performs labor on Shabbat both neglects a positive command and violates a prohibition. Maimonides thus explicitly maintains that when the “duplication” is between a prohibition and a positive command, this is not true duplication, and both must be counted.

Returning to Nahmanides’ claim about comprehensive prohibitions: how did he understand Maimonides?

From here Nahmanides concludes that the principle set forth by Maimonides applies only to comprehensive positive commandments, because they add nothing to the specific mitzvot. But a comprehensive prohibition does add something to the specific mitzvot, because it is not duplicated by them, according to the principle of the sixth root. For this reason Nahmanides also supports counting “Sanctify yourselves,” which imposes a positive command alongside the prohibitions of swarming and creeping creatures. That too is a positive command added to prohibitions, and so, in his view, there is no duplication.

Above, we proposed two possible understandings of Maimonides’ principle:
1. Comprehensive mitzvot are not counted because of duplication.
2. These verses do not command us to do anything, and therefore they are not mitzvot at all.

Nahmanides’ remarks make it entirely clear that he understands the principle of this root as one of the rules meant to prevent duplication—namely, the first understanding. That is why he says that comprehensive prohibitions should indeed be counted, because that is not duplication. Clearly, according to the second understanding—namely, if a comprehensive mitzvah does not command us to do anything and merely reveals a meta-halakhic principle—there would be no room to distinguish between comprehensive prohibitions and comprehensive positive commands, because the problem would not be duplication but the very nature of these “mitzvot.”

Now Maimonides, in Sefer HaMitzvot, positive commandment 5, counts the mitzvah to pray once each day. In the course of that discussion he refers to the fourth root and writes as follows:

The fifth mitzvah is that He commanded us to serve Him, exalted be He. This command has been repeated several times: “You shall serve the Lord your God” (Exodus 23:25), “Him shall you serve” (Deuteronomy 13:5), “Him shall you serve” (Deuteronomy 6:13), and “to serve Him” (Deuteronomy 11:13). Although this command is also one of the comprehensive commands, as we explained in the fourth root, it nevertheless possesses a unique feature, namely that it commands prayer. The language of the Sifrei is: “‘To serve Him’—this is prayer.” They also said: “‘To serve Him’—this is Torah study.” And in the teaching collection of Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yosei HaGelili it says: From where do we know that the principal obligation of prayer is among the commandments? From here: “The Lord your God shall you fear, and Him shall you serve.” And it is also said in Midrash Tannaim, from Midrash HaGadol on Re’eh: “Serve Him through His Torah; serve Him in His Temple”—that is, go there to pray in it and toward it, as Solomon explained in 1 Kings 8 and 2 Chronicles 6.

Maimonides’ language here suggests that the problem is duplication, for he explains his decision to count the mitzvah of serving God by saying that it introduces something beyond the general instruction. Yet, as we shall see immediately, that is not necessarily so. It may well be that Maimonides is explaining that ordinarily such a verse is not really a mitzvah, but if it contains a unique and concrete directive, then it becomes one—and may therefore be counted.

On the other hand, Nahmanides, at the end of his glosses on this mitzvah, explicitly states that this is how he understood the principle of the root. He writes there:

For the verse says, “After the Lord your God shall you walk, and Him shall you fear, and His commandments shall you keep” (Deuteronomy 13:5), and they expounded there in the Sifrei: “‘And His commandments shall you keep’—this is a positive commandment; ‘and His voice shall you heed’—to impose a prohibition with respect to the voice of His prophets.” Behold, the performance of all the commandments has already been stated, and that is why they expounded “and Him shall you serve” as referring to Temple service. They said explicitly concerning the whole verse: “Serve Him through His Torah; serve Him in His Temple”—meaning that it first commanded: serve Him through His Torah, that is, by performing all the commandments, from the beginning of the verse; and then it commanded Temple service from the words “and Him shall you serve,” to say that in all of this our service of Him, may He be exalted, will be complete.

These, then, are comprehensive commands. But because He commanded us in the verse “with all your heart” something new—that our whole heart be devoted to Him, may He be exalted, in the performance of the commandments, as I explained—it is possible that this command should enter the reckoning of the 248 positive commandments.

For this reason, in his view, comprehensive commands are not counted, because they have already been counted in their particulars. Just as we do not count the repetition of a single mitzvah two or three times in detail, but only once, so too we do not count its repetition in general as another mitzvah. However, if in that repetition it introduces and adds a matter fit to be counted, then it is counted.³

At the beginning of this passage, Nahmanides explains why the Sages interpreted the verse “Him shall you serve” as Temple service rather than as service of God in general. According to him, they did so because a general command to serve God is duplicative and therefore unnecessary. By contrast, Temple service is not quite a comprehensive positive command, because it adds a new obligation: to serve with our whole heart, and that is why it is counted.⁴

Nahmanides then explains that precisely for this reason comprehensive mitzvot are not counted, “because they have already been counted in their particulars.” In other words, he sees this root as a rule about duplication. He therefore explicitly links it to the ninth root, which teaches us not to count repeated commands unless one contains some novel element absent from the other. So too in our case: the comprehensive prohibition is counted because it contains a novelty, namely, that it adds a prohibition to the specific positive commandments. The entire last paragraph of his discussion is devoted to explaining that the whole issue turns on questions of duplication.

It is important to note that the reason Nahmanides gives for counting “with all your heart” is that it commands us to perform all the commandments with inward intention directed toward Heaven. This is different from Maimonides’ reason, because Nahmanides disagrees with him and holds that there is no Torah obligation to pray. He explains the verse as introducing a new mode of performing all the mitzvot.

In fact, this explanation implies that the verse remains a comprehensive command—like the duty to perform mitzvot with intention, which is likewise not separately counted, at least according to Maimonides, even though everyone agrees that such a duty exists.⁵ But this comprehensive command introduces something new, and is therefore counted. This is further evidence that Nahmanides sees the present root as a rule aimed at preventing duplication.

Maimonides, however, apparently does not accept this reasoning. Even if we were to read the verse in its simple sense—namely, that one must serve God with the heart—according to Maimonides that would still not suffice to justify counting this mitzvah separately. That is why he needs the interpretation that the verse commands prayer. Why indeed would the simple meaning of the verse be insufficient, according to Maimonides, to justify its inclusion in the count? This is further evidence that Maimonides does not see this root as merely preventing duplication. Rather, he holds that one does not count comprehensive commands as such. Therefore the obligation of intention, which remains a comprehensive command, is not counted separately by Maimonides.

The explanation seems to be that the instruction to intend while performing mitzvot is itself a general instruction, and therefore belongs to the meta-halakhic level rather than to halakha itself. It teaches us how mitzvot are to be done, but it should not be treated as a mitzvah in its own right. Hence Maimonides would not have included this mitzvah—intending while performing a commandment—had the verse not been interpreted as a command to pray. We shall expand on this below.

One may also observe a symptomatic difference between the language of Maimonides and Nahmanides here: Nahmanides speaks of the novelty introduced by the verse, whereas Maimonides speaks of its uniqueness. Nahmanides understands this root in terms of duplication, and therefore once there is some novelty the duplication disappears. Maimonides sees this root as an independent principle, that comprehensive commands are not counted; therefore, when a command has a unique, specific feature, it thereby loses its comprehensive character, and then Maimonides too will count it.

A difficulty with Nahmanides’ claim

Nahmanides’ remarks are very puzzling. He claims that although there is no place in the enumeration of mitzvot for comprehensive positive commands, there is definitely room for comprehensive prohibitions. But the specific mitzvot in the enumeration include both prohibitions and positive commandments. If so, a comprehensive positive command, such as “You shall keep all My commandments,” is indeed duplicative with the specific positive commands, but it is needed as an addition to the specific prohibitions. Exactly the same is true in reverse for a comprehensive prohibition, such as “Do not stiffen your neck any longer”: it is needed as an addition to the specific positive commandments, even though it is duplicative with the specific prohibitions. Why, then, does Nahmanides think there is an asymmetry between a comprehensive prohibition and a comprehensive positive command?

The author of Megillat Esther, in his comments on the roots, generally defends Maimonides against Nahmanides’ objections. Here too he attacks Nahmanides in a similar way, arguing:

If so, then he should also count comprehensive commands like “You shall be holy” and the like, because of their added stringency with respect to all the mitzvot, since they add a positive commandment to them—and a positive commandment is more stringent than a prohibition, as it is written in Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 86a: “When is this said? With respect to prohibitions. But with respect to positive commandments—for example, if one says to him, ‘Make a sukkah,’ and he does not make it, or ‘Take a lulav,’ and he does not take it—they beat him until his soul departs.”

Nahmanides felt that this defense lacked substance, and therefore said that in his view that verse is a promise and not a prohibition…

Thus it remains unclear what essential distinction Nahmanides sees between prohibitions and positive commandments. In both cases there is duplication with some of the specific mitzvot and non-duplication with the others.

Does Nahmanides himself accept the reasoning he proposed in explaining Behag?

We saw that the author of Megillat Esther claims, at the end of his remarks, that Nahmanides himself does not accept this line of reasoning—that one should count a comprehensive prohibition—for he himself interprets the relevant verse as a promise, not as a comprehensive prohibition. But that is not entirely clear from Nahmanides’ own words, for he does not say that he rejects the reasoning itself; he merely notes that in his view this specific verse should be interpreted differently.⁶

Even so, it seems that one can bring proof that Nahmanides really does not accept this reasoning. If his disagreement with Behag were only local—that is, only about interpreting “Do not turn aside” as a promise—but he agreed with the principle that one should count a single comprehensive prohibition in order to add a prohibition to all the positive commands, then why did he not count some other comprehensive prohibition in place of that verse? He himself notes that there are many such verses. If there is indeed no problem with counting a comprehensive prohibition, he should have counted one of them instead of this verse, which he understands as a promise.

It therefore appears that Nahmanides himself is in fact unwilling to count any comprehensive mitzvah, even a prohibition. If so, the author of Megillat Esther is correct in saying that Nahmanides disputes not only Maimonides but also the very principle he himself proposed as an explanation of Behag. Why does Nahmanides reject it? after all a comprehensive prohibition adds something to the specific positive commands, and vice versa. It is possible that his view is that the reason for not counting comprehensive prohibitions is not duplication, but rather the conception that such commands are not mitzvot at all—contrary to what seems to emerge from his remarks on positive commandment 5. We will return to this below.

A note on the remarks of Megillat Esther

It should be noted that the author of Megillat Esther presents Nahmanides’ remarks, and his own objection to them, somewhat differently from the way we have formulated them. According to him, a positive command has a stringent side relative to a prohibition, and therefore there is room to add comprehensive positive commands on top of the specific prohibitions. It is not clear whether he means to dispute Nahmanides and argue that specifically a positive command can be added to a prohibition, and not the reverse, or whether he means that each type has its own stringent side and therefore both kinds of comprehensive mitzvot should be counted. The latter seems more likely. In any case, he assumes that the reason one counts a duplicated prohibition and positive command is that each has some dimension of stringency.

As we shall see in the next two essays, this is probably not the real reason. The difference does not necessarily concern greater or lesser stringency, but rather a substantive difference between them. Even so, the basic thrust of his objection to Nahmanides appears to be correct, as we saw above.

Rabbi Yeruham Fishel Perla: why is the fourth root needed at all?

Rabbi Yeruham Fishel Perla, in his introduction to Saadia Gaon’s Sefer HaMitzvot, goes through Maimonides’ roots and examines the position of Saadia Gaon and the other enumerators of the mitzvot with respect to each of them. In his discussion of the fourth root, he addresses Nahmanides’ remarks and asks essentially our question:

Nahmanides’ words, of blessed memory, trouble me greatly. For according to this, the entire root is wholly undermined and has no place at all. Every prohibition that encompasses the whole Torah adds a prohibition to all the positive commandments of the Torah, and every positive commandment that encompasses the whole Torah adds positive force to all the prohibitions of the Torah. Why, then, did Nahmanides say this only regarding the prohibition “Do not turn aside from all the words” and no other?

He then cites the author of Megillat Esther, and interprets him as saying—as we explained above—that a positive command is more stringent than a prohibition. But he rejects that immediately, because in his view it is obvious that a prohibition is more stringent than a positive commandment, not the reverse.⁷

He adds that after one has added either a prohibition or a positive command, the resulting situation is certainly more severe, because prohibition plus positive command is more severe both than a prohibition alone and than a positive command alone. If so, an argument based on relative stringency provides no basis at all for Megillat Esther’s distinction between adding a comprehensive prohibition and adding a comprehensive positive command. He therefore concludes, as we noted above, that the non-duplication between prohibition and positive command does not depend on considerations of greater or lesser stringency.

In the end, he writes that this is precisely why Maimonides devoted a special root to our subject, rather than being satisfied with the ninth root. In effect, he argues that on Nahmanides’ understanding—that this root too is merely a rule preventing duplication—the ninth root would have sufficed, and the present root would be superfluous. The very fact that Maimonides devoted an additional root to comprehensive commands proves that Nahmanides is mistaken and that this is not a question of duplication. Put differently: as far as the rules of duplication are concerned, there would in fact be room to count comprehensive prohibitions, because the prohibitions they contain add something to the specific positive commands, and vice versa. Therefore the ninth root is insufficient to explain why comprehensive commands should not be counted, and Maimonides needed the present root in order to explain that.⁸

But now the question about the character of this root remains open. Rabbi Perla does not explain why one really does not count comprehensive mitzvot. If duplicated prohibition and positive command are counted, why not count comprehensive mitzvot? Considerations of duplication will not answer that question.

We are therefore driven back to our earlier conclusion: comprehensive mitzvot are not counted because they are not mitzvot at all, not because of duplication. They may reveal meta-halakhic principles, or something else, but they do not command us to do anything.

Nahmanides, who sees the matter in terms of preventing duplication, is in fact forced to surrender the principle of the root, because he concludes that one should count a comprehensive prohibition since it adds something to the specific positive commands. Thus, despite Nahmanides’ declaration that Behag also accepts the principle of this root, in practice that is not so. Behag does count a comprehensive prohibition. He counts only one, because to count several would be pointless duplication, but one is enough to show that he disagrees with Maimonides about this root.

With respect to comprehensive positive commands, however, Behag probably does accept Maimonides’ approach in this root. Yet according to our explanation above, even that may not be correct. The reason he does not count comprehensive positive commands may be that they have no content beyond the specific prohibitions, not that comprehensive commands are never counted.

Two possible explanations of Behag

We argued above that Nahmanides himself does not actually accept the reasoning he attributes to Behag. In his own view, too, there is no room for a comprehensive prohibition beyond the specific mitzvot. But even if Nahmanides presents this only as a possible explanation of Behag, a serious difficulty remains: why would Behag count a comprehensive prohibition in addition to the specific positive commands, but not count a comprehensive positive command in addition to the specific prohibitions?

It is possible that we misunderstood Nahmanides’ proposal. Perhaps even he does not ground this root in duplication, but rather maintains—at least in Behag’s view—that comprehensive mitzvot command nothing concrete, and are therefore not included in the count. In his own view this is certainly true, because, as we have seen, he himself is not willing to accept duplication between a comprehensive prohibition and a positive command, or vice versa. It may be that even in Behag there is room to explain matters this way, except that one must distinguish between a comprehensive positive command and a comprehensive prohibition. A comprehensive prohibition forbids us to do something, and in the case of a positive command it forbids us to neglect that positive command. But a comprehensive positive command tells us to do something, and in the case of a prohibition it would be telling us not to violate the prohibition.

Now, although we do find examples of a positive command whose content is refraining from action—such as Shabbat, where there is a positive command to desist from labor—there the abstention itself is the content of the mitzvah. We are commanded to rest on Shabbat, that is, not to perform labor. Only in such a case does it make sense to command abstention by way of a positive commandment. But ordinarily one cannot formulate a positive command “do not eat pork.” There is no positive meaning in not eating pork; there is only the absence of the negative significance of eating pork. Therefore there is no room for a comprehensive positive command with respect to prohibitions. Note that this argument for not counting a comprehensive positive command is not based on duplication, but on the fact that it commands us to do nothing.

We thus find that a comprehensive positive command adds nothing with respect to the specific prohibitions, because there is ordinarily no meaningful content to a positive command directing abstention—except where that abstention itself has positive content, as in resting on Shabbat. And with respect to the positive commandments, the comprehensive positive command obviously adds nothing, if only because of duplication. For both reasons together, then, there is no point in defining a comprehensive positive command as a separate mitzvah.

What about a comprehensive prohibition? Why might there be room to count it? Does a comprehensive prohibition have meaningful content in addition to specific positive commands? Apparently yes. If we examine the concept of a comprehensive prohibition, we see that it forbids us to neglect specific positive commandments. Such a command is a prohibition with concrete content. True, as we saw, a comprehensive positive command—that would command us not to violate specific prohibitions—has no real content. But a comprehensive prohibition, which forbids us to neglect a positive commandment, certainly does have concrete content. This may be why Nahmanides suggests that Behag found it appropriate to count comprehensive prohibitions but not comprehensive positive commands.

According to Rabbi Perla’s approach, which grounds everything in relative stringency, one can explain Behag differently. In his view, a prohibition is more stringent than a positive command, and therefore it makes sense to impose a general prohibition upon specific positive commandments. But it makes no sense to impose a general positive command upon specific prohibitions, because that would add no further stringency. True, if such a positive command were imposed, it would be counted by force of the sixth root, because it would be a positive command in addition to a prohibition, and that is not the kind of duplication that is excluded from the count. But there is no logic in imposing it if it adds no further severity beyond what already exists in the specific prohibition. The role of an added prohibition is to treat the violator more severely, but if the added command adds no severity, there is no sense in imposing it. This explanation is problematic even by Rabbi Perla’s own standards, however, since he himself argued that the addition of a positive command also makes the situation more severe, because prohibition plus positive command is certainly more severe than prohibition alone.

Another difficulty in Nahmanides

If Nahmanides is right, and Behag counted the mitzvah “Do not turn aside from all the words” even though it is a comprehensive command, then the result is that we now have a prohibition applying to the whole Torah. That means that every positive command in the Torah is accompanied by a prohibition. For example, one who does not put on tefillin neglects the positive command of tefillin, but also violates the prohibition of “Do not turn aside from all the words.” One might perhaps even explain from this why a positive command overrides a prohibition: because alongside the positive command there also stands a prohibition.⁹

But once this is granted, all the questions Nahmanides raised against Maimonides in the first root arise here as well. Why, for example, are there no lashes for neglect of a positive command? Seemingly there should be lashes because of the prohibition of “Do not turn aside.” This might perhaps be explained via the rule of a prohibition framed in general terms: such a prohibition does not incur lashes because it is not specific enough. But all the other differences between prohibitions and positive commands would still require explanation. Why, for example, with respect to a positive command must one spend only up to one-fifth of one’s assets, whereas for a prohibition one must spend all one’s money? Why does a positive command yield before human dignity while a prohibition does not? If every positive command has a prohibition alongside it, then seemingly one should have to spend all one’s money, and it should not be overridden by human dignity, and so on. More generally, this assumption seems to erase entirely the halakhic distinctions between prohibition and positive command.

A prohibition that supports a positive command

It seems possible to explain this in light of Nahmanides’ novellae to Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 34a. The Gemara there lists several positive commandments not dependent on time, among them the positive command of building a parapet. Several early authorities, among them Nahmanides, ask why the positive command of a parapet belongs in that list. Even if it were a time-bound positive commandment, women would still be obligated, because it is accompanied by the prohibition “Do not place blood in your house.”

Nahmanides answers there that if this mitzvah were time-dependent, women really would be exempt, despite the accompanying prohibition. The reason is that in such a case the prohibition exists in order to support the positive command, that is, to ensure that the positive command is fulfilled. Therefore, one who is exempt from the positive command is certainly not obligated by the prohibition. If the entire point of the prohibition is to ensure performance of the positive command, there is no place at all to impose that prohibition upon someone who is not obligated in the positive command. Put differently: if the prohibition exists to support the positive command, it cannot be more stringent than the positive command itself, and therefore, for at least some practical halakhic implications, it will be treated like a positive commandment.¹⁰

On that basis, perhaps one can explain our own problem as well. When there is a comprehensive prohibition that applies to all positive commands, it too is in the category of a positive command, because its whole content is the support of positive commandments; with respect to prohibitions it is redundant because of duplication. Therefore, for at least some practical implications it will be treated as a positive commandment. For example, there would be no obligation to spend all one’s money to avoid violating it, because even with respect to the positive command itself there is no such obligation. Why should the prohibition, whose whole function is merely to secure the fulfillment of the positive command, require one to spend all his money? And similarly with respect to doubtful cases. There too there is no reason to be stringent, because in a case of doubt one is exempt from the positive command, and therefore there is likewise no obligation under the prohibition, for in such a case there is no requirement to perform the positive command, and the prohibition whose whole purpose is to guarantee its performance is simply irrelevant.

One could still ask: if this prohibition is entirely like a positive command, in every respect, then what practical use is it? Surely the prohibition is effective only because it is more severe than the positive command it is meant to support. But according to what we have said, this prohibition is not more severe than the positive command. We may note that this problem arises as well with respect to Nahmanides’ remarks about the mitzvah of parapet, and nevertheless Nahmanides counted the prohibition “Do not place blood in your house.”

In our essay on the sixth root we will answer this difficulty. Speaking generally, as we already mentioned, there is something in a prohibition that adds to a positive command irrespective of formal halakhic stringency; the greater stringency is merely a result of that deeper difference. It may be, however, that with respect to some practical halakhic consequences such a prohibition will indeed still be treated as a prohibition. This is not the place to elaborate.¹¹

C. “You Shall Be Holy”

Introduction

As we have already mentioned several times, a substantial part of Maimonides’ and Nahmanides’ discussion in this root is devoted to clarifying the mitzvah “You shall be holy” and its parallels. Here we will try to touch on several aspects of that mitzvah.

Nahmanides’ approach to explaining “You shall be holy”

We saw that Maimonides attacks Behag for counting the mitzvah “You shall be holy,” even though it is a comprehensive command to observe the whole Torah. Nahmanides rejects the attack by claiming that Behag was not counting “You shall be holy” but “Sanctify yourselves,” and that latter verse has concrete content. This implies that had the issue really been “You shall be holy,” Nahmanides would have regarded Maimonides’ objection as a serious one, since he too sees that verse as a comprehensive command.¹²

Now, Nahmanides’ famous comments on the opening of Parashat Kedoshim are well known. There he explains “You shall be holy” as a demand to act beyond the letter of the law—in other words, not to be, in his famous phrase, a degenerate within the permission of the Torah. On Leviticus 19:2 he writes:

In my opinion, this abstinence is not abstinence from forbidden sexual relations, as the Rabbi—that is, Rashi—explained. Rather, it is the kind of abstinence mentioned throughout the Talmud, whose practitioners are called people of restraint.

The idea is that the Torah warned against forbidden sexual relations and forbidden foods, but permitted marital relations with one’s wife and the eating of meat and wine. Thus a person driven by desire could find room to be swept up in sexual excess with his wife or his many wives, to be among wine-swallowers and gluttonous meat-eaters, and to speak all the vulgarities he wishes, since this specific prohibition was not mentioned in the Torah. He would then be a degenerate within the permission of the Torah.

Therefore the verse came, after specifying the prohibitions that it forbade absolutely, and commanded in a general way that we be restrained even with respect to what is permitted. One should lessen sexual indulgence, as they said in Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 22a, that Torah scholars should not be found with their wives like roosters; and one should use wine sparingly, as the verse calls the Nazirite holy (Numbers 6:5), and remember the harms caused by it in the stories of Noah and Lot. Likewise one should separate oneself from impurity, even though we were not explicitly warned against it in the Torah, as they mentioned in Babylonian Talmud, Chagigah 18b, that the garments of the unlearned are considered defiling for those who practice purity. And the Nazirite is also called holy (Numbers 6:8) for guarding himself from corpse impurity. One should also guard one’s mouth and tongue from being defiled by gross overeating and disgusting speech, as the verse says, “Every mouth speaks vileness” (Isaiah 9:16). In all this one should sanctify oneself until one reaches true restraint, just as they said of Rabbi Hiyya that he never engaged in idle chatter in all his days.

It is with these and similar matters that this general command was given, after Scripture had specified all the sins that are absolutely forbidden, so that included within this instruction would be cleanliness of hands and body, as they said in Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 53b: “‘Sanctify yourselves’—these are the initial washings of the hands; ‘and you shall be holy’—these are the final washings; ‘for holy’—this refers to fragrant oil.” Even though these are rabbinic commandments, the main thrust of the verse is to warn us in similar matters, that we should be clean, pure, and restrained, unlike the masses of people who dirty themselves in what is permitted and in ugliness.

This is the Torah’s method in such matters: to specify and then to generalize. For after warning in detail about all the laws governing transactions between people—“You shall not steal,” “You shall not rob,” “You shall not wrong,” and the rest of the warnings—it says generally, “You shall do what is right and good” (Deuteronomy 6:18), thereby including in one positive command fairness, evenness, and every kind of conduct beyond the letter of the law for the satisfaction of one’s fellow, as I shall explain there when I reach that verse, God willing. And similarly concerning Shabbat, it prohibited the categories of labor by way of a prohibition, and burdensome exertion by a general positive command, through the verse “You shall rest.” I will explain that as well later, with God’s help.

The meaning of the verse “For I, the Lord your God, am holy” is to say that we will merit cleaving to Him by being holy. This is similar to the first statement of the Ten Commandments.

Nahmanides thus explains that this general command comes to prohibit things that are technically permitted, and to preserve the general idea that stands behind formal halakha—just as “You shall rest” does something similar with respect to the prohibitions of labor on Shabbat, and “You shall do what is right and good” does something similar with respect to the laws of commerce and property.

Returning to Nahmanides here: the paradox of the degenerate

In light of Nahmanides’ comments in his Torah commentary, it is difficult at first sight to understand why, when he wants to explain why Behag counted the mitzvah “You shall be holy,” he does not offer the interpretation that he himself gives to the verse. On the face of it, his interpretation adds a real novelty emerging from the verse, and therefore there would seem to be justification for counting it as a positive commandment, exactly as he proposed regarding swarming and creeping creatures. Why, then, did Nahmanides find it necessary to insist first that Behag was counting a different verse?

It should be noted that Nahmanides himself does not add the mitzvah “You shall be holy” among the commandments he adds to Maimonides’ enumeration. The simple reason appears to be that one cannot count the demand to act beyond the letter of the law as a mitzvah. If one were to count such a mitzvah, then “beyond the letter of the law” would itself become the letter of the law, for there would now be a formal Torah obligation to act that way. That would uproot, at one stroke, the whole meaning of conduct beyond the letter of the law.

Put differently, this is a kind of paradox of the degenerate. According to Nahmanides, the command “You shall be holy” tells us not to be degenerates within the permission of the Torah. But the very existence of such a command means that behavior of that sort is no longer “within the permission of the Torah.” The command itself removes the permission to behave that way, because someone who behaves that way now violates the explicit command “You shall be holy.”

This may be why Nahmanides emphasized that Behag did not count “You shall be holy” but rather “Sanctify yourselves.” There is no place to count “You shall be holy” within the enumeration of the formal halakhic mitzvot even according to Nahmanides’ own interpretation, and that is why Nahmanides himself does not include it in his count: it cannot, by its very nature, be a mitzvah.

Another look at the disagreement about “You shall be holy”

We saw that according to Maimonides the mitzvah “You shall be holy” commands us, by way of a positive command, to observe all the formal halakhic mitzvot. This positive command is meant to preserve the formal system itself. He also explained that the verse reveals to us the meta-halakhic principle that doing the mitzvot adds holiness to us. Nahmanides, by contrast, disagrees with Maimonides about the meaning of holiness and the mitzvah of holiness, and explains that it concerns sanctifying oneself beyond what we are commanded within the framework of the mitzvot, or within formal halakha.

Thus we have a radical disagreement between Maimonides and Nahmanides over the meaning of holiness: according to Maimonides holiness pertains specifically to mitzvot within halakha, while according to Nahmanides it pertains precisely to what lies beyond halakha. Yet according to all views there is no room to count “You shall be holy,” each for a different reason. According to Maimonides it is not counted because it is a comprehensive mitzvah. According to Nahmanides it is not counted because it is not really a mitzvah at all, but rather an extra-halakhic directive.

A parallel to the question of “the good” in ethics

Maimonides’ approach yields the idea that the mitzvah “You shall be holy” is no more than a comprehensive command to do the mitzvot and not violate the prohibitions. The Torah tells us: do the mitzvot, and that will sanctify you; if you do not, your holiness will be harmed. But does that statement have any content at all? What is there in the concept of holiness beyond observance of the mitzvot?

A similar problem arises in moral philosophy. There, parallel objections are raised against moral justification. If someone says to his fellow, “You should do action X because it is a good action,” has he really said anything? Has he actually given a reason? After all, the meaning of “good” is precisely “that which ought to be done.” If so, in freer paraphrase what he has said is: “You should do action X because it ought to be done.” That is an empty tautology.

This question is discussed by Chaim Perelman in his book Mamlakhat HaRetorika (Magnes, Jerusalem, 1984), p. 27. See also Shtei Agalot VeKadur Poreah, note 8, and note 115 there. Perelman sees such a claim as mere empty demagoguery. But the conclusion of that note in Shtei Agalot VeKadur Poreah is quite different. There it is argued that the concept of “good” has its own content, and is not merely shorthand for “what ought to be done.” It follows that the claim that one ought to do action X because it is good is a claim that adds something, not merely one that restates the definition of the term “good.” It is not an analytic tautology but a synthetic claim, one that says something beyond the meanings of the terms involved. There is therefore indeed a reason here, because describing an act as good really is a reason to do it. This issue is treated in much greater detail in Anosh KaHatzir, which is devoted largely to this problem and to its parallels in other domains of judgment, such as aesthetics.

“Good” and “holy”

In the two cases we have described here, the situation is similar. The claim that something should be done because it is good is not an empty statement. It does offer a reason, and it adds something with respect to the act under discussion. In the same way, the statement that one who performs a mitzvah thereby becomes holy is not a mere tautology. It contains a meta-halakhic novelty: performing mitzvot is the way to increase holiness.

From that emerges Maimonides’ principle: the verse “You shall be holy” is not counted because it merely reveals a meta-halakhic principle, but does not command us to do anything. The approach that sees the principle of this root as one of preventing duplication suffers from the same analytical confusion that would treat the statement “one who performs a mitzvah becomes holy” as empty. On that view, becoming holy means nothing more than doing the mitzvot. From such a perspective one cannot understand the command “You shall be holy” as meaning anything other than “do what you are already supposed to do.” It therefore comes out as duplicative of the specific mitzvot.

According to Maimonides, however, the verse reveals to us that by doing the mitzvot we become holy. So the verse does contain a novelty; it is simply a meta-halakhic novelty rather than a halakhic one, and for that reason it is not included in the enumeration of mitzvot. Below we will see that perhaps this is what leads Maimonides to think that this verse is not a command at all, rather than merely a case of duplication.

It may be that what led Nahmanides to interpret this mitzvah as referring to what lies beyond halakha was precisely the intuition that if it referred to halakha itself, it would amount to a tautology. And as we have seen, Nahmanides also understands the principle of this root as one that prevents duplication in the counting of mitzvot; perhaps his interpretation of “You shall be holy” follows from that as well.

So what, after all, does Nahmanides think about “You shall be holy”?

We have seen that, according to Nahmanides, the “command” “You shall be holy” cannot really be considered a mitzvah. There cannot be a mitzvah—which by definition is part of the letter of the law—that commands us to act beyond the letter of the law. What, then, is the actual halakhic status of this “command,” according to Nahmanides? What is it, if not a mitzvah? At first glance, the Torah’s wording is imperative. According to Maimonides the problem is less sharp, because he still sees it as a comprehensive command. But according to Nahmanides, it seems not to be a command at all. So what is it?

Even according to Maimonides we must still ask what to make of the Torah’s imperative wording when it says “You shall be holy.” Is there a mitzvah here that simply is not counted? Or does the verse reveal a meta-halakhic principle? If so, why is it formulated in the language of command?

The next chapter will address this question with respect to Maimonides. Here we will suggest a possible explanation according to Nahmanides.

What is the nature of a halakhic instruction to act beyond the letter of the law?

It appears that, according to Nahmanides, the Torah’s intent is to teach us that God expects us to act beyond the letter of the law, and not to be degenerates within the permission of the Torah.

This instruction looks at first glance like an ordinary commandment. But for logical reasons one cannot command it, and it is not even desirable to do so. As we saw, if it were commanded, it would itself become a halakhic obligation, and that would uproot the very meaning of acting beyond the letter of the law.

Of course, that problem could theoretically be solved. The Torah could simply have included all actions that go beyond the letter of the law within halakha itself. True, that would no longer be conduct beyond the letter of the law, but it would at least ensure that the conduct is actually performed—and perhaps that is what matters.

It therefore seems that the Torah has a special interest in not commanding it. This can be understood through a remark of Rabbi Kook about why the Torah did not command us explicitly to improve our character traits. He writes that although we are taught that one who is commanded and does is greater than one who is not commanded and does, there are some kinds of obligations for which the opposite is true. Improving one’s character from commitment to the matter itself, and not merely as a commanded act, is of a higher order. Someone who improves his character because of a section in the Shulchan Arukh is not really acting from moral grounds. Character refinement is supposed to come as an awakening from below, not out of command.

A similar explanation may be offered for “You shall be holy.” The Torah wishes to leave all these actions in the realm of “beyond the letter of the law,” because it is important to the Torah that they be done from an awakening from below and not because of halakhic coercion, just as we saw with regard to character refinement.

Nahmanides therefore seems to understand the “command” “You shall be holy” as a non-halakhic directive. The Torah reveals to us that God expects us to act beyond the letter of the law, while carefully refraining from commanding it. This leads directly to the question: what is there in a mitzvah beyond the expression of God’s will? Does an ordinary halakhic mitzvah contain anything more than the Torah’s statement of what it wants from us?

The answer is: certainly yes. As we shall see in our essay on the eighth root, a mitzvah is not only an expression of the Torah’s will but also a binding command. As we have already seen several times, the fulfillment of a mitzvah contains two dimensions: obedience to a command and the repair brought about by the mitzvah. So too in a sin there are two opposite dimensions: rebellion against the command and the corruption caused by the act itself.

When the Torah merely expresses a desire that we do or not do something, the dimension of obedience or rebellion is absent; only the essential dimension remains. This, as we have already explained elsewhere, is the meaning of the rabbinic dictum that one who is commanded and does is greater than one who is not commanded and does. The one who is commanded and does fulfills both obedience and the repair; one who is not commanded and does fulfills only the repair, without the obedience.

This seems hinted at in Nahmanides’ own language, when he writes:

In these and similar matters this general command was given, after Scripture had specified all the sins that are absolutely forbidden.

One sees here that ordinary sins are “absolutely forbidden,” whereas “You shall be holy” is not absolutely forbidden in that sense, but only forbidden in a looser way. So too at the beginning of his discussion he writes:

Therefore the verse came, after specifying the prohibitions that it forbade absolutely, and commanded in a general way that we be restrained with respect to what is permitted.

The point is that the mitzvah “You shall be holy” contains only the essential dimension, without the dimension of obedience.

D. Why Are Comprehensive Commands Not Mitzvot?

Introduction

Until now we have seen that Maimonides and Nahmanides probably disagree about the principle discussed in this root. Nahmanides sees it as a rule preventing duplication, whereas Maimonides means here to exclude comprehensive mitzvot by virtue of their very comprehensiveness, even when they introduce something new, so long as that novelty is not specific but pertains to the mitzvah-system as a whole.

We also saw two implications of this disagreement:
1. A comprehensive mitzvah that introduces something beyond the specific mitzvot, but only at the level of the system as a whole—for example, intention in mitzvot.
2. A comprehensive prohibition that adds a prohibition to the specific positive commandments.
According to Maimonides, neither of these will be counted; according to Nahmanides, both will.

In this chapter we will try to explain more fully the idea underlying Maimonides’ position. Why, according to him, is a comprehensive mitzvah, precisely by being such, not really a mitzvah?

What emerges from the explanations above

In the previous sections we already mentioned briefly a mechanism that could explain why comprehensive commands are not mitzvot. For example, in the discussion of the proof from the Mekhilta we noted that the verse “You shall be holy” teaches us something about the significance of performing mitzvot. It does not command us to become holy; rather, it tells us that if we observe the mitzvot, we will thereby become holy. If so, the verse does not command us at all, but only reveals a fact—a spiritual, meta-halakhic fact. That fact does not belong to the halakhic plane for two reasons:
1. It commands nothing; it only reveals something.
2. What it reveals belongs not to halakha itself but to the meaning of halakha and its fulfillment.

Within Maimonides’ remarks on the Mekhilta we encounter the following formulation:

That is to say, this command is not an independent command, but follows from another command they were given, and one who fulfills that command is called holy.

Here there is a hint of another direction. This is not a command that stands on its own, but something appended to a mitzvah. This does not sound like an argument about duplication, but rather an argument explaining why there is no mitzvah here in the first place.

Later, Maimonides expresses himself similarly:

There is no difference between the statement “You shall be holy” and if it had said “Do My commandments.” Just as one would not say that this is a positive commandment attached to the commandments to which it alludes, which we were already commanded to perform, so one should not say of “You shall be holy” and the like that it is a mitzvah, for it did not command anything beyond what we already knew.

Here Maimonides explains that the mitzvah “You shall be holy” is “attached to the commandments to which it alludes,” meaning that it is appended to other mitzvot but is not itself a mitzvah, much like the idea we have just seen. Moreover, in this passage Maimonides makes the same point about a much more explicit and straightforward formulation than “You shall be holy,” such as “Do My commandments.” Even with respect to such wording, Maimonides does not see mere duplication here, but something that is not itself a mitzvah at all. Such a statement merely refers to mitzvot; it does not itself command.

This sharpens the disagreement we noted above between Maimonides and Nahmanides. Maimonides claims that comprehensive mitzvot cannot be mitzvot even when they contain some novelty. The verse “You shall be holy” is an easy case, because it introduces no halakhic novelty at all, but only reveals a meta-halakhic aspect of the meaning of mitzvah-observance. In such a case, it is obvious that no mitzvah is involved. But what about a command like “to serve Him with all your heart”? That instruction introduces the requirement of intention in the performance of mitzvot; it does not merely reveal something about the meaning of the act. Yet Maimonides also treats it as a comprehensive command and does not count it. The reason is that it too, like the previous example, is an instruction that concerns the system of mitzvot, not directly our actions.

Thus Maimonides’ claim seems to be that a mitzvah is an instruction telling us to do something or to refrain from doing something. The subject matter of such an instruction is an act or omission. By contrast, in these “mitzvot”—such as “You shall be holy” or “to serve Him with all your heart”—the subject matter is not an act or omission but mitzvot. Even if the instruction has halakhic significance, because it concerns norms rather than actions, it is not considered a mitzvah.

Meta-halakhic mitzvot

We have noted that a mitzvah whose subject is the system of mitzvot is not considered, for Maimonides, to be a mitzvah. From this one may infer several important conclusions about a number of other such mitzvot. We saw that the mitzvah “to serve Him,” insofar as it teaches the requirement of intention, is not counted. What, then, about the rule that even less than the minimum measure is biblically forbidden? Why is that not included in the count of mitzvot? And what about “This is my God and I will glorify Him,” which commands enhancement of a mitzvah? None of these are counted, even though they clearly possess halakhic dimensions.

By contrast, mitzvot such as “You shall do what is right and good,” or “You shall be holy” according to Nahmanides’ interpretation in his Torah commentary, are comprehensive mitzvot, but they do not refer to other mitzvot; they refer rather to what lies outside the system of mitzvot. With respect to them, our previous proposal cannot be made. Yet we already saw that such mitzvot are not counted for a different reason: the paradox of the degenerate. As we explained, one cannot include within the letter of the law a command to perform acts of piety or conduct beyond the letter of the law.

This is a different mechanism, and at first sight it seems unique to those mitzvot. But perhaps one can formulate parallel paradoxes even for the other comprehensive mitzvot, not only for those that speak of conduct beyond the letter of the law. Even in mitzvot concerning the mode of performing a mitzvah—such as intention, beautification, the rule of less than the minimum measure, and the like—there is a similar problem in defining them as mitzvot. For example, if intention in a mitzvah were itself a mitzvah, one would have to ask whether one must now intend that one is intending in the performance of a mitzvah. Alternatively, must one also beautify the beautification of the mitzvah?

All of this illustrates why an instruction whose subject is the mitzvah-system itself cannot be considered a mitzvah.

Paradoxes of self-reference and type theory

One might try to solve this paradox in a way similar to the proposals made for various paradoxes of self-reference, which are very common in logic. Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, in the introduction to their Principia Mathematica, propose to solve such paradoxes by dividing the statements of a language into a hierarchy and adding the rule that any statement may refer only to statements lower than itself in the hierarchy.

Usually this solution is unsatisfactory, because it lacks real justification and functions merely as an ad hoc solution to the problem.¹³ Here, however, there does seem to be a certain logic to it. Mitzvot are statements that direct us with respect to some act. Statements that teach us something about mitzvot are statements of a different type, and therefore are not themselves considered mitzvot—at least according to Maimonides. Nahmanides, as we have noted, sees only a problem of duplication here.

This becomes even sharper in light of what we saw about Maimonides himself, who treats the system of mitzvot in a systematic rather than substantive way. For him, mitzvot are laws, not necessarily practical directives. As we saw, he includes in the enumeration of mitzvot even rules that impose no positive or negative obligation at all, but merely define concepts. See, for example, positive commandments 95 and 96. Thus the mere fact that a rule has practical content does not mean that it is therefore a mitzvah. Rules that define the status of impurity from a corpse or from a creeping creature are considered part of the enumeration of mitzvot, because they concern the practical level. By contrast, comprehensive directives that refer to other mitzvot rather than to our acts are not considered by Maimonides to be mitzvot.

In any event, the solution to this paradox only strengthens Maimonides’ distinction: such rules are not mitzvot.

Rabbi Yeruham Fishel Perla’s definition: “do not add” and “do not subtract”

Rabbi Perla argues that Saadia Gaon’s view is that even duplication between a prohibition and a positive command counts as duplication, contrary to Maimonides in the sixth root. On that basis, he says in his discussion of the fourth root that according to Saadia Gaon this root is unnecessary, because the ninth root, which says that duplications are not counted, already covers it.

But at the end of his remarks there he writes that Saadia Gaon has a broader principle than Maimonides’: one does not count a reference to the system of mitzvot as a mitzvah in its own right. For this reason, he says, Saadia Gaon does not count the commandments “Do not diminish” and “Do not add,” because these are not mitzvot but meta-halakhic references to the system of mitzvot.

Rabbi Perla adds that this rule does not apply only to mitzvot that encompass the whole Torah, but also to mitzvot that add details to particular other mitzvot. He seems to mean a somewhat different definition from the one we proposed: mitzvot that add details or meanings to other mitzvot are not counted as independent mitzvot. At most they are details within those other mitzvot, or perhaps rationales for them. See there for the examples he gives.

Maimonides’ view of “do not add” and “do not subtract”

If so, this definition is not exactly the one we proposed for Maimonides himself. Still, if we are right that Maimonides is not speaking here about duplication but about rules whose subject is mitzvot rather than actions, then it is indeed unclear why Maimonides himself counts the prohibitions of “do not add” and “do not subtract.” After all, even on his own approach these are mitzvot that deal with the system of mitzvot and do not command us to do anything additional; so why count them?

Here, however, one must distinguish between two interpretations of these mitzvot. Some interpret them as prohibitions against adding or subtracting an entire mitzvah to or from the Torah. According to that interpretation, these mitzvot do indeed concern the system of mitzvot in a general way, but they are not mitzvot whose subject matter is the other mitzvot. They do not add a detail or a meaning to the other mitzvot; rather, they prohibit the creation or abolition of mitzvot.¹⁴ Rabbi Perla, however, understands these mitzvot as prohibitions against adding or subtracting a detail from an existing mitzvah—for example, having five or three fringes on a garment instead of the required four, and the like. According to that view, these are indeed mitzvot whose subject matter is other mitzvot.

What is Maimonides’ own view on this? From what he writes at the beginning of Hilkhot Mamrim it is clear that he understands these prohibitions in the first sense as well: there is a prohibition against adding a mitzvah to the Torah or subtracting one from it. Thus he writes there, in chapter 2, halakha 9:

Since the court has authority to decree and forbid something that is permitted, and its prohibition can remain in force for generations; and similarly they may temporarily permit things that the Torah forbids—what then is the meaning of the Torah’s warning, “Do not add to it and do not subtract from it”? It means that one must not add to the words of the Torah or subtract from them and establish the matter permanently as though it were from the Torah, whether in the Written Torah or in the Oral Torah. How so? The Torah says, “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” By tradition they learned that this verse forbids cooking and eating meat with milk, whether the meat is from domesticated animals or wild animals, whereas poultry with milk is permitted by Torah law. If a court were to permit the meat of a wild animal with milk, that would be subtracting. And if it were to forbid poultry and say that it is included in “kid” and is forbidden by Torah law, that would be adding. But if it says: poultry is permitted by Torah law, yet we shall forbid it and inform the people that this is a decree lest harm come of it and people say: if poultry is permitted because it was not explicitly stated, then wild animals are also permitted because they too were not explicitly stated—and then another will say: even the meat of domesticated animals is permitted except for goats; and another will say: even goat meat is permitted with the milk of a cow or sheep, for the Torah only said “its mother,” meaning its own kind; and another will say: even with goat’s milk that is not its mother it is permitted, for the Torah only said “its mother”—therefore we shall forbid all meat with milk, even poultry. In such a case this is not adding, but merely making a fence around the Torah. The same applies in all similar cases.

Maimonides thus explicitly defines the addition or subtraction of a mitzvah as falling under the prohibitions of “do not add” and “do not subtract.” He therefore rules that when a court institutes a rabbinic enactment, it must make clear that it is a rabbinic enactment and not a Torah commandment, for otherwise it would violate “do not add.”

The Raavad objects there:

Since the court may decree and forbid, etc.—all of this is wind. Anything that the court decrees and forbids as a fence and safeguard for the Torah does not involve “do not add,” even if it establishes it for generations and makes it look like Torah law and supports it with a verse, as we find in many places that rabbinic law has a verse only as a scriptural support. And if it subtracts for a temporary need, as Elijah did on Mount Carmel, that too is itself a matter of Torah, as it says, “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have voided Your Torah.” You will not find a prohibition of adding except in positive commandments such as lulav, tefillin, tzitzit, and the like, whether temporarily or permanently, whether one fixes it in a Torah matter or not.

That is, the Raavad argues that adding or subtracting an entire mitzvah does not fall under “do not add” or “do not subtract,” in line with what we said above. See also Tosafot, s.v. “ve-tok’in,” Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16b, and the Rashba there.

A logical-halakhic note: formulating the paradox with respect to “do not subtract”

Above we suggested parallel formulations of the paradox of the degenerate with respect to other comprehensive mitzvot. With respect to “do not subtract,” this paradox appears in especially sharp form. If a person were to remove the commandment “do not subtract” itself, then seemingly he would no longer be violating any prohibition at all, because in his revised system there is now no prohibition against subtracting a mitzvah.¹⁵ This is an indication that such a mitzvah does not really belong within the system of mitzvot.

But that is mistaken. Even if a person removes this mitzvah, he is still altering the system of mitzvot that we received from God. Even if, in his own revised system, there would no longer be any prohibition against subtraction, that says nothing, because it is certainly not the system we received. In the original system there was a prohibition against subtraction, and he did subtract. Therefore it is clear that even if he removed “do not subtract” itself, he would still be violating a prohibition. Hence there is no obstacle to including that mitzvah in the enumeration of mitzvot.

Another formulation of our explanation of Maimonides on comprehensive mitzvot

In practice, one might say that comprehensive mitzvot, such as “This is my God and I will glorify Him,” or the requirement of intention in a mitzvah, are not counted because none of them can be fulfilled independently; each can only be fulfilled as an appendage to some other mitzvah. For example, one cannot fulfill the requirement of intention as such. The only way to fulfill it is alongside the performance of another mitzvah, by intending for the sake of the mitzvah when one performs it. The same is true of enhancing a mitzvah.¹⁶

If so, Maimonides is saying that mitzvot that cannot be fulfilled independently are not counted. They are appendages to mitzvot, in Maimonides’ own language, and not mitzvot in the full sense. The enumeration of mitzvot includes only mitzvot that are independently fulfillable.

Rejecting this explanation

This explanation too, however, seems problematic. A mitzvah that merely adds details to another mitzvah is certainly not counted separately—but that belongs to a different root. Moreover, Maimonides himself rejects that principle as a blanket rule in the eleventh root. There he shows that there are mitzvot that cannot be fulfilled without another mitzvah—that is, they are mutually dependent—and yet sometimes they may still be counted separately. We discussed this in our essay on that root.

Further, in effect this explanation brings us back to the issue of duplication. The principle of the present root once again becomes a rule against redundancy. More than that: this explanation does not fit verses that add nothing at all, such as “You shall keep all My commandments” and the like.

Therefore this may indeed be a correct principle in Maimonides with respect to mitzvot such as embellishment and intention, but it cannot explain the main foundation of the present root.¹⁷ In the next subsection we will suggest a different explanation of Maimonides, at least with respect to those mitzvot that are content merely to command observance of the other mitzvot, leaving aside embellishment, intention, and the like.

On the meaning of comprehensive mitzvot

The principle we proposed in explaining Maimonides’ view resembles the issue of a prohibition stated in general terms, which will be discussed in our essay on the ninth root. But perhaps the explanation for why Maimonides does not count a comprehensive mitzvah that refers to the totality of the Torah’s mitzvot is somewhat different.

Let us first recall what we saw in the previous essay, on the thirteenth root: from the hermeneutic of the “common denominator” one may learn that every law in the Torah has only one reason. We also saw that if a specific halakha applies in several different contexts, that is a sign that all those contexts share some common feature, and that common feature is the cause of the law.

A good example is the relationship between the various commandments of love in the Torah.¹⁸ There is the mitzvah “You shall love your fellow as yourself,” which commands us to love our fellow Jews. There is also the mitzvah “You shall love the convert,” which commands us to love converts. Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, in Pahad Yitzhak on Passover, essay 29, cites the question of a certain sage: why do we need both of these mitzvot? Every convert is also our fellow, and there is already an obligation to love him on that basis. Why, then, is a special command needed to love the convert?

Rabbi Hutner answers that the mitzvah to love the convert is not a mitzvah to love him merely as a person, but specifically to love him because of his conversion. Therefore the general mitzvah to love every Jew does not overlap with this one. In other words, if love of the convert were simply because he is a fellow Jew, it would be included within the mitzvah of loving Israel and would not be counted as an independent mitzvah. But because its subject matter is different, it is counted separately.

This is the inverse of what we saw above. If two mitzvot are not included within one another, that is a sign that each contains something absent from the other; that is, the mitzvot do not derive merely from what is common to the two contexts, but precisely from what differentiates them.¹⁹

If so, a command that refers to a whole cluster of mitzvot always concerns what is common to them all. For example, punishment is given for every prohibition that involves an act. From this one may infer that the punishment is not given for eating pork or for desecrating Shabbat as such, but for defying God by an act. That is the layer common to all the halakhic contexts in which punishment is given, and therefore it is what generates the punishment. This is a conclusion about the theory of punishment in halakha, but that is not our subject here. The same applies to any other reference to a whole collection of mitzvot: it always concerns what is common to them all.

A further conclusion is that the more mitzvot a command pertains to, the fewer concrete features the situation that generates the command will possess. In other words, it refers to a more basic layer, because it concerns that which is present in all of them.²⁰

In light of this, a very interesting conclusion emerges for our topic. If there is a mitzvah that refers to all the other mitzvot of the Torah, then clearly it concerns the layer shared by them all. But what could possibly be shared by all the mitzvot of the Torah? It seems that the only such feature is the basic obligation to serve God. That is the most fundamental layer present in all the mitzvot of the Torah. Any smaller group of mitzvot will possess additional defining features.

We can now see what a comprehensive mitzvah really means: it is a mitzvah commanding us to serve God, and nothing more. It does not command us specifically not to eat pork, though that certainly follows from it. Nor does it specifically command us not to desecrate Shabbat, or to put on tefillin, though those too follow from it. It commands us to serve God.

Perhaps we should refine this slightly and say that a comprehensive mitzvah is a command to obey commands, since service of God includes dimensions beyond the mitzvot as such. The totality of the mitzvot is not identical with the whole of the Torah but only with part of it, and therefore a command referring to that totality cannot encompass every aspect of service of God. According to the principle just mentioned, the smaller the group, the more features it possesses.

But if this is indeed the meaning of comprehensive mitzvot, it is unclear how they can be treated as mitzvot at all. Does it make sense to have a mitzvah commanding the fulfillment of mitzvot? Can there be a law commanding us to obey laws?

On the command to keep commands and the command to believe

It is impossible to command us to fulfill commands, for two main reasons:

1. It is pointless. If we do not obey commandments without this command, then even taking it into account we will continue not to obey them. Why should we obey this command more than any other? There is therefore no sense in legislating a law that one must obey the laws.
2. Even if it were not pointless, such a law or mitzvah is not logically well-defined. One cannot have a command that commands the fulfillment of commands. Clearly the logical status of such a command is different from the commands it purports to command, which means that it itself cannot be a mitzvah in the same sense.

This is similar to positive commandment 1 in Maimonides’ Sefer HaMitzvot, the mitzvah to believe in God. Several commentators already point out that such a mitzvah cannot really be formulated. If someone does not believe in the existence of the Commander, there is neither point nor logical possibility in commanding him to believe. That belief is the prerequisite that makes a person capable of observing mitzvot at all. Exactly the same is true here. If a person is not yet one for whom mitzvah-observance is meaningful, there is no logic and no point in commanding him to observe commands.

The explanation of the fourth root

We saw above that when Maimonides explains why comprehensive commands are not counted, he does not speak about duplication, but about the fact that they do not command any specific act. He does not say that they contain no novelty. We can now understand his meaning. These verses do not command any act; rather, they concern the very halakhic obligation itself, namely the practical service of God.

Indeed, the mitzvah closest to this definition is “to serve Him,” and it is therefore unsurprising that it is precisely there that Maimonides refers to the fourth root. And indeed he decides to count that mitzvah only because it contains a unique addition beyond the general obligation to serve God—namely, prayer—which certainly can be counted.

We should stress that this explanation of the root is fundamentally different from the earlier one. What we are saying here applies only to mitzvot that refer to the halakhic totality as such, not to instructions that refer to other mitzvot even if they are many, such as the rule of less than the minimum measure, embellishment, and so on. The analysis here is valid only for instructions that refer to the totality as a whole.

A note from Nahmanides’ language in his glosses to the ninth root

After writing all this, we found in Nahmanides’ glosses to the ninth root language that seems almost identical to what we have proposed here. He writes there:

Furthermore, one does not receive lashes for a prohibition that is needed for another prohibition and depends on it. I mean that every prohibition which does not specify and forbid a particular thing, but merely warns, “Do not do what I have forbidden you,” is not itself a true prohibition but only a warning. Thus this prohibition merely warns them not to make their souls abominable through things forbidden to them by the explicit prohibitions, and therefore it is not fit to incur lashes. This is also the reason for the warnings that encompass the whole Torah, such as “You shall keep My commandments” and the like mentioned in the fourth root. For by this they do not enter the category of prohibition at all; rather, they are exhortation toward the mitzvot and reinforcement of them, and all the more so one does not receive lashes for them.

He begins almost exactly with Maimonides’ definition: one does not receive lashes for a prohibition that merely explains another prohibition and warns one to keep it. This is strikingly close to Maimonides’ own language in this root, as we saw above. Immediately afterward, Nahmanides explains that this is the basis for not counting warnings that encompass the whole Torah, because they are not prohibitions but exhortation and strengthening with respect to mitzvot. That is exactly what we have proposed here in explaining Maimonides. It remains somewhat difficult, however, to reconcile this with Nahmanides’ remarks discussed above, where he seems to understand the basis of the root as the prevention of duplication.

Summary

We have thus seen several explanations and reasons for the exclusion of comprehensive mitzvot from the enumeration of mitzvot:

1. According to Saadia Gaon, they are not counted because they are details within existing mitzvot.
2. According to Nahmanides in his glosses to positive commandment 5, they are not counted because they are duplicative of the specific mitzvot. And according to him, Behag’s view is that one comprehensive prohibition is counted, while all the others are not, because they would be redundant.
3. Some comprehensive commands are not counted because they introduce a meta-halakhic novelty, such as the idea that every mitzvah adds holiness. Others introduce a principle concerning the mode of performing mitzvot, such as intention.
4. Our first proposal in Maimonides, and what seems to emerge from Rabbi Perla at the outset: mitzvot are instructions that concern acts, not other norms. Instructions that concern mitzvot are not included in the enumeration of mitzvot.
5. Our final proposal in Maimonides: comprehensive commands are not counted because their content is a command to fulfill mitzvot, that is, a command about the service of God, and there is neither logical possibility nor practical point in commanding that.

E. Why Are Comprehensive Commands Needed? On Worlds and Rectifications

Introduction

Alongside everything discussed here, another question arises. If comprehensive commands are not mitzvot, and if they do not command us to do anything, then why do they appear in the Torah at all? What is their significance, and what can nevertheless be learned from them? To examine this, we must distinguish between several kinds of comprehensive commands.

Meta-halakhic novelty

Above we saw comprehensive mitzvot that teach a meta-halakhic novelty. For example, the verse “You shall be holy” teaches us something about the meaning of performing mitzvot. If so, this “mitzvah” appears in the Torah in order to teach us that accompanying aspect of mitzvah-observance. Such an interpretation is reasonable for verses teaching that sin defiles the land, or adds holiness, and the like. All of these do not come to command us, but only to teach us something about the mitzvot and their significance.

We also saw that there are comprehensive mitzvot whose subject is the system of mitzvot itself, such as intention, embellishment, the rule of less than the minimum measure, and so forth. These are not counted for technical reasons, but the reason they appear in the Torah is perfectly clear. They contain an important and practical novelty. In that sense they are quite similar to the previous category.

Comprehensive imperative verses

But what about the third category: verses that simply tell us to keep all the commandments? These are harder to explain, because they seem to be pure commands, without any further revelation about the significance of sin—such as impurity, holiness, flattery of the land, and the like—and without any practical novelty regarding the mitzvah-system. This is especially difficult in light of our final explanation, according to which these are commands to obey commands. On that account it becomes very hard indeed to understand why they are needed at all.

As we have already mentioned several times, Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, in his essay on repentance in Kovetz Maamarim, distinguishes between two dimensions present in every mitzvah and every sin: the formal-halakhic dimension and the essential dimension. Every mitzvah contains both obedience to God and some repair, which is why we were commanded to do it; every sin contains both rebellion against God and some flaw, which is why it was forbidden. On that basis, one might have suggested that a command to keep mitzvot comes to teach us that every mitzvah includes an aspect of obedience to God beyond the substantive repair it brings about. That is, beyond the essential value in performing the mitzvah or refraining from the sin, there is also value in obeying God’s command and not rebelling against it.

But even if that explanation is correct, it is not sufficient. For that purpose, one comprehensive verse would have been enough. Yet Nahmanides himself cites here several different verses that instruct us to keep the mitzvot, and the meaning of these multiple repetitions remains very difficult.

We may note that according to Nahmanides the question why comprehensive commands appear in the Torah is much harder than it is according to Maimonides. On his view, these verses are not counted only because of duplication. If so, why did the Torah write them at all? We should recall that Nahmanides, in his glosses rather than in his Torah commentary, seems to treat a verse like “You shall be holy” as nothing more than an additional command to perform the mitzvot. Why, then, does it appear at all?

Perhaps one could say that these comprehensive commands really are mitzvot. Every specific mitzvah or transgression is accompanied, like shadows, by several comprehensive positive and negative commandments. Nevertheless they are not counted, because they add nothing in practical terms. This is a difficult explanation, because the halakhic consequences of added prohibitions should still exist. For example, every positive command would then also carry one or more prohibitions, and one ought therefore to be required to spend all one’s money to avoid transgressing them—though see above, at the end of section B, for a possible explanation of this.

Between mitzvot and counted mitzvot

At this point one may ask whether the fourth root is interpretive or substantive. That is: is the principle that comprehensive commands are not counted merely a rule about the enumeration of mitzvot, while someone who violates a specific prohibition also violates all the relevant comprehensive commands? Or is it a substantive principle stating that such directives are not mitzvot at all, and therefore cannot be violated in that sense?

At first glance, the answer depends on one’s explanation of this root. If the explanation is interpretive—for example, connected to Rabbi Simlai’s count in tractate Makkot, as has arisen several times in previous roots—then perhaps there is indeed a prohibition here, but it is simply not counted among the 613. But if the explanation is substantive, as in our proposal concerning Maimonides above, then it may be that there is no prohibition here at all.

It seems likely that according to Nahmanides, who sees this as a principle grounded in preventing duplication, there is a prohibition here, though it is not counted. Perhaps one who violates some other positive or negative command also violates it. If so, then if the Torah repeats comprehensive commands several times, that would be in order to reinforce the specific commands and to teach us that whoever violates them also violates several additional, general prohibitions.

According to Maimonides, by contrast, this seems to be a substantive problem whose conclusion is that such directives cannot be counted within the system of mitzvot. It is certainly true that someone who does not serve God is doing something wrong, but it is hard to say that he has thereby neglected a positive command or violated a prohibition of “service of God” as such.

If there is nothing more to the matter than this, we still need to explain why all these comprehensive commands were written in the Torah. What do they teach us? And even according to Nahmanides, who may regard them all as genuine mitzvot that simply are not counted, it is still unclear why there should be dozens of additional prohibitions attached to every mitzvah without any practical consequence. If they come merely to reinforce existing commandments and prohibitions, what is the point of that, beyond perhaps one added positive and one added negative command?

Worlds, flaws, and rectifications

Above we presented Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman’s distinction, in his essay on repentance, between the dimension of command and rebellion on the one hand and the substantive dimension of repair and flaw on the other, present in every mitzvah and every sin. Based on that, we suggested that perhaps a command to observe mitzvot comes to reveal that every mitzvah has a dimension of obedience beyond its substantive content. But we rejected this, because for that purpose a single comprehensive mitzvah would have sufficed.

Even so, it may be that the comprehensive commands reveal to us that every mitzvah or transgression repairs or damages several distinct aspects in the spiritual worlds, or perhaps even in our own world. The Torah does not provide explicit explanations of the nature of these repairs or flaws, but perhaps each such command reveals another aspect that accompanies every mitzvah or sin.

If we adopt this suggestion, the answer to the question why these commands were written in the Torah becomes very similar to the answer we proposed regarding verses that reveal meta-halakhic aspects. They are written in order to reveal something to us about the mitzvot and their observance, but not something halakhic.

We should emphasize that if this is indeed the explanation for their appearance in the Torah, then everything we have said implies that each such comprehensive command describes an aspect that is repaired or damaged by all 613 mitzvot together. Since each such verse refers to the totality of the mitzvot, whatever it reveals clearly concerns that whole. It does not reveal what is repaired or damaged by this or that particular mitzvah, but something pertaining to the whole set of mitzvot.

What suggests itself here is the conclusion that each such verse reveals an entire “world” that the totality of the mitzvot either repairs or damages. Each comprehensive verse reveals another such world. Every act of mitzvah or sin affects each of these worlds, and therefore there are indeed several parallel aspects present in every mitzvah or sin.

The revelations contained in such verses are not counted as ordinary, individual mitzvot, because they speak about the significance of performing the mitzvot rather than commanding anything. Each such verse commands us, as it were, to serve God and observe mitzvot from the standpoint of another aspect—another world.

It is clear that rectifications in the upper worlds as such do not fall within the framework of the mitzvot. Only practical matters that operate within the planes of our own world are included in the ordinary enumeration of mitzvot. True, those practical matters also have hidden dimensions, but those occur alongside the repair or damage in our world. As we saw in the essay before last, on the third root, mitzvot directed only toward hidden and upper worlds are not included in the enumeration of mitzvot.

This is why the mystical intentions of the kabbalists, which concern only those worlds, are not a binding halakhic component of the mitzvah of prayer. They may accompany the performance of mitzvot, or of prayer, but they are not the halakhic essence of them.

Footnotes