Deontic Logic and the Relationship Between Prohibitions and Positive Commandments – Lecture 2

Table of Contents

• General Overview
• From Deontic Logic to the Halakhic Chapter
• The Order of the Roots in Maimonides and the Biographical Background
• The Ninth Root: Counting Contents, Not Verses
• The Four Types of Commandments as an Introduction to Understanding “Content”
• Meat and Milk, Derashot, and the Second Root
• “Six Days You Shall Labor” and the Dispute Over Counting a Commandment to Work
• The Second Part of the Ninth Root: A General Prohibition
• Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla’s Difficulty and the Text’s Answer: The Need for Both Command and Content
• The Sixth Root as a Qualification on the Ninth Root: Duplication of Positive and Negative Commandments
• Three Aspects of Commandments That Contain Both a Positive and a Negative Element
• Proofs from the Sages, Nachmanides’ Critique, and the Status of the Count of the Commandments
• The Book of Commandments as the Methodological Skeleton of the Mishneh Torah and Maimonides’ Project
• The Tradition of 613 and Nachmanides’ Reservation
• Examples of “Uprooted” Verses and the Question of Covering Jewish law
• Commandments Directed at Offenders and Problems in Deontic Logic
• The Dispute Between Saadia Gaon and Maimonides on the Duplication of Positive and Negative Commandments, and Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla’s Evaluation
• The Question of the Difference Between Positive and Negative Commandments and the Failure of the Performance-Based Criterion
• Aharon Shemesh’s Work and the Shift from a Performance-Based Criterion to a Linguistic One
• Rejecting the Practical-Difference Explanation and Sharpening the Problem of Logical Equivalence
• Breaking Down the Double-Negation Claim and Hinting at a Content-Based Distinction

Summary

General Overview

The text develops a transition from the philosophical discussion of facts and norms and the naturalistic fallacy to the “halakhic chapter,” which is meant to serve as the basis for Maimonides’ sixth root. Its claim is that the simple relations of obligation-forbidden-permitted in deontic logic do not function that way in Jewish law, and that adopting the halakhic perspective may solve problems in deontic logic. The author presents the ninth root as a central principle in counting the commandments, and the sixth root as a qualification on it; raises internal difficulties in Maimonides’ formulations and in the order of the roots; and proposes an understanding that requires both “content” and “command” in order to count a commandment. Later, he ties the question of duplication between a positive and a negative commandment to a deeper question about the essential difference between them, rejects a simple “performance-based” explanation, and hints at a content-based distinction between “He wants you to rest” and “He does not want you to do labor,” including a practical implication in a case of coercion.

From Deontic Logic to the Halakhic Chapter

The text begins from the discussion of facts versus norms, the naturalistic fallacy, and the deontic operators obligation, forbidden, and permitted, and argues that the relations that seem simple in deontic logic do not work that way in Jewish law. It sets itself the goal of showing that adopting a halakhic perspective can solve existing problems in deontic logic, and begins a “halakhic chapter” as preparation for Maimonides’ sixth root.

The Order of the Roots in Maimonides and the Biographical Background

The text expresses puzzlement about the order of the roots in Maimonides and says it would have expected the sixth root to come after the ninth, because the sixth is a qualification on the ninth. It suggests that the order may be connected to the circumstances of writing, to Maimonides’ young age, and to writing “on the road,” and presents the Book of Commandments as an analytical study rather than a halakhic book.

The Ninth Root: Counting Contents, Not Verses

In the ninth root, Maimonides states that one should not count “the prohibitions and the positive commandments,” but rather “the things one is warned against and the things one is commanded in,” and the text interprets this as a distinction between counting the commanding and warning verses and counting the content of the command. The text explains that if a command is repeated many times with the same content, like the many verses about keeping the Sabbath, we count one commandment, because we count the content and not the repeated formulations of the command.

The Four Types of Commandments as an Introduction to Understanding “Content”

Maimonides divides the Torah’s commands and warnings into four areas: beliefs, actions, character traits, and speech, and the text clarifies that “beliefs” here means outlooks and not “laws of character” in the sense of traits. Maimonides gives examples of positive and negative commandments in each area, such as God’s unity, love, fear, the prohibition of believing in the lordship of another, practical commandments, compassion and mercy and charity and kindness and “love your neighbor as yourself,” as well as speech involving praise and prayer. The text explains that this introduction is meant to emphasize that counting the commandments focuses on contents, and therefore categorization of contents is required, whereas if one were only counting verses, the division of content would become irrelevant.

Meat and Milk, Derashot, and the Second Root

The text raises the example of “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk” and the interpretation deriving eating, benefit, and cooking from it, and asks how this fits with counting by content. It offers an answer in the name of Maimonides that things learned from derashot are not counted, in accordance with the second root, and refers to Maimonides’ long discussion in prohibition 113 about counting the commandments of meat and milk and the distinction between the plain meaning and interpretation.

“Six Days You Shall Labor” and the Dispute Over Counting a Commandment to Work

The text notes a difficulty in the ninth root in light of a verse like “Six days you shall labor,” which seemingly ought to be counted as a commandment if the rule is to count the content of the command. The text argues that there are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who regard this as a commandment, and mentions the book Sha’arei Talmud Torah by Professor Yehuda Levy as a collection of sources presenting a commandment to do labor, to study external wisdoms, and to work for a livelihood, describing it as a kind of “Torah with worldly engagement” book and as a book based entirely on quotations, which makes it hard to argue with, and also mentions the approbations it received from the Gerrer Rebbe and Rabbi Shach.

The Second Part of the Ninth Root: A General Prohibition

Maimonides adds a condition according to which a prohibition is counted only when there is a prohibition stated “specifically,” whereas a prohibition that includes many matters is counted as only one prohibition, and it is “a general prohibition for which one is not lashed, as we have explained.” Maimonides brings the example of “Do not eat over the blood,” which is interpreted in tractate Sanhedrin to refer to a number of matters, and the text cites the interpretations: eating from an animal before its soul has departed, eating sacrificial meat before the blood has been dashed, eating while “the blood is still in the bowl,” refraining from the mourner’s meal for those executed by the religious court, the Sanhedrin’s refraining from eating after they have put someone to death, and a warning to the stubborn and rebellious son. The text also mentions the interpretation, “From where do we know that a person should not taste anything before he prays?… ‘Do not eat until you have prayed for your blood,'” and comments that this seems like a strange Torah-level prohibition, while trying to reconcile it with Maimonides’ view that prayer at the Torah level is general and not necessarily three prayers a day.

Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla’s Difficulty and the Text’s Answer: The Need for Both Command and Content

Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla presents an internal contradiction in the ninth root between its beginning, where one counts by content and not by the multiplicity of commands, and its end, where one prohibition containing many contents is counted as one, which seems to follow the command and not the content. The text rejects the “this requires further study” and proposes that the method requires a combination: in order to count a commandment, you need both a unique verse and a unique content, and if one of them is missing, you do not count an independent commandment. The text connects this to an article by Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman citing the Ramchal about two aspects in every commandment: the aspect of obeying the command and the aspect of the value and content of the thing one was commanded about.

The Sixth Root as a Qualification on the Ninth Root: Duplication of Positive and Negative Commandments

In the sixth root, Maimonides states that a commandment that contains both a positive and a negative element is counted with the positive as part of the positive commandments and the prohibition as part of the negative commandments, and the text explains that this is a qualification on the ninth root, because here, even though the content overlaps, this is not seen as duplication to be counted only once. The text illustrates this with the Sabbath: the positive commandment to rest and the prohibition “do not do any labor,” and emphasizes that Maimonides’ opening sentence includes two innovations: we count both sides despite the overlap in content, and we classify each side according to its language as a positive commandment or a prohibition, and not according to the content of the act.

Three Aspects of Commandments That Contain Both a Positive and a Negative Element

Maimonides divides the cases into three: a situation in which an act is forbidden by a prohibition and the rest is a positive commandment, like the Sabbath and Jewish holidays and the Sabbatical year, and likewise the fast of Yom Kippur, where fasting is a positive commandment and eating is a prohibition; a situation of “a prohibition preceded by a positive commandment,” like the rapist and the slanderer, with “and she shall be his wife” followed by “he may not send her away all his days”; and a situation where “the prohibition comes first and is afterward converted into a positive commandment,” like “do not take the mother with the young” and afterward “you shall surely send away the mother,” and likewise examples of returning stolen property and burning notar. The text notes that in these cases Maimonides concludes that each type should count the positive commandment as a positive commandment and the prohibition as a prohibition.

Proofs from the Sages, Nachmanides’ Critique, and the Status of the Count of the Commandments

Maimonides argues that “the Sages explicitly said” of each of these that they are positive commandments and prohibitions, and the text explains that this is proof both for there being two commandments and for their classification. The text notes that Nachmanides comments that the proof is problematic with regard to the count of the commandments, because the Sages were not engaged in counting the commandments but in determining prohibitions and obligations, and it brings the example of neshekh and tarbit: the Talmud says, “to violate two prohibitions through it,” but Maimonides counts one prohibition in the tally, while in the laws of lender and borrower he writes that one violates both. The text also cites, in the name of the book Ma’alot HaTorah about the Vilna Gaon, that he has no comments on the counting of the commandments because “there is no practical difference at all,” and explains that the count of the commandments is affected by formal classification rules and not necessarily by halakhic status.

The Book of Commandments as the Methodological Skeleton of the Mishneh Torah and Maimonides’ Project

The text presents the Book of Commandments as the skeleton of the Mishneh Torah, because at the beginning of each book Maimonides lists the commandments that will be detailed in it, and explains that the count of the commandments enables him to make sure he covered all areas through a division into fourteen books and subtopics. The text describes a top-down process of building headings on the basis of the commandments and fitting the whole of the Talmud, the Geonim, the halakhic midrashim, and the Jerusalem Talmud into the structure, and argues that the rules in the count of the commandments are classification rules that prevent topics from “slipping through the cracks.” The text expands in praise of the scope of Maimonides’ work as a physician, philosopher, and leader while wandering from place to place, and presents the Mishneh Torah as a unique halakhic code, including an example from a responsum of Maimonides about kiddushei kesef being of rabbinic origin versus betrothal by document through the analogy of “becoming” and “leaving,” and his distinction by means of the Talmud’s initial assumption.

The Tradition of 613 and Nachmanides’ Reservation

The text cites Nachmanides’ question at the beginning of his glosses to the first root about the very obligation of the number 613, and presents the exposition “Torah Moses commanded us” as an aggadic teaching of Rabbi Simlai that seems like an asmachta. The text notes that Nachmanides raises the possibility that the number is not binding, but yields to the tradition because everyone accepted it and there is no dissent in the Talmud, and presents the framework of 613 as a necessary constraint that prevents free counting, which could have produced “seven hundred” or “two thousand” commandments.

Examples of “Uprooted” Verses and the Question of Covering Jewish law

The text argues that there is no guarantee that the Sages related to every positive commandment and prohibition according to its simple meaning, and brings “the resting of his son” as an example of an explicit verse that does not receive significant halakhic expression, aside from Rashba and the Magen Avraham. It also brings the example of actively feeding a minor as a distinction between the absence of a law of “the resting of his son” and an active prohibition against feeding or having a minor light a fire for you.

Commandments Directed at Offenders and Problems in Deontic Logic

The text presents “and he shall return the stolen item that he stole” as an example of a commandment imposed on someone who has already committed an offense, and describes it as a commandment “addressed to offenders” and as a commandment that presupposes wrongdoing. The text connects this to problems of formalization in deontic logic and to CTD, and adds to it the example of rape: “if you raped, you must marry,” and then “it is forbidden to divorce,” as a more complex structure of obligations after an offense.

The Dispute Between Saadia Gaon and Maimonides on the Duplication of Positive and Negative Commandments, and Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla’s Evaluation

The text says that Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla understands Saadia Gaon as disagreeing with the sixth root and counting one commandment instead of two where a positive and a negative commandment overlap, choosing to count “whichever one the matter of the commandment is explained through,” which is interpreted as following the content that requires refraining, and therefore counting it as a prohibition. The text describes Saadia Gaon’s Book of Commandments as a short liturgical poem from which Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla extracts a complete system in a broad commentary, and warns that his conclusions depend on Perla’s reconstruction and not on Saadia Gaon’s actual wording itself.

The Question of the Difference Between Positive and Negative Commandments and the Failure of the Performance-Based Criterion

The text presents the simple definition of a positive commandment as an obligation to act and of a prohibition as an obligation to refrain, but rejects it because there are positive commandments that command refraining and prohibitions that command action. It brings examples of prohibitions that require action, such as “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” and the laws of a hired laborer, and shows that the very existence of the duplication of positive and negative commandments in the Sabbath already requires that the distinction is not performance-based.

Aharon Shemesh’s Work and the Shift from a Performance-Based Criterion to a Linguistic One

The text cites an article by Aharon Shemesh in Tarbiz, according to which in the early generations of the Talmud the distinction between a positive and a negative commandment is understood in performance terms, whereas in the later generations it shifts to a linguistic criterion dependent on the wording of the verse. The text presents this as part of a broader process in which the Talmud is more abstract than the Mishnah, and gives examples such as abstracting categories of damages into “ox-goring” where “its intent is to damage and it is unusual,” and “tooth” where “its damage gives it benefit,” and also analogies to replacing “demons” with “laws of nature” and to understanding a “male memorial token” as a “real remnant” and not only as a mental memory.

Rejecting the Practical-Difference Explanation and Sharpening the Problem of Logical Equivalence

The text rejects the suggestion that the difference between a positive and a negative commandment is only meant to produce practical differences such as lashes, extracting payment, and a positive commandment overriding a prohibition, and argues that practical differences are symptoms, not an explanation. The text sharpens the problem through formulations of “double negation,” such as “I do not want you to be without tefillin” versus “I want you to be with tefillin,” and argues that if these are logically equivalent, there is no justification for two different commandments.

Breaking Down the Double-Negation Claim and Hinting at a Content-Based Distinction

The text states that the question is built on a mistaken assumption, because “I don’t want it to be so” is not identical to “I want it not to be so,” and it illustrates this with formulations like “I don’t want you to go to Australia” as opposed to “I want you not to go to Australia.” The text hints that in the Sabbath, the positive commandment “to rest” expresses a desire for a state of rest, while the prohibition “do not do labor” expresses opposition to the act of labor itself, and suggests a practical implication in a case of coercion: under coercion there is no violation of the prohibition, but there is still no fulfillment of the positive commandment, because in practice “I did not rest.”

Earlier I spoke about facts versus norms and about the naturalistic fallacy, and in the eighth root we saw that there are prohibitions and positive commandments that gather into a shared category called a decree, a commandment; we did a bit of linguistic discussion there. And at the end I finished with the basic deontic operators: obligation, prohibition, and permission, and a bit about the relations between them. And I said that later on I’d try to show that the relations that are seen as simple relations in the world of deontic logic don’t work that way in Jewish law. And then, if you adopt the halakhic perspective, that can solve problems that exist in deontic logic. So now I’m starting the halakhic chapter, and this is really the basis in Maimonides’ sixth root, but as background I want first to touch a bit on the ninth root, because really the sixth root is a qualification of the ninth. I don’t know exactly why Maimonides arranged the roots in the order he did, I don’t know, and I don’t see a logical order among them. I would have built them differently, because there are connections between them. And here even the order itself—meaning, the sixth appears before the ninth—you’d put it much later, but after it, meaning the sixth should come after the ninth. I don’t know, it’s not clear to me why. By the way, it doesn’t fit Maimonides. He’s extremely systematic, extremely orderly, everything has reasons. All these roots are basically there to explain to us how he built his enumeration of the commandments. Everything comes with reflection, and he explains it and defines the rules. Here specifically it somehow looks as though he didn’t come up with something like that, just kind of left it. I don’t know. Maybe you haven’t learned enough Torah wisdom? Huh? Yes, maybe. Maybe he did it while traveling? Because he kept moving from place to place. Where he wrote it I don’t know. He wrote it at a pretty young age, and I understand that he was kind of moving along the way. Maybe. In any case, that’s a lesson too. When a person is on the road, wandering from the expulsion from Spain—not the expulsion from Spain, that was later, but never mind—they were wandering around there, and in the middle of all that he writes compositions like these that are really theoretical, an analytical study like that; it’s not even a Jewish law book, it’s an analytical study. If he wrote this on the road, that really gives you real moral instruction. Anyway, in the ninth root—maybe without that he wouldn’t have held up. There are people for whom that doesn’t support them, it’s the opposite; it’s exactly what gives him strength for all the other nonsense he does.

The ninth root is: that it is not proper to count the prohibitions and positive commandments, but rather the things against which one is warned and the things one is commanded in. It is not proper to count prohibitions and positive commandments—the wording is a little strange. Admittedly this is a translation from Arabic, by the way, so I don’t know exactly what in it is Maimonides and what is the translator—but it is not proper to count prohibitions and positive commandments, except what? The things one is warned against and the things one is commanded in. “Warned” and “commanded”—we were already there in the eighth root, the previous root. What is the relation between them? What does he mean?

So he says: Know that all the Torah’s commands and warnings are only in four things: opinions, actions, character traits, and speech. “Opinions” in this context is not like the Laws of Character Traits. Maimonides’ Laws of Character Traits are laws of traits, meaning not beliefs or outlooks. But this already appears in the sages in that form too: people have many dispositions, and all those things—there “opinions” means character traits, not worldviews. But even in the sages it appears in both senses, and here too. Here he uses “opinions” in the sense of outlooks; “actions” are the practical commandments; “traits” are traits of the soul; and speech. These are the four types of commandments; both commands and warnings belong to these four categories.

And then: that He commanded us to believe one opinion among opinions, such as what He commanded us regarding unity, and the love of God, blessed be He, and fear of Him; or that He warned us against believing a certain opinion, such as what He warned us against, namely believing lordship belongs to another. Here he’s talking about opinions. In matters of opinion there are both positive commandments and prohibitions. Then he moves on: likewise He commanded us regarding one action among actions; so he’ll bring an example of commandments and an example of warnings; and after that he moves to character traits: that we should conduct ourselves with one of the traits, such as what He commanded regarding compassion and mercy and charity and kindness and “love your fellow as yourself,” and so on; hatred and bearing a grudge. Then one kind of utterance: to praise Him and to pray, and so on, positive commandments and prohibitions.

What is this whole strange introduction? Why doesn’t it appear at the beginning of the Book of Commandments, where he could explain that there are four kinds of commandments, and that each type divides into positive commandments and prohibitions? What’s it doing here all of a sudden in the ninth root? It just lands here. So here you have to understand: when he says that it’s not proper to count the prohibitions and positive commandments—that’s how it opens—but rather the things one is warned against and commanded in, what is he trying to say? That if there are several verses repeating the same command, then in the count of the commandments it will appear as one commandment. Right? For example, there are—here, he writes later on—many times to remember and keep the Sabbath, so in the count of the commandments one such commandment will appear. Why? Because we are not counting the commands and warnings, meaning the verses that command and warn; rather we are counting the things one is warned against and commanded in, the content of the command. We are not counting the commands themselves, but the content of the command. So if there are twelve times with the same content, we count it once, because we count the content and not the commands. That’s what he said.

And that’s why he goes into this whole introduction with these four categories, because he wants to show that if we were counting the commands and not the contents, then this whole division would be irrelevant. A command is a command—what difference does it make whether the content of the command concerns speech, traits, actions? A command is a verse, a verse telling me to do something or think something, doesn’t matter. All these distinctions come to show what types of contents there are, because we count only contents and do not count commands.

Wait, if that’s so, then let’s say “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk”—so how many commandments is that? One is the prohibition of eating, one is the prohibition of benefit, and one is cooking. So does he count that several times? No, but you said that if you go by the content, then in each one there’s different content. Yes, but that’s content learned from exposition, from an extra wording. He does not count things learned from expositions—that’s the second root. He does not count expositions. By the way, he has a very long discussion in prohibition 113, in the commandment of meat and milk, and there he explains why he does not count those three commandments, and what he does count. Meaning, eating… But what do you mean, the sages told us: this is the content, this is the content; when it says it in this place, the content there is eating. Obviously that’s the content—they expounded it, it’s an exposition, not the plain meaning. Maimonides argues that an exposition is something else; it is not an interpretation of the verse. But that’s a complicated story. Look at the positive commandments—no, prohibition 113. Prohibition 113 deals exactly with the question of how to count the commandments of meat and milk and why. It’s very interesting, by the way; a fascinating discussion. Maybe we’ll talk about it sometime.

In any case, then later on—and this is a very long root, maybe I already talked about it once—later he says that he means not to count the prohibitions and positive commandments if it’s like “Six days shall you labor,” not to count that as a commandment even though that’s how it’s written. I didn’t understand. Not to count the positive commandments and prohibitions as a commandment—meaning not every place where it says to do something or not to do something counts, like “Six days shall you labor,” so he doesn’t count “Six days shall you labor” as a commandment. There’s no commandment to work six days? Who says? It says “Six days shall you labor.” Right, so I’m saying, I thought that what he says here, not to count them, is only if there is really command-content inside… Why does that belong to this root? It doesn’t belong to this root. In this root, according to this root, he really should have counted it. It says “Six days shall you labor,” a positive commandment to work. No, wait—that’s what he’s going to explain. There are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who write that it is a commandment.

There’s a book by Yehuda Levi, Shaarei Talmud Torah; he collects there—it’s an interesting book, do you know it? Yehuda Levi, the president of Machon Lev. Professor Yehuda Levi. So he wrote a book called Shaarei Talmud Torah. My friend Nadav Shner introduced me to that book because it’s a very amusing book. He’s from the “Torah with Derekh Eretz” people, one of the dinosaurs of that approach, a Torah scholar. He collected there a chapter on attitudes toward labor, secular wisdom, and earning a livelihood. The book is basically somewhat anti-Haredi. Even though he’s very respectable, very close to all the great halakhic decisors and Haredi rabbis, very close to them, still it is basically a book of Torah with Derekh Eretz, which in the accepted Haredi outlook is taboo out of sheer disgust.

Now the great artistry of that book, and what is most entertaining there, is that it is all only collections of quotations; he doesn’t say a single word of his own. So you can’t argue with him—what are they going to tell him, that it’s forbidden? Maimonides says this, the Tashbetz says this, this one says that—only quotations. And in all the quotations he shows that there is a commandment to do labor, and great importance in studying secular wisdom and working for your livelihood and all those things. And he got approbations from the Rebbe of Gur, got approbations from… and all those approbations, when you see how they are written, you see the guys twisting themselves into knots. Yes, it’s true this isn’t for our generation, but of course he has skillfully gathered a rich sheaf from important sources and so on. But in any case, in the second part of the root—and in the second part of the root: “This is what should be joined to this root,” and I put in parentheses: what I’m numbering. “And it is this: because what we said, that it is fitting to count the matters one is commanded in and warned against, is on condition that in the matter one is warned against there is a distinct prohibition for each and every matter. Or some proof will be stated by the transmitters”—that is, the transmitters of the tradition—“that they distinguished one matter from another, and imposed a warning for each of them. But when one inclusive prohibition reaches many matters, then only that prohibition alone is counted, not each and every one of the matters included under that prohibition. And this is an inclusive prohibition for which lashes are not administered, as we have explained.”

Meaning, he is basically saying: what is an inclusive prohibition? For example, as they said—and this is because the verse says, “You shall not eat upon the blood.” For its interpretation they said—that’s a Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin—“From where do we know that one who eats from an animal before its life departs transgresses a prohibition? Scripture says: ‘You shall not eat upon the blood.’” Another explanation: “From where do we know that one who eats sacrificial meat before the blood is dashed transgresses a prohibition? Scripture says: ‘You shall not eat upon the blood.’ Do not eat the meat while the blood is still in the bowl.” Rabbi Dosa says: “From where do we know that they do not give the meal of consolation for one executed by the religious court? Scripture says: ‘You shall not eat upon the blood.’” Rabbi Akiva says: “From where do we know that a Sanhedrin that executed a person may taste nothing the whole day? Scripture says: ‘You shall not eat upon the blood.’” Rabbi Yosei son of Rabbi Hanina said: “From where is the warning for the stubborn and rebellious son? Scripture says: ‘You shall not eat upon the blood.’”

So these are five matters, all of them prohibited, and all are included under this prohibition. One verse with five matters in it. After that there is an interesting addition: “And they further said: from where do we know that a person should taste nothing before he prays? Scripture says: ‘You shall not eat upon the blood’—do not eat before you pray for your blood.” You see? It seems to imply that this is Torah-level. That’s odd. I don’t know of such a position. It seems from this that it is a Torah prohibition to eat before prayer. Interesting. Well, I don’t know such a position. Although for him prayer is not necessarily one of them—never mind which one, right? He doesn’t—he writes in the Laws of Prayer, I think, that the fact that we pray three times a day is entirely rabbinic, and the Torah-level prayer—that is, according to Maimonides prayer requires some kind of prayer, but he doesn’t say not to do prayer; it could be that you only said, I don’t know, the morning blessings or some verse, and then you can eat before that. And then if you decide to pray only mincha or only arvit, you’ll be fasting all day. So that’s an incentive to pray first thing in the morning, to pray at sunrise—this Maimonides.

In any case, never mind. Anyway, that’s what he says. So there would be a problem for a mourner before burial, because he is forbidden to pray but obligated in the prohibition—what would he do? Right, but he is also exempt from the… you’re saying that according to this prohibition he would be obligated. Yes. Well, interesting. Fine, this is not “before prayer,” it’s “without prayer.” It’s like Maimonides says that it is forbidden to return to Egypt, and then the Radbaz asks in the Laws of Kings—he is astonished there—Maimonides lived in Egypt, so how can he write there that it is forbidden? So he says that it is forbidden to return to Egypt, and Maimonides did not return to Egypt, he merely came there. No, “return” means from the Land of Israel, and Maimonides did not come there from the Land of Israel.

How does this connect to the stubborn and rebellious son? Because the stubborn and rebellious son eats and guzzles, a glutton and a drunkard, and then he goes on to spill blood or something like that probably, if I remember correctly—or maybe that’s the Ran, I think that’s the explanation there. In the end, when Maimonides counts, he counts only the stubborn and rebellious son as… and the warning is from “You shall not eat upon the blood,” because the verses there are verses of punishment for the stubborn and rebellious son; it doesn’t say there that it is forbidden. It says, “If a man has a son…” and so on, “his father and mother shall take him to the elders at the gate,” and something like that, and they kill him. Meaning, these are only verses of punishment. There is no prohibition there. And the Talmud asks: from where is the warning? The warning is from “You shall not eat upon the blood.”

Okay, in any case, Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perlow asks: there is a contradiction between the beginning of the root and its end. Because at the beginning of the root Maimonides says that we count contents and not commands; meaning, if they repeat the same command many times and it is the same content in many commands, then we count one commandment. In the second part he says the opposite: if there is one command that has five contents, we count it once. So that means we are going after the commands, not the contents. So within the same root, the first part contradicts the second part. That’s in Rabbi Avraham Perlow. I’m surprised at him, because the answer is really simple. Obviously what you need is both, of course. Right? For a commandment to be counted, it must have its own distinct prohibition and its own distinct content. If there is no separate verse, it is not counted; and if there is no distinct content, even if there is a verse, it is also not counted. Meaning, for something to be counted separately as an independent commandment, it needs a verse and it needs independent content. That is Maimonides’ position here.

This duality between content and command—I think I talked about this once too—there is an essay by Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, an essay on repentance. And he writes there, bringing it from Ramchal, that in every positive commandment and prohibition there are two aspects. One aspect, say in a positive commandment, is obeying the command, fulfilling the command; and the second aspect is the content, why we were commanded. For example, Sabbath observance. There is the obligation to obey the Torah that says to observe the Sabbath, and there is the value in Sabbath observance itself. Why does the Torah command it? Presumably because it gives something. So there is also the content, the value of the matter.

And in prohibitions too. There is the aspect of rebellion against the command, and there is the problematic nature of the act, because of which we were commanded not to do it. Now basically, these two parts that Maimonides writes here seem to me to correspond to those two parts present in every commandment. Every commandment has a command, but it also has content. The command comes to tell you that you are commanded, and the content says that this act is problematic. So if I know that a certain act is problematic but there is no command, then it may indeed be problematic, but you can’t count a Torah commandment here, because there is no command. But also something that has a command upon it yet lacks separately defined content, because it is already found elsewhere, again will not be counted, because you need both. In any case, that is the ninth root.

The sixth root qualifies the ninth root. It says as follows, the sixth root: that a commandment which has in it both a positive commandment and a prohibition—it is fitting to count the positive commandment in it among the positive commandments, and the prohibition in it among the prohibitions. Meaning, there is a certain commandment, a certain act, that has on it both a prohibition and a positive commandment, and both are counted. On this, the ninth root does not apply. Meaning, even though this is doubled. How can there be a situation where prohibition and positive commandment are doubled? For example, Sabbath observance. Sabbath observance: there is a positive commandment to rest on the Sabbath, to rest on the Sabbath, and there is a prohibition: “Do not do any labor.” The content is the same content. Resting on the Sabbath means not doing labor. And the prohibition against doing labor is also not doing labor. But one is a prohibition and one is a positive commandment. So Maimonides says: here too there is duplication, and the ninth root would seemingly say that only one of them should be counted. Maimonides says no. If the duplication is between a prohibition and a positive commandment, even though the content overlaps, because the command is a prohibition and a positive commandment, then yes, we count.

By the way, there is an additional novelty here, in Maimonides’ first sentence—you have to pay close attention, he is precise in his wording. He says: “A commandment that has in it a positive commandment and a prohibition—it is fitting to count the positive commandment in it among the positive commandments and the prohibition in it among the prohibitions.” That is also a novelty. Meaning, first novelty: the ninth root does not apply here. The duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment is not duplication; we count both sides. Second, there would have been room to say that even if you count both, count both as prohibitions. Why? Because after all, the commandment to rest on the Sabbath is only not to do labor. What difference does it make whether it is stated in positive language or negative language? In practice, it imposes on me a duty to refrain, not a duty to do. A duty not to do labor. Right? So the fact that it is written twice, as prohibition and positive commandment—first novelty, Maimonides says, the ninth root does not apply here; this is not called duplication, both are counted. Second novelty: the prohibition is counted among the prohibitions and the positive commandment among the positive commandments. That too is a novelty. Why is it a novelty? Because who says this is a prohibition and a positive commandment at all? Maybe it’s two prohibitions. After all, both “prohibitions” tell you not to do labor; what difference does it make what language they use? The content is the content of a prohibition. If we go by the content—and this is somewhat related to the ninth root—if we go by the content, the content is the content of a prohibition. What difference does it make that it says “on the seventh day you shall rest”? What does “you shall rest” mean? It means don’t do labor; that is called resting. So why not count it as a prohibition? What difference does it make that it is written in positive language? Maimonides says no: because it is written in positive language, we count it as a positive commandment and not as a prohibition. Meaning, that is another novelty. There are two novelties in the opening sentence here. First, that the issue of duplication does not apply here; second, that this is duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment, and this is counted among the positive commandments while that is counted among the prohibitions. And both are novelties. I don’t know which one is the greater novelty.

Because it could be that in the Book of Commandments there are really two books. As is known, for example, there are 613 commandments, and all those who count them got to 613 one way or another. Here too, all those who count knew that there are 248 positive commandments and 365 prohibitions. So really this is two books and two separate counts. Okay. So if one command appears in positive language and one in negative language, then one goes in this book and one in that book. Why? Why would I put them both among the prohibitions and then adjust the number? But exactly—the command is intended so that it will also appear in the book of the positive commandments. Why? Why? After all, in the end what it commands me is not to do labor, right? That is the content of the command. What difference does it make in what language it is said? If it were written in English too, would we count a third commandment? After all, it’s just a change of language saying the same content. So if it is the same content, why count them both? It is the same content, this is duplication. If there is duplication in the content, we don’t count; that’s the ninth root. And if you do count, since it is the same content, how can one be a prohibition and one a positive commandment when both say the same thing? In what sense is this a prohibition and that a positive commandment? The fact that it is written in positive language is just a form of expression. Meaning, obviously if they both pointed to the same foundation, they would not both be counted. Okay, so here there is a double novelty. There is a connection between the novelties, but it is still a double novelty. It is a double novelty and each of these things needs explaining.

Now of course, if I explain why this is a prohibition and that is a positive commandment, and that there is a difference between them, that will also explain why we count both and why this is not duplication. Therefore it is clear that if I explain the second novelty, it will also explain the first. Okay. So that is the heading.

“Know that one thing may contain both a positive commandment and a prohibition in one of three ways.” Meaning, there are three possibilities for there to be duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment. “Either one act among the acts is a positive commandment, and one who transgresses it transgresses a prohibition, as with Sabbath and a Jewish holiday.” Labor on the Sabbath and on a Jewish holiday—there is a prohibition against doing labor and an obligation to rest, both on the Sabbath and on a Jewish holiday. “And the Sabbatical year.” In the Sabbatical year too there is an obligation to rest from labor, agricultural labor, and there is a prohibition against doing agricultural labor. “Doing labor on them is a prohibition, and resting on them is a positive commandment.” Resting means not doing labor. What is the difference? As will be explained. “And likewise fasting on Yom Kippur is a positive commandment, and eating on it is a prohibition.” So that is one type. This is the usual kind of duplication that we are going to discuss, because it really is saying the same thing in two types of sentences, two types of formulations. And despite that Maimonides says this is not duplication, and you count the positive commandment and count the prohibition, and that still needs to be explained.

Then he says the second type: “Or there is a prohibition preceded by a positive commandment.” That is another type of duplication, a prohibition preceded by a positive commandment. What is that? Like what is said regarding the rapist and the false accuser: “And she shall be his wife,” which is a positive commandment, and afterward it says, “He may not send her away all his days,” and that is a prohibition. Why is there any duplication here? There is nothing here. What is the issue here? Look, in a moment I’ll comment on something. But what is he saying basically? Someone who raped—or falsely accused—yes, then he has to marry the girl as his wife. At least if she wants. I don’t remember whether Maimonides wrote only if she wants. But he has to marry her. After he marries her, he is forbidden to divorce her. Now the prohibition against divorce is a prohibition preceded by a positive commandment. Because first there is a positive commandment to marry her, and only afterward does the prohibition against divorcing her take effect.

Shmuel asks well: why is this duplication at all? The previous example of Sabbath is really duplication—it’s the same content just written twice. Here it’s not the same thing. There’s a commandment to marry and a prohibition to divorce. Apparently he understands that in the end the commandment is to remain married. How do you do that? The positive side is to betroth her; the negative side is not to divorce her. But basically, in the end, it is the same commandment: you must be married to her. That’s all. Make sure that you are married to her. How? By marrying her and then also not divorcing her. Apparently. Otherwise it really isn’t clear why there is duplication here.

“Or there is first a prohibition, and afterward it is attached to a positive commandment,” like what is said: “Do not take the mother with the young,” and afterward, “You shall surely send away the mother.” Meaning, here there is basically a prohibition preceded by a positive commandment, where after the prohibition comes a positive commandment that preserves the positive commandment. Meaning, don’t violate the prohibition; that is to preserve the achievements of the positive commandment. Because if you married her, now don’t divorce her. Okay? A black hole like that—you’re stuck with her for life.

Now in the second type this is a prohibition attached to a positive commandment. A prohibition attached to a positive commandment, like “Do not steal.” So I stole, and now there is a commandment on me: “and he shall return the stolen item that he stole.” But that commandment applies only to someone who stole. So first there is the prohibition; if you transgressed the prohibition, then there is upon you a positive commandment that repairs the prohibition. Or with leftovers: “You shall not leave any of it until morning,” and “what remains of it until morning shall be burned in fire.” So “shall be burned in fire” is a positive commandment upon someone who transgressed the prohibition of leftovers. Okay. So the positive commandment repairs the prohibition; this is a prohibition attached to a positive commandment.

By the way, there are various kinds of prohibitions attached to a positive commandment, and that too is a big conceptual field. I won’t go into that now. This is a heading; it’s a third type, but this third type itself divides into several. There is a prohibition that Scripture attached to a positive commandment, there is a prohibition attached to a positive commandment—there are all sorts of types. In any case, he says there are three types. “And each of these types—it is fitting that the positive commandment in it be counted among the positive commandments and the prohibition in it among the prohibitions.” Again, those same two novelties that he wrote in the heading. “For the sages explicitly said regarding each of them that they are positive commandments and prohibitions. And many times they say ‘the positive commandment in it’ and ‘the prohibition in it.’” Meaning, we see that there is both a positive commandment and a prohibition here, so the sages relate to it as two kinds of commandments.

“For the sages explicitly said regarding each of them that they are positive commandments and prohibitions.” That is a proof for which of Maimonides’ two novelties? How does the sentence work? Because the sages explicitly said regarding each of them that they are positive commandments and prohibitions. For every such doubled pair, the sages always said: this is a positive commandment and this is a prohibition. That is a proof for both novelties. Also for the fact that there are two commandments here—a positive commandment and a prohibition—two distinct commandments. And second, that one is a positive commandment and one is a prohibition, right? Those are the two novelties. Both that there are two commandments, and that one is a positive commandment and one is a prohibition. “And many times they say ‘the positive commandment in it’ and ‘the prohibition in it.’” That already focuses more on the second novelty. Meaning, that these two commandments—one will be a positive commandment and one will be a prohibition. It doesn’t explicitly say that there are two commandments, but they say this is a positive commandment and that is a prohibition. In any case, that already means two commandments. Yes, exactly. “And many times they say ‘the positive commandment in it’ and ‘the prohibition in it.’ And it is obvious that the sense of the command in them is different from the sense of the warning.” This brings us back to the eighth root that we discussed last time. Right, command and warning, those are two parts which in Hebrew together are called a decree, and in Arabic it is called a command because they have no word for this. And the two are two distinct matters. He commanded in one of them and warned against the other. Command and warning are two different things. They have a common root, but they are two separate things. “And no one erred in this root.” As if this root is universally agreed.

Fine. With Maimonides in general—and you can infer this from his wording in several places—he has two criteria for which roots he brings. There are more than fourteen rules underlying his enumeration of the commandments. What does he bring in his fourteen rules? One of two things. Either something that is not trivial, or something that is not agreed upon even if it is trivial. There are things that in his eyes are absolutely simple, but what can you do, the author of Halakhot Gedolot wrote otherwise, so I need to explain that he is mistaken. So I bring such a root, even though it is trivial. Sometimes there are roots in which no one erred, as with this root, but it is not trivial, because a positive commandment and a prohibition are not duplication, so Maimonides devotes a root to that too. You can see in some places that he says: I did not write this because it is completely obvious, and therefore I did not make a root out of it. So you see that he has those two criteria when he gathers the roots. Maimonides had a very strong reflective streak, meaning everything with him is calculated. That is why I was a bit surprised by the arrangement of the roots in his work.

Now Nachmanides already comments on this—and by the way it appears in several other roots as well—that this proof of Maimonides is problematic. For the first part, that this is a positive commandment and that is a prohibition, it’s obvious; that’s a good proof. They say “the positive commandment in it,” “the prohibition in it,” “positive commandment,” “prohibition.” But for the fact that there are two commandments, the proof is problematic. Because when the sages say positive commandment and prohibition, they do not necessarily mean the count of the commandments. They simply mean these are two commandments. The question of how many to count and how to count has its own rules. Usually the sages did not deal with the enumeration of the commandments at all.

I think I once talked about this: the Vilna Gaon’s brother, in the book Ma’alot HaTorah, brings there in his brother’s name—the Vilna Gaon—or about his brother, not in his brother’s name, because as is well known, there was basically nothing the Vilna Gaon didn’t touch. There is no composition without notes in the margin by the Vilna Gaon. Except one thing: the enumeration of the commandments. In the enumeration of the commandments he did not touch it. Nowhere is there any… those who know—I don’t know all of the Vilna Gaon, but they checked—there is no reference of the Vilna Gaon to the enumeration of the commandments anywhere. So the Vilna Gaon’s brother says that the Vilna Gaon did not deal with it because it has no practical consequence. It doesn’t interest anyone. What difference does the count of the commandments make? How many commandments are counted? After all, there are Torah commandments that are not counted and still they are Torah commandments, and lashes are given for them and everything. And there are commandments that are… these are all kinds of formal rules that govern how commandments are counted. It is not necessarily determined by the halakhic status of the commandment, whether it is Torah-level or rabbinic or something like that. Maybe the first root is, whether it is Torah-level or rabbinic, but most of the roots are roots of classification and definition, how exactly to count the 613, not halakhic roots.

But why indeed did Maimonides devote so much work to it? So Maimonides, for example, explains: because he was reflective, he explained everything he did. He needed a skeleton for the Mishneh Torah. He worked in a very systematic way, so he planned to create the Mishneh Torah; he was thinking far ahead. How did he do it? He starts at age seventeen, gives a commentary on the Mishnah and commentaries on tractates of the Talmud. Apparently he had almost all of the Talmud, but not much survived. We have only two tractates of Maimonides, I think. There is a commentary of his on Rosh Hashanah that came out, and another one or two. But he interpreted the sources, the Talmud and the Mishnah. Then he wanted to distill from that, and from the literature of the Geonim and all the halakhic midrashim and all those things, the Mishneh Torah. But how do you do that? First he described in introductions—how do you do that? I need an index. How to arrange the laws? How to classify the laws? He made a new classification. But the classification of the Mishneh Torah is not connected to the Book of Commandments, it’s like two separate things? No, no, wait, I’m explaining. No, he needed to classify the Mishneh Torah. What did he do? He took all the halakhic topics and divided them into fourteen books, and each book is divided into subtopics—where certainly this is his own division, he defined this division—while making sure that altogether all these things cover all the counted commandments. And in order to see that, you need to know the count of the commandments. You need to count the commandments in order to see that I covered everything. How do I know that I covered everything? I simply gather all the commandments, divide them, and I see that I have enough sections and that I covered everything and all is well.

But a large part of the Mishneh Torah isn’t connected to a commandment; there are laws of obligations and all kinds of… The topics are always commandments. Then there are accompanying details, customs, rabbinic enactments, laws given to Moses at Sinai, and they are always around commandments. Everything is commandments, everything is around commandments. So the commandments are the skeleton of the Mishneh Torah. That is why at the beginning of every book in the Mishneh Torah he gives the short enumeration of commandments. He lists which commandments will be detailed in this book. Why? Because he takes from the Book of Commandments the commandments and slots commandment 200 and commandment 303 and this commandment into the laws of, I don’t know, forbidden foods. Fine? He explains it there. Now he knows these are covered. The others he takes in the laws, and he sees that he has emptied out all 613. You can do it physically. Take the commandments, sort them here, each one into a book, and see that none are left in the basket. Finished. But for that you need a count of the commandments, right?

But that’s not the end of it. How do you count commandments? How do you decide which are the 613 commandments? But that doesn’t guarantee that he covers everything, since there are commandments that are not in the count because of the rules and still need to be inside the law book. But they are not because of the rules, because they are already included in other commandments, so there is no problem. They will already come in with the other commandments. No new topics will be added; that is exactly the point. These rules are mostly rules of classification. So they really say: why am I not counting this? Because it is already included there, because it is a detail there, or because it is another mode of implementation, all kinds of such rules. But you won’t miss any topic. That is exactly the point. By the way, that is one of the reasons Maimonides is more insistent on rules of classification than others, because for him the value of the enumeration of the commandments is methodological. Meaning, for him what he is looking for is only section headings for the Mishneh Torah; it’s not a substantive question. It doesn’t matter if this is a commandment or not a commandment; practically speaking, I need to cover the Mishneh Torah. Now in order to do that I need the count of the commandments.

How do you make the count of the commandments? Until Maimonides—the people who did this, Maimonides says, were liturgical poets who don’t know how to learn. Maimonides laughs at them. Except for the author of Halakhot Gedolot, uniquely. But that still doesn’t guarantee he won’t forget sugyot in the Talmud. The fact that he counted all the commandments—there are many sugyot that aren’t connected to the count of the commandments. Bava Metzia, Bava Batra, whole tractates. No, you work the other way. When you build the Mishneh Torah, you build it top-down. Meaning, first you build the headings. Fine? For the headings, you need to see that you’ve covered all the commandments. Okay? Now you’ve built all the headings and subheadings. Now you go and pass through the whole Talmud with all the Geonim and all the halakhic midrashim and the Jerusalem Talmud and everything, and slot each thing into its heading. You already have a ready-made structure, and you slot things in. That way you won’t miss anything. Now it could be that he suddenly came across some sugya that he didn’t know where to slot, so he added another book. Apparently the classification wasn’t complete. But this interplay between the two sides created the…

I once talked about Maimonides’ project—what an incomprehensible project. That one man alone, alongside his work as a physician and philosopher and all the wanderings, what we talked about once, yes, all the things he did—this man did work that was not done in all the history of Jewish law. And without a computer. Just the project itself, without anything. And the man knew everything. You can’t believe it; it is absolutely inconceivable. This man is simply inconceivable. It’s just—you stand opposite him and you simply do not understand what you are standing before. Really, it is something incomprehensible. And he knows everything. You see in the Guide for the Perplexed: I read the books of the Sabians and Aristotle, everything. And in medicine he was an expert in medicine, and he worked as a physician, not only studied medicine. He was the sultan’s physician. It is impossible to understand.

Now he made the codex. The only halakhic codex in the entire history of Jewish law. Now codices—people familiar with codices in the world know—codices require whole codices, as it were. In the State of Israel, for the civil code, they seated a whole battery of about twenty experts, I don’t know how many, with assistants and computers and everything; they worked on it for I don’t know how many years—true, they weren’t doing only that, these are people who were engaged in other things too—for many years, and in the end somehow a civil code came out, and even then it’s not clear whether they covered everything or not, and that is only the civil part. In the legal world that is more orderly than the halakhic world. There are court rulings, indexes, you know, there is a finite number of courts, you know exactly what material you need to go through.

And here there are a million books: Geonim here and there, Talmuds and halakhic midrashim, and it isn’t orderly, you don’t know who refers to what. The Talmudic discussions are so associative. There are many laws that he learns out of the hava amina of the Talmud. The initial assumption—he explains it in responsa, so you see it. Meaning, in various places he proves things. For example, I remember a responsum in the Laws of Marriage: they ask him, after all, kiddushin by money are of rabbinic origin, and that’s what he says at the beginning of the Laws of Marriage. So he explains: that is the second root, where I explained that things that emerge from exposition are from the sages. Then in a responsum he answers—I don’t remember whether someone asked him or he answered on his own initiative—wait, but a document too is learned, no? A document too is learned from the analogy of “taking” to “going out”; that is an analogy. The analogy of acquisition to divorce, and in kiddushin by document, “A woman is acquired in three ways”—that is from the analogy of “taking” to “going out.” So an analogy is also an exposition. So why did I count that? Maimonides asks that about himself. Meaning, why is that considered Torah-level while money is from the sages, but a document is Torah-level? So he explains from the Talmud’s initial assumption, from which it clearly emerges that it is Torah-level. So he finds… the man is a mutation, really a mutation.

Anyway, so what—and in all this you see it in a terribly systematic way, and maybe that even helped him. It’s very impressive, but maybe that’s what helped him do it. Because when you now want to gather the collection of commandments, how will you make sure that in the commandments you don’t miss anything? The commandments will help you make sure you don’t miss anything in the Mishneh Torah. But how do you know you covered all the commandments? For that too you have to go through all of the Talmud and all those things. But still, how do you build the 613 with your own ten fingers? Which are the 613? Very far from simple. Try sometime to go through the Torah and arrange for yourselves 613 commandments, 248 and 365—you won’t manage. You won’t manage. You’ll have to play chess like that, move this one, insert that one—you won’t manage. And Maimonides wants to do it systematically, according to binding rules. Not just arbitrarily; he’s not playing games. He’s trying to build the whole thing systematically so that it will be correct. He also attacks his predecessors, and it has to be grounded. What does he do? He goes one step back. We talked about the Mishneh Torah; you need the Book of Commandments—that’s the skeleton. In order to build the Book of Commandments you need the roots. The roots explain how we define the commandments, what enters the count of the commandments and what does not enter the count of the commandments. And the roots themselves also need to be proven and shown. All of that is very systematic work from beginning to end on two tracks, right? He built the skeleton; for the Mishneh Torah he had to go through the whole Talmud and all the Mishnah and everything so as not to miss anything. Then he came back after building the skeleton and began to gather all the sources and slot them into the skeleton. It was probably done on two tracks. Okay? And it really is amazing work. And all that by one single person occupied with a hundred thousand things, without computers, alongside medicine, philosophy, communal leadership, wandering, exiles, all kinds of things—and of course polemics; they also excommunicated him. You simply cannot understand it. I don’t know—I don’t understand how a person manages to do such a thing. It really is incomprehensible.

Maybe there was another reason too: he wanted to make sure that the sages relate to all the verses and all the commandments that appear in the Torah, because there’s no guarantee they referred to all of them. I’m not sure he verifies that. I think that’s not there. It really isn’t there. At least on the simple level, if they didn’t expound it. But at least he takes all the positive and negative commandments that appear in the Torah. I assume he went through the Torah. I’m not sure every commandment—for example, a son’s Sabbath rest. It is written explicitly in the Torah, and not only does it not appear as a counted commandment, nobody even mentions this law at all as a law—that there is no such law as a son’s Sabbath rest. There is one’s animal’s Sabbath rest; regarding utensils’ Sabbath rest there is a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel; but a son’s Sabbath rest, which appears in the same verse, “you and your son and your daughter and your male servant and your female servant,” all that—nothing. There is a Rashba at the beginning of the chapter “One Who Was Overtaken by Darkness on the Sabbath,” where Rashba explains some Talmud in the chapter “All Sacred Writings” as apparently being due to a son’s Sabbath rest, and the Magen Avraham brings it as law. That is the source for a son’s Sabbath rest—an explicit verse. I once wrote an article about uprooted verses. A verse that is written, and nobody relates to it; there is no such law. And it’s an explicit verse, but there is no Talmud. Among the medieval authorities there is Rashba, but there is no really serious halakhic source. So there is no such law. In Jewish law there is no son’s Sabbath rest. Today if someone has a son who doesn’t observe Shabbat, he has not transgressed a prohibition of his son’s Sabbath rest. Maybe he has… should we look inside? If your son wants to light, that’s a problem by the way; it is forbidden to make him do so, because that is directly causing him. A son’s Sabbath rest is not a prohibition, but directly causing him—if there weren’t the issue of direct causing, that would be a Torah prohibition.

If he didn’t have the verse that 613 commandments were given to Moses at Sinai, and the 248 and 365, it seems to me they would have come out with 700. Right, and maybe they’d have come out with 2,000, I don’t know how many. And that is exactly the point: the 613 gives you an indication, it gives you a framework within which you have to play; otherwise it would be terribly open-ended. You need some number. Nachmanides is puzzled by this at the beginning of his glosses to the first root. Nachmanides asks: who says there are 613? It’s some exposition at the end of tractate Makkot—“Torah Moses commanded us”—“Torah” is 611, and another two from the mouth of the Almighty. It’s some aggadic statement of Rabbi Simlai. From that you build the entire doctrine of counting the commandments, and everybody argues about what enters the 248 and 365 and the 613—who said there is even such a thing?

The Tashbetz says it isn’t true. Anyone who would speak that way today would be called Reform. The Tashbetz really says that, truly, and in the end that’s what he says. Nachmanides raises the possibility and says: we have such a tradition, and there’s nothing to do—apparently our rabbis accepted that this is nonetheless a serious number. Because one could always say: even Rabbi Simlai’s aggadah—it’s not because of any disrespect to Rabbi Simlai. Rabbi Simlai collected the commandments according to his reckoning and got 613 commandments. Fine. But that doesn’t mean there is a tradition from Sinai that there must be 613 commandments. Maybe Rabbi Nehorai, who disputed him, has only 700 commandments, or 400 commandments, or 1,000 commandments? Rabbi Simlai came out with 613. You have to assume something also about… It’s not because I disagree with Rabbi Simlai, but because I think Rabbi Simlai’s number is not a binding number; it is simply what he came out with—he counted and that’s what he got. So if someone disagrees with him about a few commandments or something like that, he will get another number. Who says everyone has to line up with this number as a given number? That everyone has to agree to it? That is what astonishes Nachmanides. And he says apparently it is a tradition—fact is, everyone agrees to it, and that’s it. Because in the Talmud nobody disputes the 613. Fine, so it’s a halakhic tradition. So he said 613 commandments, he expounded it from the verse “Torah Moses commanded us.” That obviously looks like an asmakhta, but never mind, that’s what he says, and it worked out nicely for him—he got 613. Okay. To build the whole story of the enumeration of the commandments, and the arguments and polemics and so on and so forth, on that aggadah—it seems absurd to me. But fine, that’s how the medieval authorities received it, and that’s it.

Anyway, why did I say all that? Yes—that when Maimonides says: it says positive commandment, prohibition—the sages did not deal with the enumeration of the commandments. This was Maimonides for his own methodological reasons, and that’s how I got into this whole thing. But the sages did not deal with the enumeration of the commandments. And Maimonides keeps saying: the sages said there are two commandments here. They said there are two commandments here, but they did not say that this enters the count of the commandments as two. They did not deal with the enumeration of the commandments.

I once brought this example: at the beginning of the chapter “What Is Usury,” there is the prohibition of ribbit and the prohibition of neshekh. Now the Mishnah says that every place where there is ribbit there is neshekh, and where there is neshekh there is ribbit; they always come together. What is the difference? So the difference, Rashi explains there, in the first Mishnah in “What Is Usury,” is that ribbit means increasing the lender’s money unlawfully, and neshekh is biting into the borrower’s money unlawfully. So these are always two sides of the same coin: if I take from him then my money increases and I bite into him. So obviously these are two sides of the same coin. The Talmud says: and why do we need both? So that he transgresses two prohibitions. Maimonides counts one prohibition. It says in the Talmud: so that he transgresses two prohibitions, and Maimonides counts one prohibition. Why? Because it is duplicated; it is the same thing. But he transgresses two—so it says in the Talmud. Maimonides, by the way, in the Laws of Lender and Borrower writes that neshekh and tarbit—one who transgresses, transgresses two. In the enumeration of the commandments only one enters, because it is duplication. So Maimonides himself understands that when the sages say two commandments, that does not automatically mean you need to count two. It means you violated two prohibitions, fine, but it doesn’t mean they must be counted as two; there is duplication between them. Why count two commandments here? They just told you both neshekh and tarbit so you would know that you absorb eighty, say, if you were getting lashes—not important. So the sages basically… This is what Nachmanides attacks him on in several places regarding the proofs he brings from the sages: the sages did not deal with the enumeration of the commandments. The fact that they said commandment and commandment does not mean these are two commandments in the count. They did not deal with this. That’s just a side comment.

As for our subject, what Maimonides is basically saying here—and I am now speaking mainly about the first example. We’ll return to the other two examples when we get to deontic logic maybe. An interesting issue in deontic logic is CTD, contrary-to-duty. Meaning, “and he shall return the stolen item that he stole”—after all, it is forbidden to steal, and there is a commandment: if you stole, return it. That is a commandment directed at criminals. A commandment imposed from the outset on criminals; that is, this commandment assumes criminality. If there is no criminality, the commandment has no meaning. Meaning, the Torah itself assumes criminality when it formulates this commandment. Okay? Now this is hard to formalize in deontic logic. It creates many problems in formalization. I hope to get to that when we discuss it.

What do you mean “assumes criminality”? All commandments are… No. Commandments are commandments. It is forbidden to eat pork; one must eat matzah. No, “do not steal,” “do not…” No, you’re not assuming criminality; it forbids you to steal, on the contrary, it assumes you won’t steal. It forbids in order that you won’t steal, but after it forbids, then indeed don’t steal. But the commandment of “and he shall return the stolen item” is not the same thing. “And he shall return the stolen item” assumes you have already violated the prohibition of “do not steal,” and now it says to you: return the stolen item. To someone who stole. And then after marrying, you need to return it and not divorce. No, no, no—that was a second example I brought, right? It’s the same kind of example. If you raped, you must marry her—that really is contrary-to-duty. Because it is: if you raped, you must marry. Here it appears in reverse. After you married, you may not divorce. So it’s a triple chain. Meaning: you must not rape; if you raped, you must marry; and then you may not divorce. So it’s even more complex.

In any case, right now I’m talking about the first example, yes? About the duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment that have the same content. Excuse me, I’ll just turn off my mobile. The first example, say Sabbath, okay? A prohibition and positive commandment regarding Sabbath observance. So first of all, concerning “no one ever erred in this,” Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perlow brings that Saadia Gaon did err in this—“erred” in quotation marks, meaning Saadia Gaon disagrees with Maimonides on this point. Saadia Gaon really counts one commandment. Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perlow is puzzled by Maimonides: why count this, after all it is duplication, in the ninth root you explained that if there is duplication then we do not count—so what difference does it make how the Torah formulates it? Even among prohibitions, by the way, the Torah also doesn’t always formulate things in exactly the same words. Sometimes it says rest on the Sabbath, sometimes keep the Sabbath, whatever—the content is the same content, so what difference does the wording make? So he doesn’t understand. He asks, and the matter requires investigation regarding Maimonides: why count two… why doesn’t this enter the roots of duplication.

Then he says that Saadia Gaon really does not count it. Now you know, Saadia Gaon’s Book of Commandments is really Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perlow’s Book of Commandments, in the sense that he torments Saadia Gaon with it—he more or less invented it. From Saadia Gaon itself you can’t know anything. Saadia Gaon is some kind of liturgical poem. And Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perlow extracts from this poem what commandments Saadia Gaon intended, because it is a poem. Each commandment is a word or two; you don’t know exactly which commandment he means. So he interprets which commandment he means and then infers all kinds of conclusions from that. Three such volumes on Saadia Gaon’s Book of Commandments. If you printed the source itself plain, it would be three pages, four pages. It’s a poem—six hundred and thirteen words times two, meaning twelve hundred words, that’s all. In any case, therefore with Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perlow’s rules too you have to be careful, because that’s not Saadia Gaon; that’s Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perlow and how he understood Saadia Gaon, and how he analyzed what he understood and drew conclusions from it.

He writes—Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perlow too was an amazing figure. He did his work with really impressive scholarly sensitivity. He was a responsible, systematic, orderly researcher in a truly wonderful way. He took Saadia Gaon because there he could really torment him; Saadia Gaon didn’t say anything, so you can do whatever you want with Saadia Gaon. I think that’s the point. The heaps upon heaps of things he does with Saadia Gaon there are unbelievable; he puts the whole Torah in there. His own composition. Wasn’t he also a merchant? First of all. Yes, at the end of his life he was in Jerusalem. He sat and learned; he went up to Jerusalem in order to sit and learn, and did nothing else. But I don’t know what he did outside the Land of Israel.

In any case, in the root he goes through the roots too, and explains what Saadia Gaon’s opinion is on each of the roots. He claims that Saadia Gaon does not accept the sixth root. According to Saadia Gaon, when there is duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment, he counts one. Which one? The one “in which the sense of the commandment is clarified”—which one to count, count it as a positive commandment or count it as a prohibition? The one “in which the sense of the commandment is clarified.” What does that mean? If I understand correctly—though again I checked and it doesn’t hold up across all of Saadia Gaon’s examples—but if I understand correctly, what he means is according to the content of the commandment. If the commandment forbids you from doing labor, then you count it as a prohibition; it doesn’t matter that they tell you “rest”; they are telling you not to do labor. Practically, what it imposes on you is not to do labor, so it is a prohibition. So Saadia Gaon counts these as prohibitions, basically, and that’s it. Which is why I told you that in Maimonides there is another novelty—not only that you count two, but that one is counted as a positive commandment and the other as a prohibition. That too is a novelty, because Saadia Gaon understands that both are prohibitions, and therefore he counts only one.

So how do we really understand Maimonides? Saadia Gaon would seem to be right. What duplication is this? The content is the same content, so why count two commandments? So here we really have to enter the question of what the difference is between a prohibition and a positive commandment in general, not only in the question of duplication. What really is the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment?

If I formulate it simply, I’d say this. Let’s say I write—or before that. On the simple level, the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment is in the question of what the commandment imposes on you. Does the commandment forbid you something, meaning impose on you a duty to refrain, or does it impose on you a duty to act? If it is a duty to act, that is a positive commandment; if it is a duty to refrain, that is a prohibition. Or in other words: a prohibition is transgressed by positive action and fulfilled by passive omission. A positive commandment is the opposite. It is fulfilled by positive action and transgressed by passive omission. Okay? On the simple level, that is the definition.

The problem is that this definition does not stand up to the facts. Why? Because there are commandments in the Torah that are positive commandments commanding me to refrain, and there are commandments in the Torah that are prohibitions commanding me to act. There are such commandments. Therefore this definition does not stand up to the facts—if the Talmud is considered facts, the test of the Talmud—it does not stand up to the Talmudic test. How do I know this? Without this there would be no sixth root. Because the sixth root is itself the example. In every place where there is duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment—what does duplication mean? Duplication means that both commandments impose on me the same obligation. But how can a prohibition and a positive commandment impose the same obligation? A prohibition imposes on me an obligation to refrain, and a positive commandment imposes on me an obligation to act, so how can there be duplication? If there is discussion of duplication, that means there are positive commandments that impose on me not to act and prohibitions that impose on me to act. Right? Otherwise duplication could never arise. So the example of this I already gave: Sabbath, for example.

Another example is “Do not place blood in your house” and “You shall make a parapet for your roof.” So Nachmanides at least understands this as duplication—basically to prevent hazards in one’s home. So building a parapet, and of course making sure there are no hazards, no unguarded places from which one could fall. So again, these are a prohibition and a positive commandment that duplicate each other. So these duplications show that the linguistic definition of the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment—or the performative definition of the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment—does not hold water. The difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment is not a difference of execution. It is not a matter of whether I refrain or act. The criterion is not an execution-based criterion.

By the way, there are commandments that are not duplicates and still violate that rule. The doubled commandments by definition violate one side of it. But there are non-doubled commandments too. For example: “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” What is “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood”? It is an obligation to save someone who is in danger, right? Saving is an action. Meaning, it forbids me to sit and not save. So it forbids me an omission, and commands me to act. It is fulfilled by positive action and transgressed by passive omission, just like a positive commandment, but it is a prohibition: “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” Okay? And here there is no duplication. I am not showing this from duplication; I am showing it from the content itself. There are more examples of this. Okay? So this means basically that the primary criterion we would have thought of, the performative criterion—omission versus action—does not hold water. So what does? What is the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment?

There is an article by Aharon Shemesh, who teaches Talmud at Bar-Ilan. He once wrote in Tarbiz—using Talmudic-historical methods—that the early generations of the Talmud really understood this according to a formal criterion, the definition of prohibition and positive commandment. And what I said, that this does not stand the test of the Talmudic facts—that refers to later statements. The later generations in the Talmud already changed the definition. By the way, this is a very common and very interesting phenomenon. The Talmud is more abstract than the Mishnah. Meaning, the later the generations, the more abstract thinking becomes, in a very clear and obvious way. Every rule that in the Mishnah was practical became abstract in the Talmud—not every rule, but many. The early generations worked simply; the later generations made abstractions.

The Mishnah seems like something general and abstract. The Mishnah uses a very practical language and way of thinking. If the Talmud is right that it is interpreting the Mishnah, then the Mishnah intends abstract criteria. Scholars generally don’t think that way; they interpret the Mishnah from within the Mishnah and the Talmud from within the Talmud. So when you look at it from a scholarly perspective, that means the Mishnah was concrete and the Talmud—also in property law you can see much more modern thought in the Talmud, much more abstract. The Mishnah is very concrete. In general too, the world is all becoming more abstract. In our generations at least that is certainly true. The revolution arose with barter and then there was money and so on, right, and there are processes, and there were sacrifices and now there is prayer. And also those processes, by the way, in the definitions of acquisition and definitions of money, there too you see this process—a student did work exactly on acquisition and money, how it moves from the Mishnah to the Talmud and becomes more abstract, less concrete and more abstract. The act of acquisition and sacrifices in general, all the… No, sacrifices simply because the Temple was destroyed. No, but still, you know, in the past a person needed more means. Today it is easier for people to understand things where you don’t need a medium for everything. I mean, I think that in the past, I don’t know, that’s how my head works, for a person to connect or for the service of God he needed things. Even Maimonides writes that there was a need for sacrifices and all that, and that the Holy One, blessed be He, gradually reduced it to a certain place and a certain way in order to uproot from people the… Maybe in the end there will be none at all, according to his view perhaps, yes. Prayer is much higher than sacrifice itself. Yes.

I once gave a lesson on that, and now I’m suddenly remembering it—association, Talmud. It’s connected to these days, which is why I’m remembering it. I once gave a lesson, I think on Memorial Day, about what “memory” is in the Torah. So “Remember Amalek,” “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek”—seemingly that means erase the memory of Amalek, but surely not, because there is also a commandment “do not forget.” By the way, “remember” and “do not forget” is also duplication. So there is a commandment “do not forget,” so what does “blot out the memory of Amalek” mean? It doesn’t mean the memory of Amalek, but what? “The memory of Amalek” means every remnant of Amalek. Meaning: do not leave a trace of Amalek, as we use the phrase today. Leave no vestige of Amalek, no trace of Amalek-ness or anything connected to Amalek—blot out the memory of Amalek. That means that “memory” means part of the thing, a remnant of the thing, a memory of the thing, which is a part of the thing. Okay?

So memory too is like that. Today we perceive memory as a mental act. We remember someone, meaning his image stands in our mind. It seems that in the Torah’s language, memory means that something of that someone is with us in our minds, literally—that it is part of him in our minds. It’s not that we remember some sort of fiction and construct an image of him. We don’t construct an image of him; rather something of him is present here in our minds physically—not physically but metaphysically. His soul, not his body. But something of him is here. Meaning, in the past they perceived memory as something tangible, something concrete, something really happening here. Today we abstract it. I don’t know who is right, but we abstract it today. For us today it is a mental process. Demons—once people thought demons were entities; today we talk about laws of nature. Laws of nature are abstract things. The sages spoke about the same thing; they called it demons. What is the demon responsible for the second law of thermodynamics? Maybe we talked about that once. Yes, the demon of ruin, right—and that’s the Talmud saying that this is the demon responsible for the decay of abandoned houses in which no one lives, and when people do live in them the house doesn’t decay. That’s just the second law of thermodynamics. The sages saw that demon as the demon of ruin, who crumbles houses, some kind of thing, and today we perceive it as some abstract process. It’s not someone doing it, not something doing it—a demon who increases entropy. Yes, exactly. And is that really a demon? What? There it really is a demon? Yes, it’s Maxwell’s demon too… No, Maxwell’s demon decreases it.

Anyway, the claim is basically that things once perceived as entities, as tangible things, underwent abstraction. For example, today when people talk about God they talk about an experience of faith, not a concrete object, at least many people do. Meaning, lots of things go through this kind of process, sort of dissolving; they changed from entities to phenomena, to processes. Yes, it’s a very interesting phenomenon. I think this happens in the Talmud too. And here too. Meaning, at first they said a positive commandment means get up and do, and a prohibition means refrain. And then they say no, no, this is something more abstract. It isn’t—maybe in a moment I’ll define it—but it isn’t determined by the actions; it is some abstraction.

Think of the beginning of tractate Bava Kamma: “There are four primary categories of damages: the ox, the pit, the grazer, and the fire.” What does the Talmud do with that? There is horn, tooth, and foot—and these terms already appear in the Mishnah—but in the Talmud there are the definitions. Horn means intent to damage and atypical. Right? That is the definition of horn. It is not the horns physically found there. That’s not horn—that’s nonsense, that’s what laymen think. That’s not horn; that’s just nonsense. Laymen think that’s horn. Horn is something whose intent is to damage and is atypical. That’s horn. A biting dog is horn of course. Who doesn’t understand that? It has no horns and it doesn’t know what horns are, but a biting dog is horn in the Talmud. Why? Because it intends to damage and it is atypical; that is not its normal way to damage. Okay? Tooth is something where the damage gives it benefit. So in the Talmud, a cow rubbing itself on fruit for its own pleasure—that is tooth damage, because tooth is not the actual teeth seeing the fruit or anything; rather tooth is a damager whose damage brings it pleasure. You see? That is very clearly abstraction. The Talmud takes the four primary categories of damages, which are very concrete— tooth, horn, foot—these are the most concrete things imaginable—and turns them into abstractions. It often works that way.

So Shemesh argues that the definitions of prohibition and positive commandment also underwent abstraction over the generations in the Talmud. At first it began with a performative criterion, and according to him it moved to a linguistic criterion. It depends how the Torah defines it. If it speaks in positive language, then “You shall make a parapet for your roof” is a positive commandment. If it speaks in negative language, “Do not place blood in your house,” that is a prohibition. And it makes no difference whether it imposes on you a duty to act or a duty of omission.

Now I once brought this in an article I wrote on Torah and science. This example is very, very nice because it shows that Torah and science often need not stand in a conflictual relation but in a complementary one. Meaning, if a scholar does good work—and there Shemesh did good work—then he gives excellent data, an excellent starting point. But he stops there. Because he maintains the academic character of the work. Now the interpretations you will give that are interpretations—those are not scientific things. So an academic cannot write that. He can maybe note some comment at the end, but it can’t be the article. The article needs to present judgeable things, things that can be assessed. He showed it in a completely assessable way: that in the earlier generations the criterion is performative, in the later generations the criterion is linguistic. Those are facts. You can defend them; he can show them. That is fully assessable. He finished his work there.

Now I come along as a learner, not as an academic, and I ask myself: for heaven’s sake and all the demons, what do I care about this linguistic criterion? Language does not stand by itself; language reflects content. Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, choose to formulate this in positive language and that in negative language? Was it random? If it was random, then what do I care whether it is a positive commandment or a prohibition? Why is there a difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition? It’s not random; the Holy One, blessed be He, meant to tell us something, right? When He formulates something as a positive commandment and something as a prohibition, apparently He conceives these things in some different way. So it isn’t performative—we’ll soon think about what it is—but it is something else. The formulation expresses content; the formulation does not stand on its own.

Now the scholar doesn’t ask that, because here of course we are opening the door to speculation. I can guess what the content may be and offer suggestions, but how am I going to test those suggestions? It’s not something assessable. So a scholar can’t do that. The scholar places the facts before me. And that’s why I say he did good work, really good work. A traditional learner would not have thought of this. Or understand that many traditional learners who have been learning for many years—Torah scholars and veteran kollel men who learn—if you ask them what the difference is between a prohibition and a positive commandment, they’ll answer with a performative criterion. Even though saying such a thing is really ignorance, because they never thought about it; they know it isn’t true but they never thought about it. You have to look at the facts for a moment without bias, classify them as they are, ignore your logic and your intuitions, first just look at the facts. I’d say that is an advantage of academic thinking, of scientific thinking, supposedly: it isn’t biased. He doesn’t bend things to what seems reasonable to me and what I think is right. First let’s see what the facts are.

By the way, this is a dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides in a very systematic way. Nachmanides clings to the facts in the Talmud, and Maimonides forces his logic onto the facts in the Talmud. And if it doesn’t fit, then it will fit—meaning he coerces the facts until they fit his logic. And Nachmanides often cries out against him over this. It is a very basic approach that appears in their dispute. Hold on to the text? Hold on to the scriptural source and not the logic, yes? The well-known Beit Yosef. What? The Brisker “force of Maimonides”? The Briskers? Yes, right.

You can recognize this in how he explains “Do not stand idly by” and “Do not delay payment.” He says those are positive commandments according to his view, apparently. But after all he did not find references from those generations to every one of the 613 commandments, so I don’t know what they referred to. But he showed very consistently that the approach was performative. So apparently “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” is a positive commandment. I don’t know. He doesn’t have a reference for each such thing, so I don’t know, but that’s what comes out.

Now I need to ask myself, okay, so what lies behind this? So a first suggestion—I spoke with people a bit, went back and forth—a first suggestion was, okay, people wanted to tell me the practical differences. Meaning, after all, for a positive commandment you have to spend up to a fifth of your money; for a prohibition you have to spend all your money. Okay? A positive commandment overrides a prohibition; for a prohibition you get lashes; for a positive commandment you do not get lashes. There are many consequences to the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. When the Torah formulates something as a positive commandment, it wants to tell you that for this you don’t get lashes, that for this… that you don’t have to spend all your money, that it will override a prohibition, and so on.

That cannot be the explanation, right? Yes, that’s the symptom. Exactly, it’s only the symptom. Meaning, there is a reason why you don’t get lashes for it or why you don’t spend all your money on it—because it is a positive commandment. The reverse is true. It isn’t a positive commandment because the Holy One, blessed be He, wants you not to get lashes for it. You don’t get lashes for it because the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that it is a positive commandment. But the question why He decided that it is a positive commandment still requires a definition of what a positive commandment is and what a prohibition is. This reminds me that once we studied the issue of Rabbi Yosei HaGelili, that minor sancta are the owner’s property. So the Talmud asks: in what sense is it the owner’s property? After all, he is forbidden to do anything with it except the commandment of eating it. In general he is forbidden to do anything with it, so what is the difference between that and higher sancta? Why are those minor sancta? The practical difference is that one can betroth a woman with it. So what? That doesn’t help at all—that’s the symptom. Once it is his property, he can betroth a woman with it. But the question is: in what sense is it defined as his property? In what sense is it more his property than higher sancta? What is the difference? A symptom is never an explanation. The symptom, after you understand the explanation, you can explain the symptoms. But the symptom is only an indication; maybe it hints to you at the explanation, but it is never the explanation itself.

Here too, when you ask what the difference is between a prohibition and a positive commandment, and you say: it’s the language. Now the language reflects content. What content? A practical difference? A practical difference is not the content; the practical difference is the practical consequence of the content. So I ask: what is the difference? Okay? That really is the fundamental question. What is actually the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment?

I’ll present this another way. Suppose the Torah says: I do not want you to be without tefillin. Is there a difference between that and saying: I want you to be with tefillin? A double negation brings us back to the same place, right? Two statements that are logically equivalent. Now the first is a prohibition because it says “not”; “beware,” “lest,” and “not”—we discussed this in the previous lesson, right? That is a prohibition. And the second says: put on tefillin—“and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” Put on tefillin. That is a positive commandment. How can it be that there are two different commandments where the statements that teach them are logically equivalent? If they are logically equivalent, they have the same content. They are logically equivalent; you can replace one with the other. So how can this be a positive commandment and that a prohibition? Meaning, this sharpens even further that the linguistic criterion cannot stand on its own. There has to be a difference in content. Because if there is no difference in content, then the language is just another way of saying the same thing.

You understand that this takes me back to Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perlow and Maimonides. Because basically if these are two different formulations saying the same thing, then that is exactly the reason to return this to the ninth root and say that this is duplication. Why count two? I am back to the question with which I began. There must be some essential difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment that separates them, that creates the practical consequences, and that causes Maimonides to remove this from the principle of duplication and instead count the prohibitions among the prohibitions and the positive commandments among the positive commandments. And the question is: what is that thing?

When I say double negation—again, that’s an indication because this is duplication. So here I won’t have much time left, so I’ll just talk about the double negation. I’ll give the explanation next time already. This question touching on double negation is a mistaken question. There is no double negation here. When I say to you, “I do not want you to be without tefillin,” is that a statement logically equivalent to “I want you to be with tefillin”? Logically? Logically yes. Except that no, not exactly. It doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing. “Want” and “not”—it isn’t commutative. You are switching the order of the words. Meaning, “I do not want you to be without tefillin”—you switch it to “I want that you not be without tefillin,” meaning “I want you to be with tefillin.” You switched the “want” and the “not.” That isn’t commutative. “Do not want” is not the same as “want not.” Right? It isn’t the same thing. “Want not” is something much more frontal. “I do not want” just means I lack the desire. “Want not” is something entirely different.

I say: I want you not to go to Australia. The question is only whether I don’t want you to go to Australia. I simply lack the desire that you go, that’s all. Okay? But you can. But you can, for example—it’s an extreme case. Later we’ll see that it’s even more than that. Even if you can’t, it still doesn’t say the same thing. But here I’m only pointing out that there is already a problem in the question itself. There is no logical equivalence. It isn’t really logically equivalent. Now fine, I still haven’t explained what the difference is, but this already gives the first hint as to what the difference is. The difference between “want not” and “do not want yes.” That is basically the difference.

Sometimes, for example—and I’ll say it now perhaps in relation to Sabbath observance—there is a commandment for me to rest on the Sabbath, and there is a prohibition against doing labor on the Sabbath. The commandment to rest does not mean that they don’t want me to do labor. They want me to rest. Of course, in order to rest I need not to do labor, but the Torah has no issue with the labor as such. The labor itself doesn’t matter to it. It wants me to rest. Obviously, if I do labor then I am not resting, fine, so that is a problem. When the Torah says, “Do not do labor,” it has a problem with the fact that I am doing labor. Its problem is with my doing labor. That is something else.

What will happen, for example—is this what bothers you? What? Yes, what will happen if I do labor under coercion? Say, okay? Regarding the prohibition, I did not transgress. “To the girl you shall do nothing.” Coercion exempts. So certainly I did not fulfill the positive commandment. In practice I did not rest. So here is an example showing that these are not logically equivalent. Right? To tell you “I want you to rest” is not the same as saying “I do not want you to do labor.” Here is an example of the difference between them. Once there is a practical difference, it is no longer logically equivalent. Now this is not a practical difference in the sense of a mere symptom. It points to an essential difference, that there is a difference between the prohibition and the positive commandment. From the standpoint of the positive commandment, coercion means it is as if you didn’t act. Meaning, if you transgressed under coercion, it is not considered that you acted. You’re not guilty, so it is not considered that you acted. The commandment was not fulfilled. Regarding the prohibition, you did fulfill the prohibition and did not transgress the prohibition if it was under coercion. There is no prohibition on you. Okay? So there is a difference between saying something in positive language and in negative language. But that is still for the future.