Lesson 11: Category 4 — The Tenth 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 Tenth Root

The Halakhic Status of Preparatory Acts for a Commandment

Our present essay deals with the Tenth Root. This root, too, belongs to the fourth category of roots, which contains rules concerning the character of mitzvot (commandments) as commands. In our two previous essays, on the Fifth and Eighth Roots, we examined the relation between a command and other kinds of verses. There we distinguished between the normative sphere — halakhic, that is, legal, or moral — and the factual sphere, and explained that the roots in this category deal with the distinction between those two spheres.

In this root, Maimonides establishes the principle that one should not count preliminaries that serve a given end. In simple terms, such preliminaries are not counted because they are not commandments; therefore this root, too, appears to belong to the fourth category, since it likewise deals with verses that are not counted because they do not belong to the normative sphere.

At first glance this determination seems simple, and we would expect it to be universally accepted. Nevertheless, we shall see that substantive disputes arise here regarding the purpose and essence of the Torah’s commandments, and regarding the status of preparatory acts for a commandment and safeguards surrounding commandments.¹ At the foundation of the discussion lies a conception of the preparatory act as something situated between a commandment and an optional act.

A topic that arises incidentally in this root is the matter of the parashiyyot among those who enumerate the commandments in the wake of Bahag. This is a vague and obscure subject, and in the appendix at the end of the essay we shall briefly discuss it, and what it represents.

A. Maimonides’ Argument

Introduction

Maimonides’ comments in this root are quite brief, and so we shall begin by presenting an annotated outline of his discussion. After that, we shall examine his argument and the views of the other medieval authorities regarding it.

The Course of Maimonides’ Discussion

Maimonides opens by defining the term “preliminaries”:

The tenth root is that it is not proper to count preliminaries that serve one of the ends. Sometimes commands appear in the Torah, but those commands are not themselves the commandment; rather, they are preliminaries to performing the commandment, as though Scripture were explaining how that commandment is to be carried out.

The term “preliminaries” is simply the halakhic term for preparatory acts for a commandment. Thus, in this root, Maimonides argues that such preparatory acts are not included in the enumeration of the commandments. He then gives an example from the showbread:

An example of this is the verse, “And you shall take fine flour…” (Leviticus 24:5). It is not proper to count the taking of the flour as one commandment and the making of the bread as another. What is counted, rather, as positive commandment 27, is the verse, “And you shall set the bread of the Presence upon the table before Me always” (Exodus 25:30). The commandment is that bread should always be before the Lord. Scripture then goes on to explain what this bread is to be, and from what it is to be made, and says that it shall be of fine flour and consist of twelve loaves.

The Torah commands us to take fine flour for baking the showbread, and then the bread must be baked — but this, too, is only part of the preparations for the commandment, not something that belongs to the commandment itself. The commandment is to place the showbread on the table and that it remain there continually. Everything else is preparation and therefore is not counted.

He then goes on to present several further examples:

In this very same way, one should not count the verse “And they shall take to you pure olive oil” (Exodus 27:20). Rather, one counts, as positive commandment 25, the verse “to raise up a perpetual lamp,” that is, the tending of the lamps, as explained in tractate Tamid. Likewise, one should not count the verse “Take for yourself fragrant spices” (Exodus 30:34); rather, one counts, as positive commandment 28, the burning of the incense every day, as the verse states, “In the morning, when he tends the lamps, he shall burn it, and when Aaron lights the lamps…” This is the commandment that is counted. “Take for yourself fragrant spices” is a preliminary within the command, explaining how this commandment is to be done and of what the incense is to consist. Likewise, “Take for yourself the finest spices” (Exodus 30:23) is not counted. Rather, what is counted, as positive commandment 35, is the commandment that we were commanded to anoint the High Priests, the kings, and the sacred vessels with the specially formulated anointing oil.

From there he moves to the general conclusion:

Apply this reasoning to everything similar to it, so that you do not multiply in your count what ought not to be multiplied. That is our intention in this root. The matter is clear.

The Motivation: What Are the Parashiyyot?

Immediately afterward, Maimonides explains why he nevertheless found it necessary to address this root at all. As we noted in our introductory essay, Maimonides does not discuss every rule governing the enumeration of the commandments, but only those that are disputed or especially novel:

We mentioned this and called attention to it because many have erred in it as well, counting some preliminaries of commandments together with the commandment itself as two commandments. This will become clear to one who understands the enumeration of the parashiyyot mentioned by Rabbi Simeon Kayyara, of blessed memory, and by all who followed him among those who mention the parashiyyot in their count.

Thus, the motivation for the discussion is the view of Bahag, the author of Halakhot Gedolot,² who counts some preparatory acts as independent commandments, in addition to the principal commandments, which he counts separately.

The examples Maimonides brings are the parashiyyot. As we shall see later, among the earlier enumerators of the commandments, the commandments were generally divided into three categories rather than two: positive commandments, prohibitions, and parashiyyot. From Maimonides onward, the division into two kinds — positive commandments and prohibitions — became accepted, and the category of parashiyyot was completely abandoned. Matters reached the point that today even the term parashiyyot is far from clear, and its meaning is disputed among commentators.

Maimonides argues here that the very counting of the parashiyyot itself indicates an error concerning the principle of this root. It may be that this very error is what led him to devote a special root to this seemingly obvious point, since the error has important consequences for the enumeration of the commandments in general — namely, the omission of an entire category of commandments, the parashiyyot. After we discuss what these parashiyyot are supposed to be, we shall also try to understand this claim.

Is There Really a Dispute About This Root?

It should be noted that Nahmanides also agrees with the principle of this root, and so does Bahag himself. Nahmanides defends Bahag against Maimonides’ criticisms, explaining that Maimonides misunderstood him, as will be detailed below. Rabbi Yeruham Fishel Perla writes that Saadia Gaon, too, appears to agree with this root, like all the other early authorities.

Despite the sweeping agreement among the medieval authorities regarding this root, we shall immediately see that it is not at all clear that they all understood the principle in the same way. As we shall see already in the next subsection, there are at least two ways to understand the basis for not counting preparatory acts.

A Preliminary Note About the Rationale

Maimonides claims that this is a simple and self-evident principle, and he makes no effort to justify it. The possible rationales that he might have offered are various: the overall count — the number of commandments would proliferate into the thousands if every detail of a commandment’s preparation were counted; considerations of classification — the details should not be counted because they are details within another commandment that has already been counted, which is the subject of the roots in the next category, Roots Seven, Eleven, and Twelve; and considerations belonging to the present category — namely, that these are not commandments at all, but only preparatory acts.

From the plain sense of Maimonides’ language, it appears that he intends the last of these rationales. At the beginning of his discussion he writes:

Sometimes commands appear in the Torah, but those commands are not themselves the commandment; rather, they are preliminaries to performing the commandment.

Here it seems that the preliminaries are not commandments at all, and therefore they are not counted. This is not a matter of duplication or classification of one sort or another, but something that follows from their very definition as preparations.

Yet at the end of his discussion he writes in a somewhat different formulation:

We mentioned this and called attention to it because many have erred in it as well, counting some preliminaries of commandments together with the commandment itself as two commandments.

Here it seems that the problem is not only the fact that they counted the preparations at all — “counting some preliminaries of commandments” — but also the fact that they counted them in addition to the commandment itself — “together with the commandment.” From all this it appears that Maimonides has two different claims against Bahag:

1. The preliminaries should not be counted because they are not commandments.
2. Even if he thinks they should be counted — that is, that they do have the status of commandments — he should have included them within the commandment itself. For example, he should have included preparing the flour and baking the bread within the commandment of the showbread.

These two types of argument presuppose different conceptions of preparatory acts, and therefore different principled meanings for this root. According to the first argument, preparatory acts are not commandments at all, and therefore the principle that determines their non-enumeration belongs to the roots of the fourth category. According to the second argument, they are commandments, but they must be included as details within other counted commandments. According to that view, the principle that determines their non-enumeration belongs to the roots of the fifth category, the principles of classification.

According to the first possibility, a difficulty arises: how can preparatory acts ever be regarded as commandments at all? After all, we have no direct command concerning them, and they seem to be nothing more than actions that must be done technically in order to fulfill the commandment.

Fulfillment Without Command

Before proceeding, let us clarify a preliminary point about the connection between command and fulfillment. Is it really true that only acts that we were commanded to do can count as fulfillment of a commandment? At first glance, yes. But on second thought the matter is not so simple.

In our essays on the Torah portions Toledot and Vayeshev from 2007, we discussed situations in which there is fulfillment without a command. The best-known example is women performing positive time-bound commandments. In the view of most medieval authorities, even though women were not commanded in these mitzvot, if they perform them they nonetheless fulfill a commandment. At least according to some views, this also has halakhic ramifications regarding the blessing recited over such commandments, regarding the rule that one engaged in a commandment is exempt from another commandment, regarding the principle that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition — that is, that even a woman who wishes to fulfill a positive time-bound commandment could transgress a prohibition in doing so and would be exempt from another positive obligation after she has begun this one — and the like.

Another example is the innovation of Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik, according to which when the Patriarchs prayed to the Holy One, there was there an objective halakhic entity of prayer. In other words, there was fulfillment of the commandment of prayer even though there had been no command concerning it.

Another example is levirate marriage performed by a minor, who is indeed not commanded, but whose act may nonetheless bear halakhic significance. Yet another example is the inclusion of a minor in the Paschal sacrifice and the bringing of the sacrifice on his behalf, a case discussed by Rabbi Hayyim himself in the Laws of the Paschal Offering, where he explicitly defines the distinction between discharging an obligation and fulfilling a commandment without being obligated.

Returning to the Dilemma About the Meaning of Preparatory Acts

We have seen that even where there is no command, one need not conclude that the act contains no fulfillment of a commandment. If so, at least conceptually, there is no obstacle to viewing a preparatory act as a kind of deed that contains fulfillment of a commandment, even if there is no direct command concerning it.

This is all the more so in cases where the Torah itself commands the preparatory act. In fact, in this root Maimonides deals only with such examples, for if there is no command in the Torah, it is obvious that the law in question cannot be counted among the commandments. Maimonides’ entire discussion here concerns cases in which the Torah itself apparently “commands” us regarding the preparatory act, such as “take fine flour,” and so on. In such examples, one might have thought that there is even a command concerning the preparation itself, and therefore there is certainly more room to view it as an act of commandment. Yet, as we saw above from Maimonides’ language, these are apparently not commands at all, and more on this below.

This distinction requires us to enter a preliminary discussion of the meaning of preparatory acts in general, since, as we have just seen, the conceptions adopted in this matter underlie the apparently technical discussion before us.

B. Preparatory Acts for a Commandment: Sources and General Considerations

Introduction

A “preparatory act for a commandment” is an act that makes fulfillment of the commandment possible, but at first glance it has no halakhic status of its own. Examples include buying a lulav and etrog, baking the showbread, writing and making tefillin, heating water for circumcision, harvesting wheat for matzah, or cooking food for one’s parents. All of these are acts that sometimes must be done, and often without them the commandment cannot be fulfilled at all. Yet there is no direct command concerning them. In essence, one might say that this is an act that stems only from a technical constraint — without it, we cannot technically fulfill the commandment — and not from a command. Therefore it contains no fulfillment of any commandment whatsoever.

Even in the examples brought by Maimonides, where the Torah itself appears to “command” us regarding preparatory acts, his simple assumption is that these are not commands, but only definitions of how the commandment is to be carried out. For that reason he concludes that they should not be included in the enumeration of the commandments, since there are no commandments here. It is, however, quite obvious that performing such acts has spiritual and religious value — hence such concepts as reward for the very steps one takes — but the accepted view is that their performance does not amount to fulfillment of a commandment in the formal halakhic sense of the term. For this reason, the present root appears to belong to the fourth category, the roots that deal with the definition of a commandment as a command.

That, indeed, is the prevailing picture of preparatory acts. But, as we shall see below, it is neither so simple nor so universally agreed upon. From several sources it emerges that preparatory acts do have halakhic status, and that engaging in them has definite legal significance. Naturally, these aspects come to the surface mainly when halakha places preparatory acts in confrontation with other halakhic duties. Two basic situations are relevant here:

1. Engagement in a preparatory act exempts one from another commandment.
2. Engagement in a preparatory act overrides a prohibition.

We shall now deal with both of these, as briefly as possible.

Agents of a Commandment

The discussion about one commandment displacing another arises in the context of the rule that one engaged in a commandment is exempt from another commandment. The Mishnah in Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 25a, states: “Agents of a commandment are exempt from the sukkah.” Rashi explains there:

Agents of a commandment — people traveling on the road for the sake of a commandment, such as to study Torah, to greet their teacher, or to redeem captives. Exempt from the sukkah — even while they are camped.

Rashi explains that those emissaries of a commandment who are exempt from sleeping in the sukkah are people on the way toward fulfilling a commandment, such as one going to study Torah or to redeem captives. These are, of course, situations of preparation for a commandment and not actual engagement in performing the commandment itself. The conclusion is that the exemption of agents of a commandment applies even at the stage of preparation, not only at the moment of actual fulfillment.

What is the basis of this exemption? The Gemara there explains the source of this law:

Gemara: From where are these words derived? As the Sages taught: “When you sit in your house” (Deuteronomy 6:7) excludes one who is occupied with a commandment, and “when you walk on the way” excludes a bridegroom. From here they said: one who marries a virgin is exempt, but one who marries a widow is obligated.

The law that agents of a commandment are exempt from other commandments is thus connected here to the rule that one engaged in a commandment is exempt from another commandment. From the Gemara it appears that one who is engaged in a preparatory act is considered as actually engaged in the commandment. At first glance, one might infer from here that engaging in a preparatory act counts as actual fulfillment of a commandment, and therefore that engagement displaces other commandments. But this conclusion is far from simple, and we shall now see arguments in both directions.

First, this may depend on the source of the law, which appears later in the same discussion:

What is the implication of the verse? Rav Huna said: just as “the way” refers to optional travel, so every case in the verse refers to optional matters, excluding this one, who is occupied with a commandment. But are we not speaking even of one who is going for the sake of a commandment, and nevertheless the Merciful One says that he should recite? If so, Scripture should have said merely “when you sit” and “when you walk.” Why does it say “when you sit in your house” and “when you walk on your way”? It is your own walking that obligates you; walking for a commandment exempts you. If so, then even one who marries a widow should also be exempt. One who marries a virgin is preoccupied; one who marries a widow is not preoccupied. And wherever one is preoccupied, is he therefore exempt? If his ship sank at sea and he is preoccupied, would he also be exempt? And if you say yes, did not Rabbi Abba bar Zavda say in the name of Rav that a mourner is obligated in all the commandments of the Torah except tefillin, because they are called “splendor”? Here he is preoccupied with the preoccupation of a commandment; there, with the preoccupation of optional matters.

And is the rule that one occupied with a commandment is exempt from another commandment really derived from here? It is derived from there, as it was taught: “There were men who were impure through contact with a human corpse…” (Numbers 9). Who were those men? They were the bearers of Joseph’s coffin, according to Rabbi Yosei HaGelili…

The Gemara offers several possibilities for the source of the law that one engaged in a commandment is exempt from another. The common denominator of these sources is the exemption of one who is on the way to a commandment from performing other commandments. Since these sources deal directly with one traveling toward a commandment, it is difficult to derive anything unequivocal from them. On the plain reading, it seems that engaging in a preparatory act counts as fulfillment of a commandment and therefore exempts from other commandments. Yet one could also reject that inference and say that precisely because engaging in a preparatory act does not count as actual engagement in the commandment, an explicit derivation is needed here to exempt even the person who is merely on the way to a commandment, despite not yet being engaged in the commandment itself. That, precisely, is what we learn from the verse, and that is the novelty it contains. According to this, one cannot infer from the displacement that engaging in a preparatory act itself constitutes fulfillment of a commandment.

Second, one might suggest that walking toward a commandment overrides the obligation to sit in the sukkah because, if the person were to sit in the sukkah, the commandment toward which he is going would not be fulfilled. In other words, what displaces the commandment of sitting in the sukkah is not the walking to study Torah, but the annulment of Torah study that would result from sitting in the sukkah. If so, the preparatory act may have no halakhic significance of its own, and it displaces the obligation to sit in the sukkah only because fulfillment of the sukkah-commandment might harm the actual commandment of Torah study, not because of the value of the preparatory act itself.³

One might object, however, that if that were indeed the correct conception — that Torah study is what displaces, and not the walking toward it — then it is not clear why the commandment of Torah study should take precedence over the commandment of sitting in the sukkah. If we understand that the walking itself displaces the sukkah, then the priority of Torah study is clear, because he is already engaged in that walking when the obligation to sit in the sukkah arrives. Torah study came first, and therefore it takes precedence. But if the walking does not itself displace the commandment of sitting in the sukkah, and only the actual study does so, then he is not yet engaged in that study. If so, seemingly we should rule that sitting in the sukkah is the first commandment with which he must engage, and consequently he would be obligated only in that, and exempt from Torah study — and certainly from walking toward it. At first glance, then, this seems to prove that it is indeed the preparatory act that displaces the sitting in the sukkah, and not the commandment itself, namely Torah study.

Even so, one can still reject that rejection and say that walking toward the commandment, while not itself a full-fledged fulfillment of a commandment, is enough to regard the person as already engaged in matters pertaining to the commandment of Torah study. That is sufficient to establish that the commandment of Torah study is the one that has already taken hold of him first, because he is already engaged in it, and therefore it is the commandment that obligates him, rather than the commandment of sitting in the sukkah.

In any event, we cannot escape some degree of recognition that walking toward the fulfillment of a commandment — or any other preparatory act, for there is no reason to distinguish between travel and other preparations — contains something of the beginning of the fulfillment of the commandment itself. Perhaps there is not yet actual fulfillment here, but there is some sort of beginning, if only enough to determine that he has already begun engaging in the commandment of Torah study. Below we shall see this from other angles as well.

Overriding Shabbat

The primary source dealing with preparatory acts is the Mishnah in Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 130a, at the beginning of the chapter on Rabbi Eliezer concerning circumcision. Here the issue is the overriding of a prohibition, and, as we shall see, there is room to raise considerations similar to those that arose above regarding the overriding of an obligation stemming from another commandment.

As is well known, the commandment of circumcision at its proper time overrides Shabbat. What about the preparatory acts for the commandment — such as heating water, preparing the circumcision instrument, bringing it from outside the Sabbath boundary, and the like? The Mishnah states:

Rabbi Eliezer says: If one did not bring the instrument on the eve of Shabbat, he brings it on Shabbat uncovered. In a time of danger, he covers it in the presence of witnesses. Rabbi Eliezer further said: one may cut wood to make charcoal in order to fashion an iron instrument. Rabbi Akiva stated a general principle: any labor that can be done on the eve of Shabbat does not override Shabbat, whereas circumcision itself, which cannot be done on the eve of Shabbat, overrides Shabbat.

The Gemara there, on Shabbat 131a, explains that the dispute is whether the preparations for circumcision override Shabbat, and similarly there is a parallel dispute regarding preparatory acts for commandments in general.⁴ Rashi, too, explains the Mishnah in precisely this way:

Rabbi Akiva disputes Rabbi Eliezer regarding preparatory acts for a commandment: they do not override Shabbat, since they can be done on the eve of Shabbat. What cannot be done on the eve of Shabbat — such as the circumcision itself, whose time is the eighth day — overrides Shabbat.

Thus, Rabbi Eliezer permits performing the preparatory acts for circumcision, and for commandments generally, on Shabbat, whereas Rabbi Akiva disagrees in cases where those preparations could have been performed beforehand.

Rabbi Eliezer’s view appears to show that preparatory acts for a commandment have the status of engagement in the commandment itself. Yet one might reject the proof in a manner similar to what we saw above, and claim that what overrides Shabbat is the commandment of circumcision itself, not its preparations; only if the preparations cannot be performed, the commandment itself also cannot be fulfilled. If so, one might argue that this proves nothing about preparatory acts having the status of fulfilling a commandment.

Closer examination, however, suggests that this is precisely Rabbi Akiva’s view: the preparations for circumcision override Shabbat only if there was no possibility of doing them before Shabbat. According to Rabbi Akiva, if they could have been done on Friday, there is no permission at all to do them on Shabbat. This, seemingly, is the very explanation of his position: what overrides Shabbat is the commandment itself, not its preparations. Therefore setting aside Shabbat for the sake of the preparatory acts is possible only where the actual fulfillment of the commandment is endangered if they are not done on Shabbat. In such cases it is the commandment that overrides Shabbat, not the engagement in the preparations.

The picture that emerges, then, is that we have an explicit tannaitic dispute about our very issue. According to Rabbi Eliezer, preparatory acts are themselves like fulfillment of a commandment, and in their own right they override Shabbat, even if they could have been done beforehand. According to Rabbi Akiva, preparatory acts are not fulfillment of a commandment, and therefore they do not override Shabbat. What overrides Shabbat is the commandment itself, and the preparations override only where doing them on Shabbat is necessary for that commandment’s fulfillment. The halakha is ruled in accordance with Rabbi Akiva, and the conclusion would seem to be that preparatory acts do not have the status of commandment-fulfillment.

But that is too hasty. What is the law in a case where it was possible to do the preparations on Friday, but the person nevertheless failed to do them? Now the commandment itself cannot be carried out unless the preparations are done on Shabbat. On the other hand, they could have been done beforehand, and according to Rabbi Akiva there is no permission to do them on Shabbat.

Maimonides rules as follows in Laws of Circumcision 2:6:

All the needs of circumcision are done on Shabbat… But the preparatory acts for circumcision do not override Shabbat. How so? If they did not find a knife, one does not make a knife on Shabbat, nor bring it from place to place; even through an alley without an eruv one does not bring it from courtyard to courtyard. Even the rabbinic law of eruv is not set aside for bringing the knife, since it was possible to bring it on the eve of Shabbat.

Thus, as a matter of halakha, in a case where it was possible to bring the knife beforehand, even if one failed to bring it and now the circumcision will be postponed, there is still no permission to bring the knife or make one for the circumcision.

What does this mean in terms of the status of the preparatory act? At first glance it seems to follow that according to Rabbi Akiva even the commandment itself does not override Shabbat in such a case, for where it was possible to do the preparations beforehand, he does not permit the preparations even at the cost of canceling the commandment itself. This can be understood in two ways:

1. In principle it is the commandment that overrides Shabbat, not its preparations, as we explained above in Rabbi Akiva’s view. But if one failed to do the preparations beforehand, a sanction is imposed upon him — obviously, on the biblical level — that forbids him to perform the preparations now, and he therefore loses the commandment.
2. When the preparations could have been done beforehand, they are not carried along with the commandment, because they are not an inseparable part of it, at least regarding Sabbath desecration. The permission to override Shabbat for preparations exists only where there was no possibility of doing them beforehand; in such cases they constitute part of the actual fulfillment of the commandment. According to this conception, even Rabbi Akiva holds that preparatory acts are part of the fulfillment of the commandment itself.

One possible consequence that would distinguish these two conceptions is the question what the law would be if the preparations were not done beforehand by mistake. Would they then override Shabbat? The matter is ruled in Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 266:2 — see the Vilna Gaon there for the source:

But if he forgot the knife on the roof or in the courtyard, it is permitted to bring it from one to the other, even if the courtyards were joined with the houses by eruv.

At first glance, this seems to show that the issue is indeed a sanction. Therefore, when he merely forgot, the sanction was not imposed upon him. If so, the halakhic conception is that preparatory acts do not override Shabbat in their own right; only the commandment itself does. When the commandment is endangered, the preparations, too, are allowed — and only a sanction was imposed to the effect that if he deliberately failed to do them beforehand, he may not do them on Shabbat. Yet this is not the impression given by the wording of Maimonides and the Shulhan Arukh, who state in general terms, as cited above, that “the preparatory acts for circumcision do not override Shabbat.” This suggests that we are not dealing with a sanction, but with an essential law: only the commandment itself overrides, not the preparations.

And what about Rabbi Eliezer’s view? He holds that preparatory acts override Shabbat even if they could have been done beforehand. His main argument centers precisely on the case mentioned above, namely a situation in which the preparations were not done beforehand and now they stand in the way of the commandment itself. In such a case Rabbi Eliezer says that the preparations override Shabbat. At first glance, it is specifically according to his view that the preparations do not independently override Shabbat; the override is based on the fact that without them the commandment itself will not be fulfilled. If so, according to Rabbi Eliezer, too, it is the commandment that overrides Shabbat, not the preparations. According to Rabbi Akiva, by contrast, there was room to understand that even the preparations in themselves might override Shabbat, but in the end it seems that this is not how we rule.

Does this picture imply that preparatory acts have no halakhic status as fulfillment? The matter is not clear. It may well be that they do have halakhic status, and perhaps there is even actual fulfillment of a commandment here, but that this commandment does not override Shabbat. As we noted, there are many other commandments as well that do not override Shabbat, and perhaps the preparations for circumcision belong to that category — that is, they may indeed be a commandment, but an inferior one relative to circumcision itself, and therefore it does not override Shabbat.⁵

Exemption From Exile

Another discussion in which the issue of preparatory acts arises is found in Babylonian Talmud, Makkot 8a. At the end of the Mishnah there appears the following law:

Abba Shaul says: just as wood-chopping there is optional, so too every other case must be optional. This excludes a father striking his son, a teacher chastising his student, and an agent of the court.

The Mishnah exempts one engaged in wood-chopping for the sake of a commandment from exile. The examples given are a father striking his son or a teacher disciplining his student. What commandment is involved there? In simple terms, this is the commandment of Torah study or education. But is the act of striking itself actual engagement in a commandment? That is far from obvious.

The Gemara there asks:

Regarding one who throws a stone… A certain scholar said to Rava: How do we know that the wood-chopping in question is optional? Perhaps it refers to chopping wood for a sukkah or chopping wood for the altar-fire, and even so the Merciful One said that he must go into exile. He said to him: since if he found wood already chopped, he would not chop, it is not a commandment even now.

The examples the Gemara gives of chopping wood for the sake of a commandment are chopping wood for a sukkah and chopping wood for the altar-fire. The Gemara rejects this possibility on the grounds that if one found the wood already chopped, he would not be commanded to do so. This can be understood in two ways:

1. It is only a preparatory act, and therefore not a commandment at all; the indication of this is that if the wood is not needed, there is no commandment to perform the act. That would show that the need is purely technical, arising from circumstances rather than from command.
2. The preparatory act is indeed a commandment, but it is a lighter one, since it does not apply in every case. When there is already wood, one need not chop it.

Later in the Gemara, Rava is challenged from the Mishnah itself:

Ravina challenged Rava: This excludes a father striking his son, a teacher chastising his student, and an agent of the court. Let us say: since if the student had already learned, it would not be a commandment, even now it is not a commandment. There, even if he had learned, it is still a commandment, as it is written: “Discipline your son and he will give you rest; he will delight your soul” (Proverbs 29:17).

But the Mishnah’s examples, too, are not commandments in every situation, for if there is no need to strike the son or the student, then there is no commandment in doing so. The Gemara rejects this by saying that striking the son is a commandment in every case. In simple terms, the Gemara is not saying that striking the son is itself a commandment rather than a preparatory act — what commandment would that be? It is more plausible to interpret the Gemara as saying that this is indeed a preparatory act, but one that exists in all situations. It is a preparatory measure whose purpose is to produce an educated son, and the Gemara understands that this remains appropriate even where he is already learning properly. If so, this supports the second understanding above.

Rashi there explains why chopping wood for a sukkah is not a commandment:

Even now — if he did not find wood already chopped, the chopping itself is not the commandment; rather, making the sukkah is.

Many have already remarked on Rashi: what commandment is there in making a sukkah? Surely the commandment is dwelling in the sukkah, whereas building it — and certainly chopping wood — is only a preparatory act. Later authorities developed intricate analyses of Rashi’s words and concluded from them that there is indeed a commandment in building the sukkah; see Otzar Mefarshei HaTalmud there. But according to our line of thinking, none of that is necessary. Rashi means that building the sukkah is a preparatory act, and preparatory acts have the status of a commandment. Chopping the wood is also a preparatory act, and therefore the Gemara initially considered the possibility that it, too, has the status of a preparatory act.⁶ But in the end it is too remote a preparation, and therefore has no status as a preparatory act at all. The Gemara is establishing here a relevant degree of proximity between the preparation and the commandment in order for it to count as preparation for that commandment. After all, we would not imagine that going to work in order to earn money so that we can eat and have strength to build a sukkah should also count as preparation for the commandment of dwelling in the sukkah. It is worth noting that according to Tosafot Shantz there, even in the Gemara’s conclusion, chopping wood for the sukkah is indeed still regarded as a commandment.

In any event, from the discussion here — whether according to Rashi or Tosafot Shantz — it emerges that preparatory acts have the status of fulfilling a commandment, and therefore engagement in them exempts one from exile. Yet here too one might reject the proof and say that the exemption from exile stems from the fact that the person is compelled to engage in the preparatory act by virtue of his obligation in the commandment itself, and therefore his act is not optional. See the sugya there. Some have explained that his situation is analogous to that of one who is permitted to bring his animal into another’s courtyard and it caused damage there: he is exempt because he entered with permission. Engagement in a commandment likewise counts as acting with permission, and one is not expected to refrain from it.

It is obvious that even if the preparatory act has no halakhic value of its own, it is still imposed upon the person. One who lacks wood for a sukkah must go and cut some in order to be able to fulfill the commandment of dwelling in the sukkah. Thus, even if the preparatory act itself has no halakhic status, the commandment compels the person to chop the wood, and therefore he is regarded as acting with permission.⁷ It follows that this example, too, does not necessarily prove against the simple conception of preparatory acts as lacking halakhic status.

Up to this point, then, the examples have not been decisive for our discussion, and the proofs regarding the halakhic status of preparatory acts could still be rejected. However, there are two further sources that seem more unequivocal, and we now turn to them.

Improper Intention While Raking the Coals

The Gemara in Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 48b, is uncertain whether an improper intention entertained while raking the coals for the incense also invalidates the service — and the commentators there disagree about what exactly is invalidated, the incense itself or the coals:

If one had an improper intention while raking the coals, what is the law? Are preparations for a commandment like the commandment itself, or not? The question stands unresolved.

Raking the coals is certainly a preparatory act. Already from the very formulation of the doubt, it is clear that the Gemara took for granted that raking the coals is a preparatory act; the question is whether improper intention disqualifies even while one is engaged in preparing the commandment, just as improper intention disqualifies when one is engaged in the commandment itself.

At least according to one side of the doubt — the side that holds that the improper intention does disqualify even while raking the coals — the conception is clearly that the preparatory act is truly like engagement in the commandment itself. If the preparatory act had no halakhic status at all, there would be no room even to entertain the possibility that improper intention would disqualify there. Nor can one reject this as we did in the earlier examples by tying it to the commandment itself, namely the burning of the incense. Even if the improper intention did not invalidate here, the commandment itself would still be performed properly. Nothing here directly harms the commandment itself.

To be sure, as the Gemara before us stands, the doubt is not resolved, and the sugya ends with the matter left undecided. If so, it is difficult to bring definitive proof from here to our issue. However, according to the version of Rabbeinu Hananel — and Maimonides rules accordingly — an intention entertained while raking the coals does invalidate. If so, at least according to their view, the halakha is that a preparatory act counts as the beginning of the actual fulfillment of the commandment itself.

This conclusion seems sharper than the conclusion we drew from the case of agents of a commandment. There we saw only that a person engaged in a preparatory act is regarded as engaged in a commandment, but only for the purpose of determining that the commandment in which he is already involved takes precedence over another that he encounters on the way. In other words, regarding the question which commandment is weightier and therefore displaces the other, engagement in a preparatory act is enough to regard the goal of the mission as the commandment with which he is engaged. Here, by contrast, we see that the preparatory act is actually part of the process of performing the commandment itself, to the point that improper intention disqualifies it.⁸

Lighting Hanukkah Candles and Honoring One’s Parents

Another example is found in responsum 102 of Terumat HaDeshen, which deals with the law of the Hanukkah lamp on Friday the eve of Shabbat. The question there is as follows:⁹

Question: We hold that regarding a Hanukkah lamp, if it went out one is not required to relight it. If it went out on Friday before the acceptance of Shabbat, when in any case the lamps must be lit while it is still day, is one required to relight it in such a case or not?

The explanation is simple. As is well known, the halakha is that if the Hanukkah lamp went out, one is not required to relight it. But on Friday the situation appears different. On Friday we light the lamps before sunset, whereas the ordinary enactment of lighting is, according to the author of Terumat HaDeshen, at nightfall, for what use is a lamp in broad daylight?

The question thus concerns a lamp lit on Friday before its proper time, which then went out. On an ordinary day, if the lamp goes out, one need not relight it. But here, if it went out before Shabbat began, that happened before the commandment had actually taken effect. Therefore, at first glance, everyone should agree that there ought to be an obligation to relight it.

Yet the author of Terumat HaDeshen writes:

Answer: It appears that even in such a case one is not required to relight it.

This is a surprising answer. He himself then raises the obvious difficulty:

Although Mordekhai wrote there that the commandment of the Hanukkah lamp begins only from the end of sunset onward — that is, at nightfall and not earlier, for what use is a lamp in the daylight? — it follows that the essence of the commandment of the Hanukkah lamp is not at the time of the lighting while it is still day. Rather, the continued burning after dark is the fulfillment of the commandment. Therefore one could have said that if it went out before the fulfillment of the commandment began, one would indeed be required to relight it.

The lamp went out before the commandment was fulfilled. How, then, can he say that there is no need to relight it? He explains as follows:

However, from the fact that we recite the blessing while it is still day — “who commanded us to light the Hanukkah lamp” — even though the commandment is not yet present, the reason must be that since it cannot be done otherwise, it is regarded as a preparatory act for the commandment. As Tosafot explained regarding the preparatory acts of the commandment of honoring one’s father and mother in the discussion of the upper chamber at the beginning of tractate Yevamot: “Slaughter for me, cook for me” — there is not yet a commandment until the later moment when he actually feeds his father, and yet the Gemara there entertained the possibility that it should override a prohibition punishable by karet.

He proves that the lighting is a preparatory act from the fact that even on Friday we recite a blessing over the lighting, even though the commandment itself is not yet being fulfilled. It is not entirely clear what he means here. Of course it is a preparatory act; but apparently he wishes to prove that there is here actual fulfillment of a commandment, and not merely preparation. That indeed seems to be his meaning: a preparation of this sort has the status of a preparatory act in the sense of being the beginning of the commandment’s fulfillment — unlike a remote preparation, such as chopping wood for a sukkah according to Rashi, which has no such status.

He also proves this from Tosafot on Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 6a, who cite Rabbeinu Hananel as saying that the preparatory acts of honoring one’s parents override a prohibition punishable by karet. To be sure, as we saw above from the discussions of one law displacing another, it is difficult to derive definitive proof from such cases regarding the status of preparatory acts. But the author of Terumat HaDeshen understands them in exactly that way: the override occurs because the preparatory act is already the beginning of fulfillment of the commandment itself.⁹ It stands to reason that he would understand all the earlier discussions we cited in the same way.

It should be noted that Rabbeinu Hananel may be consistent here with his own position, since in the Yoma discussion we saw that he likewise holds that a preparatory act is the beginning of the fulfillment of the commandment itself.

The author of Terumat HaDeshen concludes the passage with the following formulation:

Thus we see that fulfillment of the positive commandment in the preparatory act is regarded as though it were in the commandment itself, and that is why we recite a blessing over it. Therefore too, if it went out, one is not required to relight it, for the commandment has already begun through the preparation.

His conclusion is that the preparatory act counts as fulfillment of the commandment itself, and therefore one recites a blessing over it. From that he infers that if the lamp goes out, there is no need to relight it even on Friday. Although the time of the commandment has not yet arrived, once we have lit it, the very fact that this is a preparatory act means that some fulfillment of the commandment has already taken place.

A Note on the Conception of Terumat HaDeshen

We should note that the innovation of the author of Terumat HaDeshen contains two distinct components:

1. A preparatory act has the status of the beginning of the fulfillment of the commandment.
2. If a person has performed the preparatory act, he has fully discharged his obligation, even without any trace of the result. Of course, this is relevant only to commandments whose focus is the act rather than the result, as with the Hanukkah lamp, where the halakha is that if it went out one is not required to relight it.

It is important to understand that the second innovation is not a necessary conclusion from the first. It is entirely possible that Maimonides and Rabbeinu Hananel, who regard the preparatory act as the beginning of the commandment’s fulfillment, would still obligate us to relight a Hanukkah lamp that went out on Friday. Even while agreeing with the first innovation, they could certainly reject the second innovation of the author of Terumat HaDeshen.

What does the second innovation mean? It too seems to turn on one’s conception of preparatory acts. One might have said that the preparatory act has halakhic status, and that it contains some dimension of fulfilling a commandment, but that it is not truly part of the commandment itself — certainly not its complete fulfillment. From Terumat HaDeshen it appears that he understood the lighting as the very fulfillment of the commandment itself. In action-centered commandments, one who has performed the preparatory act has discharged his obligation. In his view, he has performed the required act, and thereby he has fulfilled the commandment. Below we shall see that Maimonides very likely did not understand the halakhic status of preparatory acts in this way.

C. Maimonides’ View of Preparatory Acts

Introduction

In the first chapter we presented the simple conception according to which a preparatory act has no halakhic status and is nothing more than activity dictated by circumstances in order to make it possible for a person to fulfill the commandment. We then challenged that conception from several talmudic discussions, from which it emerges that engaging in a preparatory act is akin to engaging in the commandment itself — that is, it is actually the beginning of performing the commandment. We saw this explicitly as well in the positions of Rabbeinu Hananel, Maimonides, and Terumat HaDeshen.

As already mentioned, these two conceptions yield two different ways of understanding Maimonides’ words in the root before us. Maimonides’ determination that a preparatory act should not be counted within the enumeration of the commandments can be interpreted, in the straightforward way, as a claim about the preparatory act itself — namely, that it has no halakhic status, and therefore it cannot enter the count of the commandments. According to this conception, Maimonides’ main point is that a preparatory act has no place at all in the count, because it is not a commandment.

By contrast, according to the view that a preparatory act is part of engagement in the commandment itself, the focus of the claim is that it cannot have an independent status, not that it lacks halakhic status altogether.

We have already noted that Maimonides’ language in this root can be read as supporting both conceptions. In this chapter we shall try to understand the significance of that, and its connection to Maimonides’ overall halakhic conception of preparatory acts.

The Anointing Oil and the Incense

At the beginning of the Laws of Temple Vessels, Maimonides rules that making the anointing oil and the incense are positive commandments:

1:1: It is a positive commandment to make the anointing oil so that it be ready for those things that require anointing with it, as it says: “And you shall make it a holy anointing oil”…

2:1: The incense is made every year, and making it is a positive commandment, as it says: “And you, take for yourself fragrant spices”…

The author of Kinat Soferim, commenting on our root, objects that this contradicts Maimonides’ words in the root itself, where making the anointing oil and taking the incense are not positive commandments but only preparatory acts, and are therefore not to be counted because they have no halakhic status. Yet here we see that Maimonides regards them as actual positive commandments.

The author of Kinat Soferim explains this as follows:

The answer is that the beginning of the commandment is that prior act which is necessary for it. Since it is impossible to fulfill the commandment properly without it, it is included together with the commandment. According to this, those preliminaries and preparations that we have mentioned are parts of the commandment, and only the completion of the commandment — namely, the end for which the commands were given — is what comes into the count…

He explains that making the oil and the incense are indeed commandments, since they are preparatory acts for the commandments of anointing and burning incense. As we saw, according to Maimonides the conclusion from the Yoma discussion is that the preparatory act is part of the commandment. In this sense Maimonides agrees with the first innovation of the author of Terumat HaDeshen.

If so, what Maimonides argues in this root is not that such acts are not positive commandments, but that they may not be given independent status. In other words, apparently he sees this root as part of the principles of classification — the fifth category — rather than as part of the fourth category. The preparatory act is not counted because it is included within the commandment, not because it is not a commandment at all. Maimonides would then be consistent with himself here, just as we saw above in the view of Rabbeinu Hananel.

Difficulties in Understanding Maimonides’ View

This understanding, which as we saw seems to follow from Maimonides’ statements and from the talmudic discussions, raises several problems:

1. From Maimonides’ language at the beginning of the root it seems unmistakable that he does not mean to say that a preparatory act is an ordinary part of the commandment, for he defines it as “not the commandment” but a preliminary to the commandment. If it were indeed an ordinary part of the commandment, as we assumed above, this formulation would be hard to understand. It would therefore seem that this root belongs specifically to the fourth category.

On the other hand, we saw that the preparatory act does have halakhic status, and in fact is the beginning of the fulfillment of the commandment. If so, it is difficult to say that it is not a commandment at all, but merely some prior activity. Yet Maimonides’ language indicates that the preparatory act is inferior to the commandment itself, even though, as we saw, his principal complaint against Bahag was that he counted it separately — as two commandments — and not merely that he counted it at all. Thus Maimonides’ opening language suggests that this root does indeed belong to the fourth category, meaning that a preparatory act is not counted because it is not really a commandment at all.

2. If our root really belongs to the fifth category rather than the fourth, then one must explain why there is any need for a special root establishing that a preparatory act is not counted independently. That should already follow from Root Seven and Roots Eleven and Twelve, which establish that one does not count parts or details of commandments independently.

It is quite clear that Maimonides is not trying to teach here the halakhic principle that a preparatory act is part of the commandment, for that has nothing to do with the enumeration of the commandments. His purpose here is to teach a principle concerning the count — namely, that preparatory acts should not be counted — and if so, he should seemingly have included this under Root Twelve.

3. Another question that arises is what exactly distinguishes ordinary preparatory acts from those concerning which the Torah itself issues a command. At first glance, only where the Torah commands us is there room to regard the preparation itself as a commandment, but not so with preparatory acts that do not appear in the Torah. Recall that the author of Kinat Soferim tied the status of the preparatory act to the factual condition that the commandment cannot be performed without that preparation; this also seems to follow from the language of the Gemara in Makkot that we cited above, which makes the matter depend on whether the preparation is always necessary.

Yet Maimonides in this root deals with preparatory acts that appear explicitly in the verses of the Torah, for otherwise there would be no reason even to entertain the possibility of counting them as commandments; see the second part of our lesson on the Ninth Root. Maimonides is certainly not intending here to reject the counting of preparatory acts that do not appear in the Torah as commandments. But according to what we said above, namely that every preparatory act is part of the fulfillment of the commandment — even one about which there is no command in the biblical text, such as walking toward a commandment or slaughtering for one’s father in the Yevamot discussion — it is not clear what additional role is played by the verse that commands it, for example the verses cited by Maimonides here about preparing the anointing oil or the incense.

If every preparatory act is already the beginning of engagement in the commandment, and therefore also not independently counted, then what difference remains between preparatory acts concerning which the Torah gives a command and those about which there is no command at all, and only reality compels the person to engage in them? What, in practical terms, does the verse add?

The Solution: Preparatory Acts as an Intermediate State — Half a Commandment

It seems that the key to understanding all these problems lies in the first question. Maimonides does indeed argue that the preparatory act is only a preliminary — that is, a means for carrying out the commandment — and for that reason its status is indeed inferior relative to the actual performance itself. Yet, as we saw, it also has halakhic status; only this is the halakhic status of a preliminary to a commandment. It is not part of the commandment, as the lulav is part of the commandment of the four species. Rather, it is the beginning or prelude of the commandment. It is an initial stage that functions as a means and not as the end, and therefore its status is inferior. It is lower qualitatively, not quantitatively, than an actual commandment.

In other words, the preparatory act does have halakhic status, but this does not conflict with the fact that it is indeed a means and not an end. Therefore, relative to ends, its halakhic standing is inferior. One implication of viewing a preparatory act as a means is that it does not constitute an end in itself, and therefore we are not obligated to do it. If a person already has something to cook for his father who wants food, as in the Yevamot discussion, he is under no obligation to slaughter a fresh animal especially for that purpose. Slaughtering is a preparatory act that must be performed only where it is needed in order to fulfill the commandment. This is also the meaning of the Gemara in Makkot, which ties the status of a preparatory act to the fact that it is not always required, and thereby distinguishes between striking a son and chopping wood for a sukkah or for the altar-fire.

From here one can understand the double formulation in Maimonides’ root. On the one hand, a preparatory act cannot be included in the count of the commandments because it is not entirely a commandment. It is a means and not an end. On the other hand, it does have halakhic status, and therefore there is room to regard it as part of the system; but it still should not be counted, because even if we treat it as though it were an actual commandment, it is only a detail of the commandment that it serves. Thus the double meaning of this root, and the double formulation employed by Maimonides, come together with Maimonides’ conception of the halakhic status of preparatory acts.

The Commandments as Values: Ta’ama De-Kra From Another Angle

From this definition it follows that ordinary commandments are always ends in themselves, and therefore means cannot be included in the count of the commandments. For this reason, a preparatory act, which by its very essence is a means, is not included in the count. This does not mean that it lacks halakhic status; but it cannot be regarded as a commandment.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz pointed out in several places that values are always principles that cannot be rationalized. They have no reasons that precede them or stand above them. For example, at the end of his book Faith, History, and Values, he discusses disconnecting a sick girl from life-support machines in order to prevent suffering and to end a life that appears to lack value. He argues there that one cannot ground the value of life in the ability to enjoy it, for that would amount to rationalizing the value of life. Every rationalization turns the value into a means for achieving some goal outside it. Measuring values and assigning them degrees of importance is itself a kind of rationalization, since what cannot be measured by some external standard cannot be assessed at all. A value, by definition, is an end and not a means to something else; therefore it cannot be measured, and therefore its force cannot be limited. Hence, tragic though it may be, one may not disconnect a patient from machines, because the value of life is not measured on any axis or by any scale — it has no “price” and no finite worth.¹⁰ On the problems this creates for constructing a hierarchy of values — the incomparability of values — see Enosh KaHatzir, Third Gate, chapter 3.

From here one can see, from another angle, why we do not expound ta’ama de-kra — the reason for the verse; see also our essay on the Fifth Root. If commandments are values, and if values by definition are not subject to rationalization, that is, they cannot be grounded in ends external to themselves, then by the same token one cannot expound the reason for the verse. The commandments are not means for achieving goals outside themselves.

To be sure, one might infer from this not only that we ought not seek such reasons, but that there simply are no such reasons. But that is the position Maimonides attributes to the “weak-minded” in Guide of the Perplexed 3:31; see our discussion there and at the beginning of our essay on the Ninth Root. Therefore the formulation must be corrected somewhat. From our standpoint, the commandments are values and not means. This does not mean that the Holy One, who gave them to us, did not do so for the sake of certain goals. But from our standpoint, they are not to be rationalized. Therefore preparatory acts, whose rationalization is perfectly obvious — namely, the commandment itself — and whose obligatory character depends upon the need to achieve that end, cannot be included in the count of the commandments.

Preparatory Acts That Appear in the Torah

This brings us to preparatory acts concerning which the Torah itself commands us. As we saw, Maimonides here deals only with preparatory acts that the Torah itself commands. When a verse commands us to prepare the anointing oil or the incense, the meaning is that beyond the actual burning and anointing, an obligation is also imposed upon us to do those acts. In cases where the Torah commands the preparatory acts, the preparation itself thereby acquires the status of obligation. It is still a preparatory act, and therefore we do not count it separately; but there is indeed an obligation, as part of the counted commandment, also to prepare the means for the commandment where necessary.

It is important to note that we still conceive of the acts of preparation as preliminaries, as preparatory acts. But this does not necessarily mean that they are not obligatory. This is precisely Maimonides’ meaning in the Laws of Temple Vessels, where he explained that preparing the anointing oil and the incense is a positive commandment. His point is that in these cases the preparatory act is obligatory, and therefore he cites the verses that instruct it. Yet from the standpoint of the enumeration of the commandments, the preparation is included within the commandment of anointing or burning.¹¹ More than that: it is only a preparation and a prelude to the commandment, not a commandment in the full sense. It is an obligation that is a means and not an end, and therefore it cannot be counted as a commandment.

It is thus clear that this root differs from Roots Eleven and Twelve, which deal with parts of commandments. It stands in between the fourth and fifth categories. Accordingly, Maimonides is arguing on two planes:

1. There is no place to count the preparatory act as a separate commandment, as Bahag did, in Maimonides’ reading.
2. The preparatory act itself is not fit to be a full commandment, because of its inferior halakhic standing as a means and not an end.

Preparatory acts that do not appear in the Torah do not count as obligations at all. These are not means endowed with halakhic status, but means arising only from technical constraints. Therefore, with regard to them, the question whether to count them among the commandments never even arises. The consideration in the Makkot discussion — that one is always obligated to strike the son — does not mean that this act has halakhic status. Rather, it means that the act is attached to the commandment itself, and the exemption from exile stems from the fact that the person is engaged in something obligatory. The commandment necessarily requires this preparation of him, since in those situations there is no practical way to fulfill the commandment without performing that preparation, and therefore he is exempt from exile. It seems that, according to Maimonides, such preparations have no halakhic status.

Summary: Returning to the Second Innovation of Terumat HaDeshen

This, then, is most likely Maimonides’ view of preparatory acts: they are obligations of an inferior halakhic status, because they are means and not ends.

It would seem that Maimonides would not accept the second innovation of the author of Terumat HaDeshen, discussed above, according to which lighting the Hanukkah lamp before its proper time counts as performing the commandment. According to Maimonides, there is indeed a commandment here, but it is not the commandment of lighting the Hanukkah lamp; rather, it is the commandment to prepare for the lighting. Therefore, if the lamp goes out before Shabbat, it would seem that according to Maimonides there would be an obligation to relight it. These preparations are indeed included within the commandment of lighting the lamp from the standpoint of the rules governing the enumeration of the commandments — were this a biblical commandment — but they are not part of the actual fulfillment of the commandment itself, only its preparation.

D. A Third Type of Preparatory Act: Commandments That Are Themselves Preparations

Introduction

In the previous chapter we saw that there are two kinds of preparatory acts: one grounded in circumstance, which carries no explicit Torah command, and one conveyed through a Torah command, which we are obligated to perform. Both are means, and both have halakhic consequences, such as exemption from exile and the like. The difference between them concerns whether the preparation is obligatory or whether one performs it only when necessary. In this chapter we shall examine a third kind of preparatory act: cases in which the preparation is itself a commandment.

Wearing the Priestly Garments

Maimonides counts wearing the priestly garments as positive commandment 33:

The thirty-third commandment is that the priests were commanded to wear special garments for glory and beauty, and only then to perform service in the Temple. This is what He, exalted be He, said: “And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2), and “Bring near his sons and clothe them with tunics” (Exodus 29:8).

These are the priestly garments: eight garments for the High Priest and four garments for an ordinary priest. If a priest performs the service with fewer garments than those designated for that service, or with more than them, his service is invalid, and in addition he incurs death at the hand of Heaven — that is, one lacking the required garments who served. Thus they counted him at the end of Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 83a, among those liable to death at the hand of Heaven. This is not stated explicitly in Scripture. But Scripture says: “You shall gird them with sashes…” and “they shall have the priesthood as an everlasting statute.” It is explained there: when their garments are upon them, their priesthood is upon them; but when their garments are not upon them, their priesthood is not upon them, and they are as strangers. We shall explain that a stranger who served incurs death. And it says in Sifra, at the end of Parashat Tzav: “He placed the breastplate upon him” — this section taught for its immediate occasion and taught for future generations; it taught for the daily service and for the service of Yom Kippur. Every day he serves in golden garments, and on Yom Kippur in white garments.

They further explained in Sifra, on Aharei Mot chapter 8, that wearing these garments is a positive commandment, as they said: From where do we know that Aaron does not wear these garments for his own grandeur, but only as one fulfilling the decree of the King? Scripture says: “And he did as the Lord commanded Moses” — meaning, with these garments. And although they are supremely beautiful, made of gold, onyx, jasper, and other precious stones, the intention in them is not beauty, but only to fulfill the command that God gave Moses — namely, that he should wear these garments at all times in the Temple. All the laws of this commandment are explained in the second chapter of tractate Zevahim and in places in Yoma and Sukkah.

Nahmanides, in his glosses there, notes that Bahag did not count this commandment:

Although this commandment is obvious in the verse and the Torah elaborates greatly in explaining it, I did not see the author of Halakhot Gedolot count it. Rather, he counted among the prohibitions a priest who served while lacking garments. His view is this: since there is no commandment in wearing the garments except at the time of service, it is only a preparation for the service; if he served with fewer garments than required, or with more, the service is invalid. It is therefore part of the commandment of the service, if he served in them. And if we were to count this as a commandment, then it would also be fitting to count the white garments on Yom Kippur as another commandment — as this, so that. Likewise it would be fitting to count the garments of the High Priest as one commandment and those of the ordinary priest as another. But all of them are parts among the parts of the commanded service for the days of which they are said, and it has already been explained in Root Twelve that we do not count parts of commandments.

Nahmanides explains that the reason is that Bahag regarded this as a preparatory act for the service in the Temple. As Maimonides himself wrote, a priest who served without the required garments is regarded as a stranger, and his service is invalid.

Nahmanides then adds that making the vessels of the Tabernacle — the table, menorah, and altars — are likewise not counted as commandments because they are preparatory acts for the Temple service:

Therefore we do not count the making of the table, the menorah, and the altar as a commandment, because we were commanded to place bread before the Lord always, and He commanded us concerning the preparation of this service — namely, that it should be placed upon a table described in such-and-such a way, and arranged upon it in such-and-such a manner. He likewise commanded us concerning the lighting of the lamp before Him, and arranged for us that this lighting be done in a golden menorah of such-and-such a weight and form. Thus they are sacred implements.

The reason the Rabbi gave did not seem correct to me — namely, that these are parts of the Temple. For the vessels are not parts of the building, but two separate commandments, and they do not prevent one another. Sacrifices may be offered in the House even if those vessels are not there.

He objects that Maimonides did not omit them because they are preparatory acts, but because he viewed them as parts of the commandment of building the Temple; see Root Twelve and our discussion there.¹²

At the end of his comments, Nahmanides says that Maimonides’ view regarding the garments appears to him more persuasive, but he still has difficulty with it:

The Rabbi’s view regarding the garments and sanctification is indeed more convincing, to count them among the positive commandments, because by serving in them one fulfills a commandment in addition to merely guarding against the prohibition. But if so, why should he not also count as a positive commandment that the priests perform the service while standing, and not sitting or lying down, based on what they derived: “to stand and minister” — I chose them for standing and not for sitting? And the Rabbi wrote in his great code that one who serves while sitting does not receive lashes, because his warning is derived from a positive commandment. Perhaps because Scripture does not express this in the language of command, he counted it only as preparation for the service. But this is not convincing.

Here we see that Maimonides’ method distinguishes between preparations that appear in the text of Scripture and preparations that do not, just as we explained in the previous chapter.

A Third Type of Preparatory Act

Two points here require clarification. First, it is not clear why wearing the garments, according to Maimonides and Nahmanides, is counted, even though it serves as preparation for the Temple service. What does Nahmanides mean when he says, in the last passage cited, that Maimonides’ position seems more convincing because there is here a positive commandment beyond the prohibition? After all, this is precisely what he himself had explained in Bahag: that wearing the garments is not a positive commandment, but only a preparatory act.

Second, according to Maimonides it is not clear why the Temple vessels are not also to be regarded as preparatory acts for the service, as Nahmanides proposed.

It seems that here we encounter yet another kind of preparatory act — one that not only has halakhic status, like the previous two, but is also counted among the commandments. The commandment of wearing the garments has value in itself, and not merely as a means to the service. True, failure to wear them invalidates the service, and in that sense it would seem to be only a preparation. But unlike an ordinary preparatory act, the wearing has value in itself, and not merely as an introduction or means to the fulfillment of the commandment. As we saw above, a preparatory act is not counted because it is a means and not an end. Wearing the garments may indeed be a condition for the service, but it is not only a means, and therefore it is counted.

Explaining the Obligation to Wear the Garments

To illustrate this, let us suggest an explanation of the commandment of the garments — an explanation that also seems to follow from Maimonides’ own language in this commandment. It may be that wearing the garments is not required so that the sacrifice should work properly, or produce what it is meant to produce. Rather, the obligation stems from the fact that, at the time of offering the sacrifice, the priest must be clothed in garments “for glory and beauty.” In other words, the sacrificial service is simply a situation in which, once the priest is engaged in it, he is obligated to wear dignified garments. If he does not wear them, the sacrifice is invalid — but not because something in the sacrificial act itself is defective. Rather, the priest who offered it did not behave with the proper honor. Thus, the wearing is not a condition for the sacrifice to be effective or successful; rather, the sacrificial act itself gives rise to the obligation to wear the garments. Failure to fulfill that obligation invalidates the service, somewhat like a sanction, or like a commandment that comes through a transgression. The sacrificial act loses its value if it is performed in a way that does not honor those who serve and the One whom they serve.

Let us formulate the point more sharply. A preparatory act that is merely a means, like the anointing oil, is an act such that, if it is not done, there is no fulfillment of the commandment at all. When the anointing oil has not been properly prepared, something is missing in the very act itself, and therefore the commandment of anointing with the sacred oil has simply not been performed. A preparatory act of the kind before us — wearing the garments — is not meant to enable the sacrificial act, but rather, if it is not done, the act is invalidated. That is to say, it is not that some necessary internal component of the act is missing; rather, something external invalidates it. The commandment to offer a sacrifice is not defined as “a priest wearing garments must offer sacrifices,” but as “the representative of Israel must offer them.” There is an external requirement of glory and beauty imposed upon the officiating priest, and if it is not fulfilled, the service itself has indeed been done, but it is invalidated.

It may be that the Temple vessels, too — the altars, table, and menorah — are not regarded by Maimonides as mere preparatory acts for the same reason: they are not only means to the service, but also possess intrinsic value. This is not the place to expand on Maimonides’ conception of the commandment of building the Temple, in contrast to Nahmanides, a subject on which many have already written at length.

This also explains what the author of Megillat Esther wrote in his glosses on this commandment. In defending Maimonides’ determination that building the Temple vessels is not counted because it is a part of a commandment and not because it is a preparatory act, and likewise against Nahmanides’ explanation of Bahag that wearing the garments is only a preparatory act, he writes:

It seems to me that Nahmanides’ defense of Bahag — namely, that the reason he did not count the donning of the garments among the positive commandments was that he regarded it as a preparatory act, and therefore it is part of the commandment and does not enter the count — is of no substance. For there is a great distinction between a preparatory act and a part of the commandment. When you say “preparatory act,” you are saying that by means of this the commandment is made fit to be done properly. If so, this preparation is not part of it, and it ought to be counted. After all, several preparatory acts are counted among the commandments, such as slaughtering the Paschal offering, which is only a preparation for eating it at night, and burning the red heifer, which is likewise only a preparation so that its ashes be ready to purify the impure — and many others of this sort. But a part of the commandment certainly is not fit to be counted, for it is a minor element separated from the whole and does not stand independently.

And do not object to what I wrote — that donning the garments is not part of the service — from what the Rabbi wrote in Root Eleven… We find that the sacrifice is not valid except with the wearing of the garments… If so, the wearing should be part of it. I say that there is no difficulty for one who reads the Rabbi’s language carefully… Since wearing the garments is not part of the body of the sacrifice, but something separate from it, we must certainly count it.

The essence of his argument is that although wearing the garments seems to be part of the sacrifice, since it conditions its validity, in truth it is not part of it, despite that dependency. Only parts of a commandment are excluded from the count by the principle of Root Eleven, and wearing the garments is not such a part. Indeed, the very fact that it stands outside the commandment is a reason to count it as an independent commandment.

He also argues more generally that a preparatory act is, by its very nature, not a part of the commandment, but something outside it. His proof is that several preparatory acts do appear in the count of the commandments, and are not subsumed within the commandments for which they serve as preparations. From this he concludes that a preparatory act is never a part of the commandment itself. This fits quite well with what we saw in Maimonides: he sees the preparatory act as a different commandment that prepares the main commandment, not as a part of it, as the author of Terumat HaDeshen had understood it.

The major question that arises here is why not all preparatory acts are counted among the commandments. In other words, how would the author of Megillat Esther explain Maimonides’ words in our root? He can hardly say that the preparation is part of the commandment. Rather, he would have to say that the preparation is a weaker sort of commandment — a means and not an end. The preparatory acts that are counted as commandments are those that also possess intrinsic value. He himself cites slaughtering the Paschal offering and burning the red heifer as preparatory acts that Maimonides does include in his count.

Summary: Three Types of Preparatory Act

We have thus seen three types of “preparatory act for a commandment”:

1. A circumstantial preparatory act — for example, slaughtering an animal for one’s father’s honor, and perhaps also building a sukkah. Such a preparation has only instrumental value, and there is no obligation to perform it. It is not counted among the commandments for two reasons: because of its inferior status as a means and because there is no obligation to do it; and also because it is part of the commandment whose end it serves.

2. A preparatory act that appears in a biblical verse — for example, preparing the incense and the anointing oil. Such a preparation also has only instrumental value, but we are obligated to do it, and there is a commandment in its performance. Yet it too is not counted, at least because it is included within the main commandment. It may also be excluded for the second reason as well — namely, because it is a commandment of means and therefore of lesser force — and not because it is not obligatory.

3. A preparatory act that also has intrinsic value — for example, wearing the priestly garments and slaughtering the Paschal offering. Such a preparation may condition the commandment, but it only invalidates its fulfillment from the outside; it is not a positive internal condition of the commandment’s actual performance. Such a preparation is counted among the commandments, in addition to the commandment whose fulfillment it conditions.

In our essay on the Eleventh Root we shall discuss the various relationships between commandments — some of which impede one another and some of which do not — and we shall see that sometimes this affects the enumeration of the commandments and sometimes it does not.

E. Reversing the Relation Between Means and End: Hafza and Gavra

Introduction¹³

In this chapter we shall see that there are situations in which different relations between means and ends come to expression — relations that in fact turn the ordinary means-end relation on its head.

Until now we have seen relations between means and ends that assume that the means has lower value than the end, because it is nothing more than an instrument for attaining it. Even the third case, in which the preparatory act had intrinsic value and we therefore counted it as an independent commandment, still proceeded by treating it as not only a means but also an end in itself. In all of those cases, the assumption remained that a means has lower value than the end. In this chapter we shall see cases in which the means comes to have a higher value than the end for which, apparently, it was intended.

The Seder Night and the Exodus From Egypt

As an example of this matter — which we also discussed from another angle in our essay on the Thirteenth Root, chapter 4 — let us consider the well-known interpretation of the author of Beit HaLevi¹⁴ on the verse cited in the Passover Haggadah: “Because of this, the Lord acted for me when I went out of Egypt.” At first glance, this verse establishes a means-end relation, signaled by “because of.” But if we examine the relation carefully, it is the reverse of what we would have expected. We would have expected that conducting the seder is a means for remembering the Exodus from Egypt; but this verse claims that the Exodus from Egypt is a means for conducting the seder — “this.”

The author of Beit HaLevi explains that this is indeed the correct understanding. We do not conduct the seder because of the Exodus from Egypt; rather, the Holy One brought about the Exodus from Egypt in order that we should conduct the seder. A proof of this is that the Torah relates that when the angels came to Lot, he ate matzot. Rashi there explains that it was Passover, even though the Exodus from Egypt took place many centuries later. If so, the eating of matzah is not merely a memorial to the haste of the Exodus, but possesses intrinsic value. The Exodus from Egypt is an event implanted into history in order to illustrate, and to pour the content and meaning of this world, into the commandment of eating matzah — a commandment that might otherwise have seemed detached from us.¹⁵

We thus see that on the essential, divine plane, the apparent means — the seder night — is in fact the goal, while the apparent goal — the Exodus from Egypt and its remembrance — is in fact the means. On the human plane, however, we must certainly behave as though the purpose of the seder night is to remember the Exodus from Egypt, as all the commandments of that night, and its entire content, testify. Our conduct treats the seder as though it were a means, but our understanding recognizes it as the end. More than that: only if we relate to it as a means will the true purpose be fulfilled.

Commandments of Action and Commandments of Result

Within halakha we find commandments whose content is the attainment of a certain state, and others whose content is a particular action. A clear example of a commandment of result is the commandment of charity. Its purpose, seemingly, is the benefit of the poor person. Turnus Rufus the Wicked asks Rabbi Akiva — see Sefer HaHinukh, commandment 65 — if the Holy One loves the poor, why does He not make them rich? In our terms we would say: if the goal is indeed to reach a state in which there are no poor people, why does God not create that state Himself?

Rabbi Akiva answers Turnus Rufus that the Torah and its commandments were given “only in order to refine human beings.” That is, the purpose of the commandment is that we should give to the poor, not that the poor should become wealthy.¹⁶ Even so, it seems that every giver of charity ought sincerely to aim at helping the poor person, that is, at benefiting him, even though inwardly he knows that the primary purpose is the very act of giving. Without that, we all become egocentric, and the act of giving is done only for our own sake — like that Lithuanian Jew who looks for an “exemplary poor person” in order to fulfill the commandment of gifts to the poor on Purim.

As we have seen in several earlier essays, a similar dilemma can be formulated in terms of hafza and gavra. It is customary to divide the Torah’s commandments into “commandments in the hafza” and “commandments in the gavra.” Commandments in the hafza are those whose essence is the rectification of the object, or of the world outside us; commandments in the gavra are defined as duties of action imposed on the person. This distinction is very close to the distinction between result-commandments and action-commandments discussed above, though not identical, and the dilemma can be presented in very much the same way.

If the Holy One wants a certain state in the world — in the object — for its own sake, then it should not matter whether the person performs it. Turnus Rufus asked why God does not do it Himself; but in our terms, it might just as well suffice if a gentile did it. For example, later authorities discuss — on the basis of earlier sources — whether the categories of labor prohibited on Shabbat are defined in terms of the gavra or the hafza. That is, is the concern that a certain act not occur in the world, or that the person not perform that act? This inquiry has several consequences. For example, would desecration of Shabbat by means of an agent — a gentile, who is not personally obligated, and with respect to whom agency may operate stringently — be permitted? If the law is one of gavra, then one cannot desecrate Shabbat through an agent, and therefore this would be permitted. By contrast, if the law is one of hafza, then in the end the prohibited act has occurred in the world, albeit through the agent, and the divine will has not been fulfilled. Perhaps one could not impose biblical liability on the sender, since biblically there is no agency for sin; but the act is nevertheless contrary to the divine will, and we would be obligated to prevent its occurrence, at least as a biblical concern.

It seems quite clear that one cannot understand this as literally a commandment in the hafza. After all, when a gentile, on his own initiative, performs an act that counts as desecration of Shabbat, we certainly are not commanded to stop him. If the problem were in the world itself, then although we might not be able to impose liability for the act, it would still be obvious that we ought to prevent it. More than that: if this were truly a problem in the hafza, God should have prohibited Shabbat desecration to gentiles as well. Yet in fact the halakha is the exact opposite: a gentile who keeps Shabbat is liable to death.

More generally, there is no logic to understanding commandments as literal “commandments in the object,” for the Holy One expects nothing of objects. Clearly, the Torah does not impose norms upon inanimate things or animals. Norms can be imposed only on human beings; see Shtei Agalot Ve-Kadur Pore’ah, note 1.¹⁷

In simple terms, it appears that these states are defined by the Torah as bad only in order that human beings should rectify them. They are not bad in themselves, but only insofar as they generate a duty of human action. Thus when a person refrains from an act of Shabbat desecration, his conscious aim is that such desecration not occur, but this is only the consciousness within which he acts. In truth, the goal is that he should act so as to refrain from desecrating Shabbat, not that Shabbat not be desecrated. The formal halakhic definition of the commandment may be disputed, and some hold that the target is the world, the hafza. But the essence of the commandment, and its divine purpose — what God wants to achieve through it — is, by all views, the action of the person.

Preparing the lamps and circumcision are two further examples of commandments whose primary focus is actually the preparation; see our essays on the portions Bereshit and Tetzaveh from 2007, where we discussed this at length.

All these are further examples of actions whose formal halakhic definition is that A is a means to B, while in reality B itself was created by God only in order to cause a person to do A.

Additional Examples: Safeguards and Means

In Atvun De-Oraita, the author discusses whether a safeguard can exist on the biblical level. For example, the prohibition of seclusion, or the commandment to remove leaven, are examples of Torah laws that seem to function as means toward ends that lie outside them. As mentioned above, it is usually assumed that there is no commandment that is merely a means — which is precisely why the author of Atvun De-Oraita found reason to investigate the issue — since commandments are only ends. As we saw, that also seems to follow from Maimonides’ formulation in this root, according to which “preliminaries” to something else are not counted as commandments.

Indeed, the accepted assumption in the halakhic world is that any norm designed to serve some other goal is rabbinic. Biblical laws serve nothing external; they are independent values. “A decree lest…,” safeguards, and the like are the language of rabbinic law. Even enactments that are not exactly safeguards, but whose point is to achieve some outside social goal, are always rabbinic. One example is the market ordinance, discussed in Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 114b-115a, whose aim is to enable orderly commerce in the marketplace. According to this ordinance, if a person bought an item from an unknown thief, the true owner cannot simply reclaim the item without compensating the buyer, because if that were allowed, commerce in the open market would be gravely harmed: people would no longer be able to trust sellers and buy goods from them.

From the very rationale, it is clear that this is a rabbinic rule. On the biblical level, the owner can always demand his property back, and the Sages instituted an enactment that serves certain goals. We should note that this is not an ordinance born of some change in the social or moral condition of the world; the Torah itself already addresses the reality of thieves. This is an enactment that is relevant to every society, at every time. If so, why did the Torah itself not take this goal into account and establish, on the biblical level, that the owner has no right to demand his property back in this way? One can understand why a rabbinic enactment such as the oath of inducement might be only rabbinic, because commentators have elaborated on the social change that produced it. The Torah does not address contingent social situations, and therefore biblical law did not impose such an oath. But with the market ordinance, if it is indeed justified, it is not clear why there is not already a biblical rule depriving the owner of that right.

The answer is that any principle whose purpose is to serve a goal outside itself is rabbinic. The Torah deals only with ends, not with safeguards or means. The market ordinance is a means, and therefore it cannot be a rule of biblical law.¹⁸

Reversing the Safeguard From Means to End

Yet we find that Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, in Musar Avikha, writes that safeguards have negativity in themselves, and the fact that they lead to sinful stumbling is only an indication of their negative nature, not the reason for it. In light of that, one might say more moderately that at least those safeguards that are counted as commandments are safeguards that in essence constitute an independently negative value, and the harmful end to which they lead is only an indication of that. Perhaps one can sometimes even say that the end itself was defined as negative primarily — or also — in order that we avoid violating the safeguards, along the lines of what we saw above with remembering the Exodus from Egypt.

Another example is the warning, “Keep far from falsehood.” Here we are commanded not merely not to lie, but to distance ourselves from falsehood. Is that distancing only so that we should not arrive at actual lying? If so, then, in principle, we ought to distance ourselves from every sin, major and minor alike. What is unique about this one? It would appear that here there is value in the very distancing from falsehood itself. The value is not only not to lie; the distancing from falsehood has independent worth. True, one who does so acts with the consciousness of dealing with a means — to avoid falsehood — but in reality the distancing itself has value.

A Parallel Distinction Among Types of Preparatory Act

In accordance with these definitions, we can distinguish between two kinds of preparatory act. There is a preparatory act intended to achieve a state, such as building a parapet in order to bring about that the house has a parapet. Here it stands to reason that the goal — that is, the commandment — is the result, and the person’s action that achieves that goal is merely the preparation. To be sure, in formal halakhic definition, building the parapet may be regarded as the commandment rather than the state of the house’s having one, since only the building is in the person’s hands; the result follows of itself.

By contrast, there is a preparatory act whose purpose is to enable a further action, and not to produce a state — such as building a sukkah or preparing the anointing oil — which enable the action that is itself the commandment, namely dwelling in the sukkah or burning the incense. In such cases it seems quite clear that the essential goal is dwelling in the sukkah. It is not plausible that the commandment was given in order that a person build a sukkah, since one can reach the goal even without building one personally. This is especially so because in these cases there is no constraint, and the Torah could have defined the building of the sukkah directly as the commandment, unlike the previous type, where the result could not be defined as the commandment because it is not directly in human control. The person can only perform the action. In such a case, the preparation clearly has only instrumental value and is not an end in itself, and therefore it will not constitute an independent commandment.

And what about wearing the priestly garments? At first glance, this is a commandment that can indeed be understood as an essential end, even if in halakhic terms it may itself serve only as a preparatory act, at least according to Bahag. It may be that the sacrificial service is meant, among other things, to bring about a situation in which honor must be shown to the One being served. The sacrificial service is required in order to create a situation of worship that demands “glory and beauty.” If so, there is considerable reason to say that the garments are the end and the service the means. In that case, it is more plausible that the service is not only a means to a state of glory and beauty, but has additional purposes as well. Yet at least along this line of analysis it may function specifically as a means, and that may be why both the wearing of the garments and the service itself are counted as independent commandments.¹⁹

Choice and Commandment as an Exchange of End and Cause²⁰

At the beginning of Etz Hayyim, the Ari opens with two general inquiries. The first begins as follows:

The first inquiry is what the sages of earlier and later generations investigated: to know the cause of the creation of the worlds, and for what cause it was.

They deliberated, concluded, and decisively declared that the reason for the matter was this: the Blessed One must be perfect in all His actions and powers, and in all His names of greatness, exaltation, and honor. If He did not bring His actions and powers into actuality and deed, He would, as it were, not be called complete,²¹ neither in His actions nor in His names and designations…

If the worlds and all that is within them had not been created, the true indication of His eternal being — past, present, and future — could not be seen, and He would not be called by the Name that denotes being, and likewise by the Name of lordship… But once the worlds are created, His actions and powers emerge into actuality, and He is called complete in every kind of action and power, and also complete in all names and designations, without any lack at all, Heaven forbid…

Rabbi Elyashiv, the author of Leshem Shevo Ve-Ahlamah, comments in Sefer HaBe’urim — a detailed commentary on Etz Hayyim — that the Ari opens with a question about the cause of the creation of the worlds, and answers it in terms of the purpose of their creation.

Now there is a serious theological problem with the question as simply formulated, because the term “cause” cannot describe an act of God, for two reasons:

1. There is nothing that can move or affect God independently of His own choice and will.
2. The question concerns the creation of the worlds, and before that there was obviously nothing besides God Himself; therefore there could not have been anything else that served as the cause of creation, apart from God Himself.

It is therefore unsurprising that the answer is given in terms of purpose rather than cause. But the difficulty remains: why did the Ari formulate the question in the language of causality rather than purpose?

The author of HaBe’urim writes as follows:

…He illumined them all with His light alone, for He is the cause of all and their one root and one cause; and He is also their end, for all of them return to their cause and source. As is known, such is the order of all creation: everything returns to its root and source, and that is its end…

This teaches us that His names, which are His revelations, are the cause of all; and consequently they themselves are also the final end of all. For the cause itself is the end, since the end of the act was first in thought…

In the acts of God, the end is the cause. An action is done in order to attain some goal, and the attainment of that goal is the cause of the action. In Enosh KaHatzir there is an extended discussion of this point with respect to human choice as well — which also has no cause, only a purpose, and the purpose is its cause — thereby resembling its Creator in this regard. When a person decides to call a friend in order to arrange a meeting, and I ask him what the cause of his action is, the answer will be: in order to arrange a meeting. That is, the purpose is here presented as the cause. Human choice, and likewise the action of the Creator, are forms of action that turn purpose into cause.

As is well known, the Sages say: “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven.” In its simple meaning, this says that everything is entrusted to the causal-physical processes of creation, except decisions concerning fear of Heaven — that is, the commandments. If so, commandments are about the attainment of purposes, and they are done for the sake of those purposes, not because of prior causes.

The Dispute Between Maimonides and the Author of Avodat HaKodesh

The author of Leshem, in Sefer HaKelalim — principle 15, branch 11, and also in the introduction to the work, letter 2 — discusses a fundamental dispute between Maimonides and Rabbi Meir ibn Gabbai, author of Avodat HaKodesh. Maimonides, in Guide of the Perplexed 3:13, holds that every created being is an end in itself, and that no being is merely a means for another. Rabbi Meir ibn Gabbai, by contrast, writes in the opening chapters of the section called “Part of the End” that all created beings were made solely for the sake of the human being.

The author of Leshem explains there that they do not necessarily disagree. True, there are creatures whose end is to serve other creatures — namely, the human being — but precisely that is their end. One can look at the matter in reverse and say that the human being was created in order to create the end for them. In that sense, it is specifically he who serves them.²² The whole of creation is one comprehensive entity, and all its parts are woven together and serve one another.

Here again we have an example of reversing the direction of end and cause. At first glance, the human being is the end of the other creatures, but now it appears that they are his end — or that he is also their cause. When they perform their function, they do so with a “consciousness of service,” but that is only their consciousness. In truth, it is specifically they who are being served by him. See there for a fuller development of this mode of reflection regarding the human body, the soul, human society, and indeed the entire world.

F. Two Logical Remarks

Introduction

In this chapter we shall briefly address two logical-philosophical aspects of points that arose in the course of the discussion. The first concerns the relation between a logical condition and an essential connection; the second concerns non-dichotomous logic.

1. Logic and Essence²³

We saw that the author of Kinat Soferim infers from the fact that a certain preparatory act is necessary that it constitutes an inseparable part of the commandment itself. There is here a move from physical necessity — there is no way to perform the commandment without this preparatory act — to an essential-normative connection — the preparatory act is part of the commandment.

We saw that a similar consideration may be found in the Makkot discussion. There the Gemara infers from the fact that we are always required to perform a certain act that it is probably a commandment — that is, something imposed upon us as an obligation. Here too there is a move from the factual-physical plane to the normative plane.

But these are problematic moves from a logical standpoint. Why should a physical connection necessarily indicate a normative one? In the context of the Makkot discussion, we in fact suggested an alternative explanation, according to which the factual connection does not point to an essential connection. The exemption from exile does not stem from the fact that the one chopping wood for a sukkah is engaged in a commandment, but from the fact that he is engaged in something from which he has no practical way of escaping. That is indeed a determination belonging to the factual plane, not the normative one. But the author of Kinat Soferim wants to derive such a general conclusion also with respect to the normative plane, and that is indeed not a valid argument.

Still, although the connection is not logically necessary, one can raise such a claim as a matter of reasoning. In other words, it is not a proof, but a plausible argument, and as such it is entirely legitimate. In fact, there is a strong resemblance here to Rabbi Kook’s claim, mentioned above, about safeguards: that the fact they lead to sin indicates that they themselves possess some negative quality. Again, the argument is not logically valid, but one can still advance it as a reasonable intuition.

In the appendix to Shtei Agalot Ve-Kadur Pore’ah, this problem is connected to Humean claims about causality, and also to talmudic discussions that distinguish between these two kinds of relation, such as the case of one whose negligence began the process and whose unavoidable accident completed it. For more detail, see there.

2. Intermediate States: Non-Dichotomous Logic

Our conclusion regarding Maimonides’ view was that a preparatory act — at least one written explicitly in the Torah — has an intermediate status between a commandment and an optional act, that is, an action stemming from technical necessity. We saw that the two interpretations of the principle in this root express those two conceptions, and that Maimonides, who presents both, apparently adopts an intermediate position that holds to both. In his view, the preparatory act is a qualitative half-commandment.

We saw similar phenomena in our essay on the Second Root, and also the First. There too, Maimonides creates multiple intermediate shades between different levels of authority of biblical commandments and rabbinic commandments.

What is common to all these cases is the logic of everyday concepts. As we explained there, everyday concepts cannot be handled by the tools of dichotomous logic. The sharpest expression of this is the sorites paradox. That paradox states the following:

1. A single pebble is not a heap.
2. Adding one pebble to a given pile does not change its status from non-heap to heap.
3. One million pebbles are a heap.

These three assumptions are jointly inconsistent; one cannot hold all of them simultaneously. We saw there that the reasonable solution to this paradox is to abandon the conceptual basis of assumption 2. Adding one pebble does change the status of the collection, but it does not transform it from a non-heap into a heap. Rather, it changes it from a non-heap into something slightly more heap-like. As we explained, every collection is measured on a continuous scale of degrees of heapness, not in a dichotomous way — heap or not heap. On that continuous axis, every added pebble changes the status slightly in the direction of heapness. Once enough pebbles have accumulated, we treat the resulting collection as a heap. We saw that this is true of every everyday concept, as distinct from a mathematical concept.

The same is true of the concept of commandment. We have seen here that a preparatory act lies between commandment and optionality. It is an intermediate shade on the axis of halakhic force, like the shades we saw in the essay on the Second Root. Maimonides thus continues here his general path of relinquishing dichotomies of logical evaluation, at least with respect to everyday concepts.

Appendix: What Are the Parashiyyot?

Introduction

At the beginning of this essay we noted that, at the end of his discussion, Maimonides objects to Bahag on the grounds that in his parashiyyot he also counted preparatory acts as commandments separate from the commandment itself.

Anyone who studies Maimonides’ words carefully will see that his claim does not proceed from the counting of one particular section or another, but from the very basic structure of the enumeration of the parashiyyot. It appears that their whole function is precisely the inclusion of preliminaries as commandments separate from the commandment itself. Nahmanides argues against him from exactly the same direction: the parashiyyot as a whole specifically point to Bahag’s opposite conception, since their entire point is to gather several commandments into one framework, not to add duplicated commandments. It seems clear that Maimonides had before him a different version of Bahag, and it is therefore against that version that he argues.

Nahmanides, in his glosses — and Rabbi Perla as well, in volume 3, section 65 — argues against Maimonides that even Bahag did not count the making of the incense or the anointing oil separately, but only as part of the commandment of burning the incense and anointing with the oil. As stated, it seems that Maimonides had a different textual version of Bahag, and, as is well known, there are several substantially different recensions of this work. In the version of Bahag that Maimonides had before him, the making of the incense and the anointing oil were apparently counted separately from the burning and the anointing, and that is what he attacks.

In any case, in this appendix we shall try to examine what exactly the difficulty is concerning the parashiyyot, and we shall use Maimonides’ words in the Seventh Root to help decipher the concept in general.

What Are the Parashiyyot?

The familiar division of the commandments into prohibitions and positive commandments begins with Maimonides and those who followed him. Earlier enumerators of the commandments — most of whom walked in the footsteps of Bahag — included two further divisions within the count: punishments and sixty-five parashiyyot. Unlike the division into prohibitions and positive commandments, which is rooted in the Sages and in the Talmud, this division has no clear root in rabbinic literature. Its source is an ancient geonic tradition according to which, within the count of the commandments, there are sixty-five commandments called parashiyyot.

In our introductory essay on the roots, we noted that Maimonides’ count became so dominant among enumerators of the commandments and among students that the very concept of parashiyyot now appears to us almost unintelligible. No one after Maimonides counted parashiyyot, and therefore the meaning of the term itself has been lost to us.²⁴ Some interpreted them as commandments incumbent upon the community, while others interpreted them differently.

For that reason, the meaning of those parashiyyot is not entirely clear today. Even their status relative to prohibitions and positive commandments — for example, whether they contain prohibitions or whether all of them are to be regarded as positive commandments — is not entirely clear. It appears that different enumerators used the category of parashiyyot in different senses, and likewise that different commentators on Bahag understood the term in different ways. A broad discussion of the matter is found in Rabbi Perla’s introduction to volume 1 and in his introduction to the parashiyyot in volume 3. Here we shall briefly note the positions of Maimonides and Nahmanides on the matter.

We assume that Maimonides himself was certainly aware of the meaning of the term parashiyyot, which remained widespread until his time. Therefore, even though he attacks it, his discussion can help us decode its meaning.

Different Interpretations of the Term Parashiyyot

The heading of the list of parashiyyot in the introduction to Bahag’s work reads:

These are the parashiyyot: statutes and ordinances entrusted to the public.

The common interpretation is that these are commandments incumbent on the community, as distinct from commandments incumbent on individuals. For example, in Hovot HaLevavot, Gate Ten, chapter 7, we read:

This is as I shall explain to you: when the commandments of the Creator are counted, their total reaches 613. Of these, 365 are prohibitions, and these are the warnings; and among them are sixty-five commandments in which the community is obligated, whereas the individual is not; and among them are the positive commandments.

However, this interpretation does not fit all the commandments included in this category by the earlier enumerators. Therefore some explained that parashiyyot means commandments whose explanation — deriving the term from the same root as “to explain” — was entrusted to the public, that is, to the Sages.

Thus, for example, Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer, in his commentary to the introduction of Bahag, at the beginning of the count of the parashiyyot, writes:

In the long exposition appearing in the Hildesheimer recension before the enumeration, it seems that “parashiyyot” means “interpretations,” and “entrusted to the public” means entrusted to the Sages — that is, commandments whose basis is in the written Torah but whose interpretation is in rabbinic tradition. Bahag writes there as follows:

The Sages taught sixty-five parashiyyot, the very body of the Torah, and each and every parashah was explained by the sages of Israel.

This also seems to follow from what we find in the Sefer HaMitzvot of Rabbi Hefetz ben Yatzliah, who writes:

Among them are those matters whose application depends upon the judgment of the judges and others, placed in a separate section, and these are sixty-five commandments.

Maimonides, Nahmanides, and Their Camp

But whether one interprets the matter like the author of Hovot HaLevavot or like Rabbi Hefetz and those of his camp, it is still not clear why defining a category of parashiyyot should stand in opposition to the root that forbids including preparatory acts in the count. From Maimonides’ words here — and also in the Seventh Root — and from Nahmanides’ glosses at the end of the Third Root, it seems that they understood the concept of parashiyyot differently.

From Maimonides’ objection here, it is quite clear that he sees the parashiyyot as clusters of commandments that include within themselves the preparatory acts together with the commandment itself. That is why he wonders why Bahag counts the preparatory acts separately from the commandments themselves.

This is likewise what we find in Maimonides’ discussion of the Seventh Root, where he deals with the rule that one should not count every fine detail of a commandment separately. There he writes against Bahag:

If it were proper to count the details of a commandment because they are mentioned in the Torah, then we would be compelled not to count the law of one who kills a person unintentionally and goes into exile as one commandment. For Scripture has already specified the details of that commandment, and we would then count as follows: the verse “If he struck him with an iron instrument…” (Numbers 35) would be one commandment; the second would be “If with a stone in the hand by which a man may die he struck him”; the third would be “Or with a wooden instrument by which a man may die he struck him”; the fourth would be “The avenger of blood shall put the murderer to death”; the fifth would be “If he thrust him in hatred”; the sixth would be “Or cast something at him by lying in wait”; the seventh would be “Or in enmity struck him with his hand”; the eighth would be “But if he thrust him suddenly without enmity”; the ninth would be “Or cast upon him any object without lying in wait”; the tenth would be “Or with any stone by which a man may die, without seeing”; the eleventh would be “And he fell upon him so that he died, though he was not his enemy”; the twelfth would be “The congregation shall save the manslayer”; the thirteenth would be “The congregation shall restore him to his city of refuge”; the fourteenth would be “He shall dwell there until the death of the High Priest”; the fifteenth would be “If the manslayer shall at any time go outside…” ; and the sixteenth would be “After the death of the High Priest the manslayer shall return.”

And if we did this with every commandment, the number of commandments would rise to more than two thousand. The absurdity of this is obvious, because all of this is merely the detailed formulation of the matter. The commandment that is counted is the law of one who kills unintentionally — that is, the Torah that instructs us how to adjudicate that case through all these written details. And God called them “ordinances” and not “commandments,” as it says: “And the congregation shall judge between the striker and the avenger of blood according to these ordinances.”

Up to this point, Maimonides is explaining that one should not count each detail of a commandment separately. After that, he writes that Bahag sensed some part of this point, and here we arrive at the question of the parashiyyot:

The author of Halakhot Gedolot did awaken to some of these matters, and he circled around them, counting sections as sections, saying in his enumeration: the section of inheritances, the section of vows and oaths, the section of the false accuser, and many other sections likewise. But this matter was not fully clarified to him, and he did not arrive at its full meaning. Therefore he counted within those sections matters that he had already counted beforehand, without realizing it.

Here too, then, the parashiyyot appear to be clusters of commandments, assembling within themselves whole systems of complex laws. Yet, according to Maimonides, after Bahag grouped those commandments into such clusters, he did not refrain from counting the individual details separately as well, and that is why Maimonides attacks him.

The same picture emerges from Nahmanides’ comments at the end of his glosses to the Third Root, where he refers in passing to the parashiyyot of Bahag, since among them we find commandments that do not apply for future generations — the subject of that root. He writes:

But the levy of the tribute, the dedication of the altar, and the blessings and curses on Mount Gerizim and Mount Eival — it is not explained why he wrote them in the count of the parashiyyot that complete his tally. It appears that his intent was not to count one-time commandments, such as those given in Egypt and at Mount Sinai and the like, whose significance was only for their moment; rather, commandments whose content remains with us for generations he would count, even if they are performed only once. Therefore he counted the section of the great stones, because we were commanded to write the Torah on them very clearly, in seventy languages, so that they should serve as a remembrance for generations…

And at the end of his comments there he writes:

In any event, the author of Halakhot Gedolot’s reckoning of the parashiyyot has not been clarified, for he counted generalities in place of particulars, and prohibitions in place of positive commandments, and we do not wish to lengthen the discussion here.

From his language it appears that the parashiyyot are general laws containing many details. Rabbi Hildesheimer writes there in a note:

From Nahmanides’ words it appears that the entire scriptural section, as written in the Torah, is to be counted as one commandment, despite the fact that it includes distinct positive commandments and prohibitions.

He infers this from the label Nahmanides attaches to the laws he surveys in that discussion. Each one is called a parashah, and each is based on a section of the Torah. That is, it is a Torah section containing several positive commandments and prohibitions, and Bahag includes it in his count as a parashah. But unlike Maimonides, Nahmanides does not see this as duplication, because in his view the individual commandments were not counted in parallel to the parashiyyot — and, as already noted, there may also have been different textual versions of Bahag before them.

The Nature of the Parashiyyot: Positive Commandments or Prohibitions?

Nahmanides mentions that Bahag counted prohibitions in place of positive commandments within the parashiyyot, and commentators wrestled greatly with this. It is not clear what the relation is between the count of the parashiyyot, which include both prohibitions and positive commandments — whether each one individually, or the category as a whole — and the separate counts of 365 prohibitions and 248 positive commandments.

On this point, the Radbaz writes in Responsa, part 6, no. 2111, where he was asked how to arrange the positive commandments and prohibitions in Bahag:

Response: The matter is clear that the parashiyyot he counted are included among the positive commandments. The reason is that there is a commandment to carry out such-and-such section in such-and-such a manner. Even though that section includes prohibitions and positive commandments, the whole section should properly be counted among the positive commandments and not among the prohibitions, and the total then works out correctly. For one who examines the positive commandments he counted and counts them carefully will find 183, and with the sixty-five parashiyyot the total comes to 248… Know that all the early authorities criticized the count given by the author of Halakhot Gedolot. I have only come to reconcile his words with themselves and to make his tally fit according to what he himself wrote.

He explains that all the parashiyyot, even if they include prohibitions and positive commandments, are regarded as positive commandments, and are included in the tally of 248 positive commandments. The reason is that there is a commandment to carry out the section as written.

A Source for the Concept of Parashiyyot

Rabbi Perla addresses the matter of parashiyyot in two places: in his introduction to volume 1, p. 10, and at much greater length in his introduction to the enumeration of parashiyyot in the middle volume 3. He explains that Saadia Gaon understood the parashiyyot to be commandments incumbent on the community, but Bahag and others did not understand the term that way. For example, Rabbi Yehudah al-Barzeloni includes under the parashiyyot the commandment of self-affliction on Yom Kippur, which is obviously not a commandment incumbent on the community as such. Therefore Rabbi Perla argues that for Bahag and Rabbi Yehudah al-Barzeloni the term parashiyyot means commandments whose basis is in the written Torah but whose interpretation comes from rabbinic tradition. In this way he resolves some of Maimonides’ and Nahmanides’ objections, since they did not correctly understand what Bahag meant by the term parashiyyot.

He brings a source for this from the Sifrei on Deuteronomy, piska 2, s.v. “another explanation,” with a parallel in Sifrei Zuta as cited in the Yalkut, on Parashat Naso:

“Moses spoke to all Israel” — did Moses prophesy only these words? From where do we know all the utterances in the Torah, the light and the severe, the verbal analogies, the generalities and particulars, the bodies and the details? Scripture says: “Moses spoke according to all that the Lord had commanded him to them.”

Here we see all the categories of commandments: the positive commandments — “the light”; the prohibitions that carry punishment — “the severe”; the hermeneutical derivations — “verbal analogies”; the prohibitions that do not carry punishment — “generalities and particulars”; and the parashiyyot — “bodies and details.”

Interestingly, according to Maimonides and Nahmanides, it appears that the parashiyyot are specifically the “generalities and particulars.”

Footnotes