The Commandments and Their Enumeration – Lesson 1

Table of Contents

• Recording the lectures and making the materials accessible
• The enumeration of the commandments as a technical topic with no practical implication
• What is a commandment, and the distinction between halakhic and aggadic text
• The Torah as instruction, and the giving of the Torah as the basic norm
• Jewish law as the core of the Torah and Judaism, and the discussion of values and identity
• Jewish law as command, and the analogy of the law and the red light
• Repentance, Ramchal, and Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, and the two aspects of a commandment
• “Greater is one who is commanded and does” and the integration of command and content
• Maimonides’ roots, the ninth root, and the need for both command and content
• Interpretive derivations, rabbinic laws, essence and command, and halakhic implications
• The eighth root, the language of “not,” and the distinction between command, description, and negation of obligation

Summary

General overview

The lecture is recorded and uploaded to the lecture page on Moodle and also to the lecturer’s website, so that people can listen again and make up what they missed. The lecturer presents the enumeration of the commandments as a technical topic that usually has no halakhic practical implication, and is therefore neglected, and he demonstrates that the rules of counting do not change the force of the obligations themselves. He wants to begin with the definition of “what is a commandment” and with the distinction between halakhic text and aggadic text, and argues that Jewish law is built on a binding command by virtue of the giving of the Torah. He then develops a model of two aspects in every commandment and transgression: obedience to the command and essential content, and uses Maimonides’ roots to explain that counting commandments requires both a distinct command and distinct content.

Recording the lectures and making the materials accessible

The lectures are recorded and uploaded to the website on the lecture’s page in Moodle, so that anyone who misses one or wants to hear it again can listen there. The lectures are also on the lecturer’s website. The lecturer says he has an article in a book honoring Rabbi Rabinovitch on his eightieth birthday about Maimonides’ enumeration of the commandments and the topic in general, and he will upload it to Moodle, and all his articles are also on his website.

The enumeration of the commandments as a technical topic with no practical implication

The enumeration of the commandments is presented as a neglected topic because it has no direct halakhic significance, and the decision about what enters the count and what does not does not necessarily depend on halakhic characteristics of the law itself, but on technical classification rules. The lecturer demonstrates that the four species are counted as one commandment and not as four, even though each one is a Torah-level obligation, and the rule is technical and does not affect the validity of the commandment. The lecturer notes that rabbinic commandments are not counted, and there this involves an essential principle, because it truly is not a Torah-level commandment. He cites, in the name of the Vilna Gaon’s brother in Ma’alot HaTorah, that the Vilna Gaon commented on almost everything that was printed but did not deal with the enumeration of the commandments because it has no practical implication, and he sees this as an indication that both in batei midrash and yeshivot and in the academic world, the topic was hardly dealt with.

What is a commandment, and the distinction between halakhic and aggadic text

The lecturer states that in the sources there are two kinds of texts: halakhic text and aggadic or non-halakhic text. In the Torah there are sections of commandments and sections of narrative and values, such as the creation of the world. The commandments belong to the halakhic part, and what appears in the non-halakhic part is not a commandment. He says this is not always simple, because people sometimes treat commandment-like things as commandments without noticing the context. The lecturer illustrates this with the sciatic nerve, where the verse “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve” looks like a prohibition, but according to Rashba the “do not” there is descriptive rather than imperative, and so without the oral tradition of the Sages there would be room to see it at most as a description of a custom and not as a prohibition. The lecturer concludes that identifying what counts as halakhic material and what counts as a commandment is not always simple, and there are exceptions that bring out the rule.

The Torah as instruction, and the giving of the Torah as the basic norm

The lecturer uses Rashi’s very first comment on the Torah, which brings Rabbi Yitzchak’s question why the Torah did not begin with “This month shall be for you the beginning of months,” and understands the question as assuming that the Torah in its essence is supposed to be a book of commandments. The lecturer connects this to Maimonides, according to whom what creates obligation is that the Torah was given at Sinai, and therefore even earlier passages such as the sciatic nerve are binding by virtue of their being written in the Torah that was given at Sinai, not by virtue of the historical event itself. The lecturer says that someone who acts out of rational necessity and not because he was commanded by Moses at Sinai is “from the wise men of the nations of the world, but not from their pious ones,” and therefore this is not a “commandment,” even if it is a worthy act. He compares this to Hans Kelsen’s legal conception of a Grundnorm, and defines the basic norm of Jewish law as: whatever was given at the giving of the Torah is binding.

Jewish law as the core of the Torah and Judaism, and the discussion of values and identity

The lecturer argues that the essence of the Torah is Jewish law, and that the appearance of the other parts is what needs explanation. He adds that in his opinion the essence of Judaism as well is Jewish law, and everything else, such as ethics and aggadic teachings, does not uniquely define Judaism, because those will also appear among non-Jews. The lecturer responds to criticisms of conversion standards that prefer examining ritual commandments over moral ones, and argues that the mistake is logical, because a definition tests for distinctive characteristics, not for characteristics that are important but universal, and therefore in conversion one checks precisely those things that distinguish Jews. The lecturer rejects value-based definitions such as “holiness” and “a chosen people” when they are left without practical specification, and argues that they are empty slogans unless they are mapped onto commitment to Jewish law; and he notes that Maimonides, in the fourth root, interprets “You shall be holy” as observance of the commandments. The lecturer says there is no such thing as “Jewish ethics” and calls ethics an atheistic category, and he also challenges descriptive rabbinic statements such as that Jews are bashful, merciful, and doers of kindness as a presumption of Jewishness, arguing that today reality is not like that. He distinguishes between ethnic Jewishness as a fact of birth and “Judaism in the value sense,” and states that even studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is not unique, because Christians also study the Hebrew Bible, and the unique thing is commitment to Jewish law.

Jewish law as command, and the analogy of the law and the red light

The lecturer defines Jewish law as something founded on command, and therefore the concept of commandment is essential to defining Jewish law. Without command, there is no language of forbidden and permitted, only recommended and inappropriate. The lecturer illustrates this by saying that if there is no legislation forbidding crossing at a red light, then one may say it is irrational or immoral, but one cannot say that it is legally forbidden, and he parallels legal legislation with religious command. The lecturer says that command is not arbitrary, but aimed at preventing a problem or creating good, and mentions that Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed rejects the view that commandments have no reason, presenting it as reducing the Creator beneath man.

Repentance, Ramchal, and Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, and the two aspects of a commandment

The lecturer notes that according to Maimonides repentance is not counted as a commandment, whereas confession is counted, but repentance is still a halakhic concept with implications, such as the reinstatement of a slaughterer who had been disqualified. He presents Ramchal, who sees repentance as a novelty that goes beyond the strict letter of the law, because history cannot simply be erased, and brings Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman’s question from the Talmudic text in Kiddushin about “a righteous person who rebelled,” who loses his merits because he “regrets his earlier deeds.” Rabbi Elchanan suggests in Ramchal’s name that every commandment and transgression has two aspects: the aspect of obedience or rebellion against the command, and the aspect of the essential content of benefit or harm. Regret uproots, in strict law, the subjective aspect of one’s relation to the command, but not the essential result; only beyond the strict letter of the law is even the negative spiritual result uprooted. The lecturer explains that repentance from love, where “deliberate sins become merits,” does not erase the action from history, but changes its “color,” for example when the sin becomes the lever that brought a person to the level of a penitent. He also connects this to the statement “one who says: I will sin and repent,” as an ideological initial assumption that is rejected.

“Greater is one who is commanded and does” and the integration of command and content

The lecturer brings the rabbinic statement, “Greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does,” and prefers the explanation of Tosafot HaRosh and Ritva that a commanded act has two advantages: obedience to the command and attainment of the benefit of the act; whereas one who is not commanded and does attains at most the benefit without the advantage of obedience. The lecturer emphasizes that this explanation makes unnecessary all sorts of homiletic comments about a stronger inclination under command, because the difference is explained simply as the combination of two levels of value as opposed to one.

Maimonides’ roots, the ninth root, and the need for both command and content

The lecturer explains that Maimonides formulated fourteen roots as the rules for counting commandments, and that the main connection to the discussion is these roots. He reads from the ninth root that the enumeration does not count the repetition of a positive commandment or a prohibition, but rather the thing commanded or prohibited. Therefore, repetition of a single command, such as keeping the Sabbath, does not create multiple commandments but just one commandment. He also brings from the ninth root the example of “Do not eat over the blood,” from which several prohibitions are derived, and Maimonides defines this as a general prohibition, for which lashes are not given, and counts it as one prohibition even though it contains several details. The lecturer presents Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla’s claim that there is a contradiction here between following the content and following the command, and answers that there is no contradiction, because a commandment is counted only when there is both a distinct command and a distinct content; the absence of one of them explains each part of the ninth root. The lecturer connects this to the view that the two aspects, command and content, are conditions both for Torah-level status and for being counted.

Interpretive derivations, rabbinic laws, essence and command, and halakhic implications

The lecturer suggests that things learned from interpretive derivations lack “command” in the sense of an explicit written warning, and therefore tend toward the side of “words of the Sages” in Maimonides’ method, and he connects this to the rule, “Punishment is not imposed unless there was prior warning,” and to the mechanism by which there are no lashes for a general prohibition, because there is no unambiguous warning. The lecturer argues that rabbinic commandments present the opposite case: there is a command to listen to the Sages, but there is no essence in the object itself. He illustrates this with fowl cooked in milk, where there is no problem in the thing itself, only an obligation of obedience to a safeguard. The lecturer cites the Netivot, who argues that someone who violates a rabbinic prohibition unintentionally does not require repentance, because there is no defect in the act itself when there was no rebellion against the command, and he relies on a distinction in the Talmudic text in Eruvin between preventing a Torah-level transgression and conduct with respect to rabbinic laws. The lecturer also illustrates this with “one may not read by candlelight lest he tilt the lamp,” where the rabbinic transgression is examined precisely when the Torah-level prohibition did not actually occur, and so what remains is the duty of obedience without any essential defect in the act itself.

The eighth root, the language of “not,” and the distinction between command, description, and negation of obligation

The lecturer explains that the word “not” in the Torah can appear either as a prohibitive command or as descriptive negation, and therefore Maimonides in the eighth root rules that one should not count the negation of an obligation as a prohibition. He returns to the example of the sciatic nerve, where “they do not eat” describes a custom and not a commandment unless there is a tradition from the Sages, and adds a more complex halakhic example of “she shall not go out as the slaves go out,” regarding a Hebrew maidservant, where the verse negates the applicability of a norm of emancipation through the loss of limbs and does not create a prohibition that one can transgress. He concludes that a verse that generates a positive commandment or a prohibition must grammatically belong to the language of command, and that there are also halakhic texts that are not commands but rather negations of obligation within the world of Jewish law.

We’re going to record all the lectures. The lectures will be uploaded to the course page on Moodle. So there will be recordings of the lectures; anyone who misses one, or wants to hear it again, will be able to listen there. By the way, it’s also on my website, so you can listen there too. Okay, I’ll begin. So we’re talking about the enumeration of the commandments. And the enumeration of the commandments is, as I said, a neglected topic because it doesn’t really have much halakhic significance. The question of what enters the count of the commandments and what does not enter the count does not necessarily depend on the halakhic characteristics of the law in question, of the commandment. For example, there are rules that determine the classification of commandments. Right, the four species. So the four species are counted in the enumeration of the commandments as one commandment, not as four commandments. That says nothing about the etrog, the lulav, or the willow. Meaning, each one of them is a Torah-level obligation. We don’t count them in the enumeration of the commandments because of a classificatory rule, that they are classified as one commandment and not as four. But that’s just a technical rule; there’s nothing here that follows from the fact that these commandments don’t have Torah-level validity, or that this isn’t a commandment, or anything like that. There are certain aspects of the enumeration of the commandments—we’ll still talk about all of this at length, I’m just surveying it generally—that do depend on the character of the commandment itself. For example, rabbinic commandments are not counted. So here it really is a substantive issue. Meaning, the commandment is not counted because it really is not a Torah-level commandment. It’s not a question of classification. Right, so that’s an essential principle, not a technical principle. In any case, the enumeration of the commandments, at least directly, has no practical difference. Right? The Vilna Gaon’s brother writes in Ma’alot HaTorah that the Vilna Gaon had comments on everything that moved. Meaning, anything that was printed—you can find comments by the Vilna Gaon in the margins. Right? Except for one thing: the enumeration of the commandments. On that—on that—he didn’t deal with it. That’s what his brother says. Why not? Because it’s not interesting; it has no practical significance whatsoever. Meaning, it’s an indication of what I spoke about earlier. Really, a great many people don’t deal with the enumeration of the commandments; it’s considered an esoteric topic, not something people really study in batei midrash, in yeshivot, and even, to my surprise, in the academic world they hardly dealt with it. Which was also strange—I would have expected this to be a very popular topic in academia, but it isn’t. There are very few materials that dealt with this topic. Anyone who wants, by the way—I’ll send it, I’ll upload it to Moodle as well—there’s an article of mine in a book in honor of Rabbi Rabinovitch’s eightieth birthday, on Maimonides’ enumeration of the commandments and in general, and there I talk more broadly about this whole subject of the enumeration of the commandments. I’ll talk more about this in the coming lectures, but there you can see a kind of general introduction; whoever wants to read can read it there. All my articles, again, are also on the website, so you can find them there too. Okay, but I want to begin. Before I talk about the enumeration of the commandments, I want to talk about what a commandment is. After that we’ll talk about how commandments are counted. What is a commandment at all? And on this issue, it seems to me that… this thing doesn’t work, so we’ll ignore it. On this issue there are some very general definitions that may sound simple, but it seems to me that before people talk about them, they aren’t aware of them. So I’ll start first of all generally about Jewish law, then I’ll move into commandments, and then we’ll move into the enumeration of the commandments. First of all, in the sources, both in the Written Torah and in the Oral Torah, we have two kinds of texts. One text—texts, that sounds like the Talmud department, but that’s what there is. Two kinds of texts: one kind is a halakhic text, and the second kind is a text—we’ll call it aggadic or non-halakhic. Okay? The non-halakhic can be divided into all sorts of subgenres. For example, in the Torah, the Written Torah, there are parts that are commandments, that describe commandments, prohibitions, permissions, obligations and the like, positive commandments and prohibitions. And there are parts that are story, values, I don’t know, all kinds of things of that sort, the creation of the world, right, the book of Genesis. So those are two parts that the Torah, and also the Talmud—the Talmud has aggadot and halakhic passages—is divided into. The commandments of course belong to the halakhic part and not to the non-halakhic part. Or conversely, what is found in the non-halakhic part is not a commandment. That sounds simple, but it isn’t simple. There are contexts in which it seems that people perceive things as commandments and they don’t notice the context in which the thing appears. And when you do notice the context in which the thing appears, then you can understand that the thing being discussed is not a commandment. Sometimes it also isn’t clear from the context, but from broader considerations—we’ll see examples of all this too. Right, right, that’s in the narrative section. Right, the sciatic nerve, for example, is an excellent example of this issue. Rashba already comments on this in his commentary to the aggadot. The Talmud says that we have a textual way to identify prohibitions. “Take heed,” “lest,” and “do not”—that’s a prohibition. And “not,” of course, “not” is also a prohibition. Now when we want to check whether a certain verse in the Torah is a prohibition, we have key words. If it says “take heed,” “lest,” “do not,” or “not.” “Not” in certain aspects; there is also a “not” that is not a commandment—we’ll talk about that in a moment. In the case of the sciatic nerve, for example, there isn’t—there does not appear such an expression. “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve,” right, “to this very day.” The question is whether that is the source. It is the source—why not? No, no, it is the source in the Torah, yes, according to Maimonides. He meant in the commentary to the Mishnah in the chapter on the sciatic nerve. No, no, and where was it repeated? And it was repeated—where was it repeated? It was repeated, where? In the Torah where the section is written about Jacob our forefather and the sciatic nerve. And the Torah was given at Sinai, so it was repeated. The source in the Torah is the passage about Jacob our forefather. The question is whether it was written afterward and placed in its location, or whether it was written originally. But there is no other source in the Torah for the sciatic nerve. The source is the passage of Jacob our forefather. So therefore this source does not meet the criteria of prohibitions. And Rashba already comments on this. True, the word “not” is written there, “the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve.” But that “not” is not a “not” of command. It is not “you shall not eat the sciatic nerve”; it is the “not” of description. It describes: the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve. When that “not” is not a “not” of command, then in principle it should not be a prohibition. And then the question is: so why is it one? So Rashba says: I don’t know; there was a tradition among the Sages that nevertheless it is a prohibition. But you need a tradition. Meaning, in principle, without that, if I saw this verse, this verse in principle is not a prohibition. It tells me a story about what the children of Israel have practiced from time immemorial, to this very day. A custom at most. A prohibition it is not. Only because of the tradition, so here it is an exception, but in principle it is not a prohibition. So that’s an excellent example whose exceptional nature points to the rule. Meaning, the rule is that when we have something like this, it is not a prohibition. Therefore identifying what is called the halakhic part or what is called a commandment and what is not called a commandment is not always so simple. But one needs to be aware that there are things that are commandment-like, but they are not—they are not commandments. And there are various indications—we’ll meet things like this later too—there are all sorts of indications of this matter. Regarding the concept of Jewish law in general, I’ll do this briefly, but the concept of Jewish law in general—there is, yes, Rashi’s first comment on the Torah, right, I’m always fond of it in this context. Rashi’s first comment on the Torah brings Rabbi Yitzhak’s question: why didn’t the Torah begin with “This month shall be for you the beginning of months”? Why did it begin with Genesis? So he says, “He declared to His people the power of His works,” and so on. Let’s say that as for the answer, we’ve already found more convincing things, but the question is a good question. It’s an interesting question—actually maybe because it isn’t such a good question. It’s interesting. Why should the Torah begin with “This month shall be for you the beginning of months”? All the commandments should have been there. So what? Isn’t the Torah a book of commandments? Ah—meaning, there is some assumption here in the subtext, an assumption that the Torah is really supposed to contain only commandments. Right, correct. Torah is from the language of instruction, and it is supposed to contain only commandments. Therefore, Rabbi Yitzhak says: wait, so why do we need the book of Genesis and another third or quarter of Exodus? It should have begun directly with the commandments, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months.” By the way, there are earlier commandments—circumcision, right, the sciatic nerve, all sorts of commandments that appear in Genesis—so why “This month shall be for you the beginning of months”? That hints at Maimonides. That even the things that appear in Genesis became commandments only because they were written later, after the giving of the Torah. But not because of the event that happened, the historical event that happened or did not happen in the period before the giving of the Torah. Okay? The seven Noahide commandments, same thing there. They weren’t repeated afterward at the giving of the Torah. They were repeated. They were repeated? Yes. Where were they repeated? They were repeated again—not repeated in Maimonides’ sense, no, no, not necessarily repeated in the sense that they were written again. A limb from a living animal, for example. They were repeated, Maimonides said; the very fact that they are written in the Torah and the Torah was given at Sinai—that is what obligates, not the fact that Noah. Anyone who observes the commandments out of rational necessity and not because we were commanded in them through Moses in the Torah at Sinai is one of the wise of the nations, but not one of their pious. Meaning, it is not a commandment. It is a good deed, it is a deed that is proper to do, but a commandment it is not. Why? Precisely because of this issue. Because a commandment is basically binding because of the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Even the parts of the Torah that describe events that happened before, from which somehow one might perhaps extract some command, some commandment—that is not binding because Jacob or Jacob’s sons did not eat the sciatic nerve, or a limb from a living animal, or the seven Noahide commandments. It is binding because the Torah given at Sinai also wrote that. And the obligation is the obligation of the Torah at Sinai. This is basically what is called in legal language—Hans Kelsen was a legal thinker; I don’t like the term philosopher of law because they aren’t philosophers, none of them—but a legal thinker who held that at the basis of every legal system stands a norm he calls the basic norm, the Grundnorm, the ground norm, the basic norm on which everything is based. The basic norm of Jewish law is that what was given at the giving of the Torah is binding. That is the basic norm. And therefore the basic norm is tied by the umbilical cord to the giving of the Torah. This point, this question of Rabbi Yitzhak that is brought there in Rashi, basically tells us that Torah in its essence is really the halakhic part of the Torah, the commandments. Okay? All the other parts of the Torah require an explanation of why they appear. Now there are explanations and they do appear, but all that is retrospective. In principle, the essence of the Torah is Jewish law. And by the way, as an aside, in my view the essence of Judaism is also Jewish law. Meaning, everything else—I don’t know—ethics, aggadot, Bible, all those things—to my mind have no direct connection to Judaism whatsoever. There are people’s reflections, ideas of this kind and that kind; you can accept them, you can reject them; those same ideas will appear among non-Jews too. There is nothing Jewish about them. The only thing that truly distinguishes Judaism is Jewish law. Nothing besides that. What? Ethical traits appear in the Torah. There are parts of the Torah that are universal. Yes, correct. Wait, then how did the Rabbi define this—that everything that is not Jewish law is what? Not Judaism? Not Judaism? Yes. What is Judaism—to be moral? It’s like, you know, there are criticisms—yes, I knew this comment was a bit of a landmine. Maimonides counts thirteen principles of Judaism. Yes, but maybe we can talk about that in a minute, one second. There is a very common criticism of conversion processes. In conversion you examine all kinds of ritual commandments—does he eat kosher, does he observe family purity, Sabbath, and so on. Why not examine the ethical commandments—whether he honors parents, whether he, I don’t know, behaves well toward others, things of that sort? And these are often criticisms aimed at conversion processes that somehow really hint at a criticism—it is not a criticism of conversion. It is a criticism of Judaism, if one can call it that, perhaps the more conservative kind, that sees the ritual dimensions precisely as the center of Judaism. But that criticism is mistaken. I oppose that conservatism too, but not for that reason. The criticism is mistaken, and why? Not because the non-ritual commandments are unimportant, but because when you want to define a Jew there is a rule in logic about how you build a definition. This goes back to Aristotle. What is a definition? A definition is basically to define genus and species. To say: man is a speaking living creature. Living creature is the genus that includes man plus other species, and then to distinguish the species man from the other species of living creatures. That’s how you define things, right? Meaning, you determine the category, the super-category, and then distinguish the species from other species that belong to that same category. Okay? Meaning, when you define something, you have to give the things that characterize it specifically as opposed to other things. And when you want to define a Jew, will you define him by the fact that he doesn’t murder? Every person is supposed not to murder. Will you define him by the fact that he honors parents? Every person is supposed to honor his parents. Therefore this is a mistake at the logical level; it is not a question at all of what is more important and what is less important. It is a mistake at the logical level to think that the criterion by which I examine whether a person is Jewish or not Jewish is a broad moral criterion. But—but you can’t test whether he does it or doesn’t do it. If you could test his motivations then maybe that would be relevant. Usually that is harder, even among Jews—religious Jews, not converts. I understand. When you want to examine a Jew, you cannot examine according to the force of the command that he is observing. How will you test whether he is doing it because of this force or that force? You can see what he does. Fine, seeing what he does is not a criterion for anything. Every non-Jew observes these things too, or is supposed to observe these things too. Well, Judaism—this is what I’m saying, I’m talking right now about conversion. I’m talking now about conversion. In conversion you need to examine whether the person—whether he behaves like a Jew. You won’t be able to examine that unless you get into his motivations and ask yourself why he is doing it, but that is usually harder to do, and therefore naturally the convert is examined on the ritual commandments, and rightly so. And again, the prohibition of murder is more severe than family purity, more severe than Sabbath observance or eating kosher, of course. But—but that doesn’t matter. It is more severe, but it is less unique. So when you want to examine the definition of something, you need to examine it on the basis of the things unique to it and not on the basis of the things that are important. The Jew also breathes. Will you define a Jew as one who breathes? That’s very basic—without breathing he won’t be a Jew. Yes, but being a breather does not distinguish him in any way from other creatures or other human beings, so it is not correct to define a Jew through that criterion. Not because it is not basic or not important, but because it is not unique. Maybe it would be right to define him according to his clothing? According to? His clothing. If there is such a definition, then maybe one can define that way; I don’t think there is one. Like side-locks, fringes? That doesn’t distinguish Jews. There are Jews who go without side-locks and without fringes; there is no such obligation. But I didn’t understand why the Rabbi went into conversion. My point was why the Rabbi says that the essential parts in the Torah are universal and not… So that—I began with conversion, I’ll come back to it. Again, this is first of all an aside, so I don’t want to expand too much on it; I’ve written about it and argued about it many times already. I’ll do it briefly because as a framework it is still meaningful. Now I’ll expand it beyond examining the convert as such, to examining what Judaism is. Look, there are all sorts of suggestions as to what Judaism is. You hear, for example, in pluralistic batei midrash that have arisen in recent decades, or I don’t know, definitions from all kinds of Reform places or things like that—how do you define Judaism? No definition holds water, that is clear. No definition—not connected to whether you agree with them or not—but you cannot offer a definition of Judaism on any basis other than Jewish law. And why? Because what will you define? I’m talking on the level of values. There can be an ethnic Jew—I am the son of a Jewish mother, okay, that’s a fact. Whether I observe commandments or whether I don’t observe commandments, that fact is certainly true. But when I speak about Judaism in the value sense, what are values that are Judaism or the values of Judaism, there is nothing beyond Jewish law. Holiness and chosenness? What is holiness and chosenness? A holy nation, a chosen nation—doesn’t that define the Jews? Spell it out, what does that mean? “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Okay, and therefore what? What are you proposing to do? “A kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” What does that mean? These are all slogans. What should one examine? That they are distinct from others. Distinct? Everyone is distinct—Zimbabweans too are distinct from others. But the question is what should the content of that distinction be. Every group is distinct, and yes, Jews too have characteristics because we went through a different history; we have our own genetics too, at least statistically—but that is true of every nation. So every nation has its own uniqueness. The question is whether you understand that some metaphysical thing has changed here? I don’t see any indication of that, and I don’t see any basis for that claim. Therefore the concepts of a chosen nation are also pretty empty concepts, unless they are placed or applied in relation to Jewish law. This is a nation that is supposed to observe Jewish law, very good—but then we have basically translated the concept of a chosen nation into commitment to Jewish law. That is why I asked you to try to define more clearly what you mean when you say holiness and a chosen nation and so on. Maimonides, for example, in the fourth root—maybe we’ll still talk about this—says that “you shall be holy” means: observe the commandments; that is what “you shall be holy” means. Observe the commandments because the commandments sanctify us. So again, the concept of holiness is also mapped onto observance of the commandments, meaning onto Jewish law. The question is, any other value you bring up—my value is to be compassionate toward others. You hear all kinds of definitions of Judaism: Judaism is being compassionate toward others. The claim—the claim that I am compassionate—it is true that I am supposed to be compassionate to people, but non-Jews are also supposed to be compassionate to people. Meaning, morality is not a category—there is no such thing as Jewish morality. Morality in its essence is an atheistic category. But the Sages said that there is… that if you see a person who is modest and compassionate and acts kindly, then there is a presumption that he is Jewish. That is a claim—a claim that among the Sages was probably a description of reality, and I would like to believe that the description was correct, and today of course it is not correct. Factually it is not correct. Even though it appears in Shulchan Arukh, Even HaEzer. It isn’t correct—look around and you’ll see. Look around you: there are compassionate non-Jews, not all of them but there are, and there are Jews who are not. So what are you going to say, that they are Jews and those are not Jews? We are very accustomed to clinging to these statements, these slogans, but when you check it in practice it doesn’t really hold water. Now, I don’t know, in the time of the Sages maybe yes, maybe the non-Jews then in that period were all, I don’t know, wicked and cruel, I have no idea, and the Jews were not, maybe, I don’t know—but today it is not true. So the Sages were not always right? Of course not. Isn’t it enough to define a Jew as someone born to a Jewish mother or a Jewish father and that’s it, regardless? No—that, I’m saying, is an ethnic definition. Yes, and therefore I’m saying: I am talking about the definition of what Jewish values are, what Jewish content is. When you study the Bible, is that Jewish? Even the Bible—the heart of the whole story—Christians study the Bible too, it is holy to them too. So what—what is Jewish about that? Again, apart from the question whether it is holy. That is why I say these are two different things. It can be the most important thing there is, like murder, but it is not unique specifically to Jews. Meaning, it is not unique to Jews, so you cannot use it as a definition of Judaism. If you say the commitment to the Jewish law within the Bible—that really is unique to Jews. Christians who study the Bible are not committed to the Jewish law in it. Okay? Therefore I say that on the level of uniqueness, when you want to define what Judaism is and what a Jew is—but now I moved to what Judaism is—in my view there is no other definition except Jewish law. And what about remembering the Exodus from Egypt, the tradition of Sinai? Isn’t that a Jewish concept? Well, that is a commandment; there are six remembrances. That is a halakhic obligation, and that is exactly the point. And the deeply personal connection with the Holy One, blessed be He, and so on. No, I do not accept those things; to me they sound like hollow statements. Hollow, Rabbi? Fine, okay. What about the soul? What about it? As far as I know, non-Jews don’t have a soul, they have life-force. Even on the kabbalistic level that is not true. Even stones have a soul. There is the whole spectrum—nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah—for every object. The only question is perhaps where it is located in terms of Kabbalah, in terms of kabbalistic language. But again, all these general statements—as long as they are not spelled out in detail and someone shows me what they mean and where they come from—I don’t buy them. But fine, one can argue about that; this is not the place. So to our subject, I’m returning to our track. I will talk a bit about morality in this sense because it matters to me in order to mark out the concept of Jewish law and commandment. So the claim ultimately is that Jewish law is the core of Judaism and the core of the Torah—that is my claim. Now, what does that actually mean? Jewish law, of course, at the Torah level is made up of commandments, the 613 positive and negative commandments and so on; afterward there are rabbinic laws, and maybe you can include here going beyond the letter of the law if you want. You can include that too within Jewish law in one way or another. But in different circles, that is basically the framework I am talking about—that is the framework I am talking about. Now I first want to speak about the meaning of what Jewish law means. Jewish law is basically something whose foundation is command. That is what Jewish law means. Therefore the concept of commandment, which is our subject in this series, is essentially basic to the concept of Jewish law. The infrastructure, what turns a certain thing into Jewish law, is that there is a command concerning it. Example: suppose we are in a situation where the Knesset did not legislate that it is forbidden to pass through a red light, or whoever acts on its behalf did not legislate the prohibition of passing through a red light. And yet it is still customary to stop at red and go at green, just for the sake of discussion. So passing through a red light is not logical, not moral, not right—but you can’t say it is forbidden, right? You can’t say it is forbidden as long as there is no law that forbids it. Morally forbidden—let’s leave that aside. Let’s put aside for a moment forbidden legally, forbidden by law, okay? Why? Because the concepts forbidden and permitted in halakhic and legal contexts are based on the concept of command in the halakhic context, or on the concept of legislation in the legal context. It’s the same thing—command in the religious context is basically what we call legislation in the legal context. And legislation is the infrastructure that determines what law is, what is forbidden and permitted. Without legislation there is no forbidden and permitted, and without command there is no forbidden and permitted. There is recommended, there is improper, proper, all sorts of other things—but forbidden and permitted there are not. Meaning, the concept of command is a very, very essential concept for the matter of commandment. There is a deeper meaning to command, and there is an article by Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman on repentance, and there he asks about Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto says that the idea of repentance is an innovation of the Holy One, blessed be He, or of the Torah, beyond the letter of the law. By the way, repentance, for example, according to Maimonides at least, is not a commandment. Maimonides does not count repentance; he counts confession, not repentance. But repentance is a halakhic concept; it has halakhic implications. Meaning, therefore as far as I’m concerned the concept of repentance belongs to the world of Jewish law even if it is not a commandment in itself. For example, a slaughterer who was disqualified, a witness who was disqualified—if they repented, they return to their valid status. Meaning, it has a halakhic consequence, so the concept of repentance belongs to the halakhic world. Okay? So repentance is not only commandments, but there is also—the commandments are the skeleton, exactly, the skeleton of Jewish law; around them there is also beyond the letter of the law, “you shall be holy,” what you mentioned earlier, all that—we’ll still talk about it. Now, what he asks: if repentance is a matter of going beyond the letter of the law, why is it beyond the letter of the law? So Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto explains: because by strict law, if you did something, then you did it; you can’t erase history. And beyond the letter of the law the Torah innovated that if you repent, they erase history, they change history. Okay? So he says: if that were so, then how are we to understand the Talmud in Kiddushin, where the Talmud says that a righteous person who rebelled lost his merits. Someone who becomes secular, let’s say in today’s language. Okay? So he lost his merits. The Talmud asks: why not let him be half and half? What does it mean he lost his merits? What he did, he did, and from now on if he does bad things, bad things will be counted against him. Why do you need to say that he lost the commandments, the good things he had done? So the Talmud says: he regrets the former deeds. Meaning, he not only became secular; he also regrets the past, the positive things he did in the past. It is not just that he now begins to behave differently, but he also regrets what he did. And Rabbi Elchanan asks: if indeed regret about the past by strict law cannot change the past, cannot erase it—beyond the letter of the law the Holy One, blessed be He, accepts our repentance, but by strict law that really cannot erase the past. So if that is so, then it should work only in the positive direction, not in the negative direction. Meaning, one who repents, the Holy One, blessed be He, waives the sins, forgives him. But someone who becomes secular—the Holy One, blessed be He, waives his commandments? What does it mean waives his commandments? Meaning, does He go beyond the letter of the law to his detriment? The rule is that the Holy One, blessed be He, inclines toward kindness. When He inclines—that is beyond the letter of the law—it is toward kindness, not toward harm. Now the righteous person who rebelled and regrets the former deeds, ostensibly they go beyond the letter of the law with him in order to harm him. But one does not go beyond the letter of the law to cause harm. Ostensibly from there you see that this is the letter of the law, not beyond the letter of the law. If they do it also on the negative side, not only on the positive side, then that means regret over what you did really uproots by law what you did; it is not beyond the letter of the law. So Rabbi Elchanan wants to argue—he brings another passage from Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto in Derekh Hashem—there Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto says that in every commandment and every prohibition there are two aspects. One aspect is the aspect of obedience or rebellion against the command. The second aspect is the substantive aspect. Meaning, for example, I am commanded not to eat pork; it is forbidden to eat pork. I ate pork. What happened? First, I rebelled against the command; that itself is problematic. Second, why was one commanded not to eat pork? So there are two problematic things in the fact that I ate pork. First, I rebelled against the command. Second, I created the problem that eating pork creates. The same with fulfilling a commandment. Let’s say I honored my parents. So first, I obeyed the command “Honor your father and your mother”—that is the positive side of the matter. There is obedience to a command. Second, that command is aimed at something. Presumably whoever does it creates some kind of positive thing. So when I honored my parents, I created that positive thing. Meaning that in every fulfillment of a commandment there are two aspects: obedience and substantive benefit. And in every transgression there are two aspects: rebellion against the command and substantive damage. Okay? So he says: when a person regrets what he did, either the righteous person who regrets the former deeds, or the penitent who regrets the bad things he did, then by strict law his relation to the commandment or transgression is indeed erased. Meaning, when he committed the transgression there were two problems. First, he rebelled against the Holy One, blessed be He. Second, he created some kind of damage in the world, in the soul, or I don’t know where. Okay? Now when he regrets it, that means that his relation to the command has changed, because now he is in favor of observing commands. He regrets having rebelled against the command. The subjective dimension of the commandment is uprooted. That is by law in both directions, whether a righteous person who regrets the former deeds or whether a penitent. But the reality that happened because of the deed, for good or for bad—it happened. That, by law, you cannot change by regretting. Physically? Spiritually too. You cannot change it. Usually it is spiritual. Physical things usually do not happen; in murder maybe yes, but in ordinary transgressions physical problematic things usually do not happen. The suffering of the parents in honoring parents? No, so I said, like murder or suffering, yes, things like that, true. But for example, in transgressions like pork or transgressions that are not between person and fellow person, transgressions where you do not see a practical result in the world as a result of the transgression, still there is some spiritual result. So clearly that spiritual result too you cannot change by regretting what happened. You regretted it, very nice—so what? And that is what happened. You murdered someone, you regretted it—so now will he come back to life? Fine, he’s dead, what can you do. So here Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto says this is beyond the letter of the law: when you regret bad deeds, then the problematic result too is uprooted. Not that the dead person comes back to life, but the problematic spiritual result is uprooted, erased from history. But that really is beyond the letter of the law. And when you regret good deeds that you did—it remains. The good deeds are good deeds, and one does not go beyond the letter of the law to cause harm. That is his claim. For our purposes, what this says is that in every commandment and every transgression there are two aspects: the aspect of command and the substantive aspect. And if I return to the red light, before they legislated the law forbidding passage through a red light, the substantive aspect still existed. Passing through a red light is dangerous. But the aspect of command, or legislation in the legal context, did not exist, and therefore it was not a law. For a certain thing to be law, you need two things: there has to be a command, and there has to be some reason for the command. It is not an arbitrary command; rather, the command is meant to prevent a problem or to create something positive. So that is an interesting philosophical question; it has been discussed quite a bit, although I hardly know anyone other than in introductory classes like these, where they always sketch all the possibilities, both the logical and the illogical. There you always hear also the option that the commandments have no reason in themselves, it’s just a matter of, I don’t know, some sort of game of obedience or rebellion and not real content. Maimonides in the third part of Guide for the Perplexed talks about this, and says that cannot be right. People think they make the Holy One, blessed be He, greater than His creatures by saying He does things without reason. He says the opposite: if human beings do things without reason, we regard them as fools. So to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, does things just because they have no reason—that makes Him lesser than His creatures. A human being does not do things for no reason. But again, maybe one can argue about that claim; it is also a question of on what plane you are speaking about the reason, because the reason is perhaps repairing the world, and the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world that way. He could have created it differently, so we are playing within a given framework. From our point of view we do things in order to achieve something or to prevent something else. When you speak about the Holy One, blessed be He, that is a question somewhat harder to define, because He is the one who created this structure of the world because of which this act creates something positive and that act creates something negative. He could have made it otherwise. When you ask the question why He created the world that way, that is another question. Given that this is the world, why did He command me to do this or not to do that? I am speaking about the second question, okay? Two hundred and forty-eight and three hundred and sixty-five, yes, yes, fine, nice homiletics, no. What is the meaning when a person repents out of love and his sins become merits, in terms of the practical result? So that is a very interesting point. The Talmud in Yoma really says that in repentance out of love, deliberate sins become merits; in repentance out of fear they become unwitting sins. What is interesting is that the deliberate sins are never erased. Right? That doesn’t happen. Meaning, the action that happened, happened. All you can do is change the color with which it is painted. Is it painted as positive, painted as negative—but you cannot erase it from history. Even repentance does not do that; even repentance does not do that. At most it can repaint the meaning of the action you performed. You can repaint it, for example, if you use the sin of eating pork as leverage to repent, and then the penitent is preferable to the completely righteous person, as the Sages say, and that basically means that without the sin you would not have been able to reach the level of a penitent. And then that means that ultimately, after you have already repented, there is a positive significance even to the sin of eating pork. Because it enabled you to become a penitent. And if you hadn’t sinned, you wouldn’t be a penitent. For example, yes. That is what the Talmud says; after all the Talmud says: one who says “I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent”—they do not give him the opportunity to repent. So the Hasidim—sometimes they also say sensible things—and they explain that this initial assumption, to sin and repent, is a substantive initial assumption. It’s not just the evil inclination. I want to be at the level of a penitent, so ideologically I commit sins and then afterward I repent, because if I don’t commit sins then I’ll just be a completely righteous person, and I want to be at the level of a penitent. So the Talmud innovates there: don’t do that. It is not proper to do that. But there is such an initial assumption, meaning there is such logic. That is exactly the point there. Okay? If you do it ideologically, then the Holy One, blessed be He, will make the process of repentance hard for you. I don’t know if it becomes impossible, but He will make it hard for you to repent. Don’t count on being able to sin and then repent and then be a penitent. That’s not how it works. Don’t worry—you will sin even without making it ideological. You’ll have enough to repent for even without that. “There is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” Okay? A third time is already—well, that’s a different discussion, yes, after three times, since he repeated it, it becomes to him as if permitted. Fine. In any case, for our purposes, the conclusion in the end is that in every commandment and transgression there are these two aspects. One, the aspect of obedience-rebellion, let’s call it the subjective aspect, and the objective or substantive aspect is the benefit or the damage of this deed. Okay? Those are the two aspects. More than that, I say that for a commandment to count as a commandment, it must have both aspects. Without one of them, it is not a commandment. I’ll explain that more in a moment. Before I explain it, one more word. The Talmud says: greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does. Right? Usually our initial intuition, yes, our initial intuition is that greater is one who is not commanded and does, because that is voluntary, right, and seemingly has greater value. But the Sages say: greater is one who is commanded and does. So there are all sorts of little homilies explaining why that is true. You don’t need to get to those homilies. There are Tosafot HaRosh and Ritva who say that greater is one who is commanded and does because when he fulfills the commandment, he has the two benefits. He both obeys the command and also achieves the benefit of the deed of the commandment. By contrast, one who is not commanded and does, he may achieve the benefit of the deed of the commandment, partially or fully, but he does not have that virtue of obedience to a command. Benefit is benefit. I don’t know—when one eats pork there is damage, when one observes Sabbath there is benefit. Perhaps when the commandment acts upon a person… that is what we spoke about earlier. Someone asked before—who was it that asked me—who told me that it is so? I said: my logic tells me that it is so. So Tosafot HaRosh and Ritva say that greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does because of this idea. If you are commanded and do, then you have both positive benefits when you perform the commandment. If you are not commanded and do, then you have the benefit. Therefore you are less great, that’s all. Meaning, it is almost an arithmetic matter, I would say: here there are two benefits and here there is one. Not because you have an evil inclination. People always explain that if there is a command, then you have a stronger evil inclination, and you overcome it, and therefore you are greater. All kinds of explanations of that sort, but you don’t need to get there. Fine, anyway, maybe it’s true, but you don’t need to get there. In any case, that’s the idea. Now, from where do I take the fact that not only are there these two aspects in every commandment, but that without the two aspects it is not a commandment? So like this: there is a Maimonides in the ninth root. Maimonides has fourteen roots, which are rules for counting commandments. That’s just worth knowing; it will accompany us throughout this whole series, because the roots are basically Maimonides’ work describing the rules for how to count commandments. When we deal with the counting of commandments, the main work is Maimonides’ roots. Okay? Now, the ninth root among these roots deals with counting commandments that repeat themselves several times. Let me read you a bit. This projector for some reason doesn’t work, so this will be Oral Torah. What? Maybe it was drafted? Could be it’s in reserve duty in Gaza? Sure—if you know your way around, we’d be happy. Let’s stick this in here. Okay, the projector works. Yes, the projector works; it’s just that this connection doesn’t. Maybe the cable is no good? Put in another cable. Check the plug, as our American cousins say—sometimes the problems are simple. No, it’s the projector. I’ll try maybe the source connection. Oh! Magician! Well done! Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Okay, so I want to demonstrate this through things Maimonides writes in the ninth root. I’m also working with Zoom and here, so I hope I don’t get mixed up, trying to share this also for the recording and also on the screen. I’m a known technophobe, so expect glitches. Okay, in any case, in the ninth root Maimonides says as follows: the ninth root, that it is not proper to count the prohibitions and the positive commands, but rather the things that are forbidden and the things that are commanded. Know that all the commands of the Torah and its warnings are in four things: beliefs, actions, traits, and speech. And that He commanded us to believe one of the beliefs, as He commanded us to believe in the unity and to love God, blessed be He, and to fear Him; or that He warned us not to believe one of the beliefs, and so on. In short he lays everything out—traits, speech, and so forth. And when these matters come, then it is fitting that the matters that are commanded or forbidden be counted, whether action or speech or belief or trait, and we do not pay attention to the multiplicity of commands that came regarding that matter if it is among the things commanded, or to the multiplicity of warnings that came from it if it is among the things forbidden. For all of them are only for reinforcement. Meaning, what happens? Maimonides for example says, look here—he brings here: because sometimes one warning returns regarding one and the same matter as reinforcement, and so too one command comes after another as reinforcement as well. Unless you find language from the Sages distinguishing the matters, and the commentators explain to you that each prohibition or each positive command includes a matter other than the matter included in the other prohibition or command, for then it is certainly proper to count it. But if not, then not. What does that mean? For example, Maimonides later brings: the Torah repeats twelve times the command to keep Sabbath. Should we count twelve positive commandments? A positive commandment to keep Sabbath. Eh? Thirty-six? Okay, yes. So with Sabbath he brings the example of Sabbath, yes, and with the convert too. Regarding Sabbath—twelve times. Do we count twelve positive commandments? Maimonides says no. Why? See his wording above—I return above: that it is not proper to count the prohibitions and the positive commands, but rather the things concerning which they warn and the things concerning which they command. We do not count the commands—there are twelve commands—but what? The things those commands command concerning. And here there is only one thing: to keep Sabbath. So we count one commandment and not twelve. And the same regarding prohibitions. Okay? In the second part of the root, he starts like this, without warning in the middle of a paragraph: however, when one prohibition includes many matters, then that prohibition alone is counted, not each and every one of the matters included by that prohibition. And this is a general prohibition for which lashes are not given, as we will explain now. For it says in Kedoshim, chapter 19, in the book of Leviticus: “You shall not eat over the blood.” They said in its interpretation: from where do we know that one who eats from an animal before its life has departed is in violation of a negative commandment? Scripture says, “You shall not eat over the blood.” That it is forbidden to eat from an animal before its life has departed, before the blood has left it. Another interpretation: from where do we know that one who eats sacrificial meat before the sprinkling of the blood is in violation of a negative commandment? Scripture says, “You shall not eat over the blood”—do not eat meat while the blood is still in the basin. Rabbi Dosa says: from where do we know that one does not hold a meal of consolation for those executed by the court? Scripture says, “You shall not eat over the blood.” Rabbi Akiva says: from where do we know that a Sanhedrin that executed a person does not taste anything the entire day? Scripture says, “You shall not eat over the blood.” Rabbi Yosei bar Chanina said: from where is the warning for the stubborn and rebellious son? Scripture says, “You shall not eat over the blood.” Here are five matters, all forbidden, and all are included under this prohibition. There is one verse, “You shall not eat over the blood,” from which five different things are learned, five different prohibitions. And it is also said in Berakhot: from where do we know that a person should not taste anything before he prays? Scripture says, “You shall not eat over the blood”—do not eat before you pray for your blood. This is very interesting; it appears from Maimonides here that eating before prayer is Torah-level, because it is learned from a prohibition. Usually people understand that it is only so as not to distract oneself from prayer or something like that, but here it appears from Maimonides that “you shall not eat over the blood” is a Torah-level prohibition. And they explained in the Talmud in Sanhedrin and Menachot that for all these matters one is not lashed, because it is a general prohibition, and for every general prohibition one does not receive lashes. And they also explained that a general prohibition is when two or three prohibitions come from one prohibition, and it is not proper to count each and every prohibition included by that one prohibition as a separate commandment; rather, that prohibition alone is counted, for it includes all these matters. Here we count one prohibition—just one second—we count one prohibition and not the five or six practical instructions learned from the verse, but one prohibition. And he says, and a similar case to this prohibition also is “do not place a stumbling block before the blind,” and so on; it too includes many matters, as we will explain. Yes, and so forth. From where does Maimonides derive that we count this as one prohibition and not five prohibitions? The Talmud says that one is not lashed for it, but it says nothing about the enumeration of the commandments. Maimonides decides that in terms of the count of the commandments we count here one commandment and not five. It doesn’t contradict—no, it doesn’t contradict; the things complement each other. It doesn’t—it doesn’t contradict what he said before. Before he said: look at the act… that’s another question. It is a contradiction—whether you look at the acts and not at the… that’s a contradiction to what he said before. First of all I want to understand this itself; then contradictions. What—where does Maimonides get this? The Talmud says they are not lashed. From where does Maimonides derive that more than one commandment is not counted? Maimonides counts “you shall not eat over the blood” as one commandment, one warning for the stubborn and rebellious son that also includes additional matters, but in the count of the commandments it is one commandment, one prohibition. I think Maimonides understands that one is not lashed for it. What does that mean? According to Maimonides, for one to receive lashes for something there must be a warning in the text. Now with these five matters, it is hard to say that you have a warning in the text, because the warning in the text can be interpreted as this, or this, or this, or this. A person can always say: wait, I understood that one does not eat before prayer, but how do I know that it is forbidden to eat on the day one executes a person, or the reverse? There is no unambiguous warning from the verse, and only because the warning is lacking one does not receive lashes. By the way, that is probably the reason—this is what I told you before—that probably is the reason one is not lashed for things learned by derivation. Because things learned by derivation are also not written in the verse; you extract them from the word “et” or a verbal analogy. A person can say, I didn’t understand that there was a warning here warning me not to do this, and therefore one cannot flog a person because he was not warned. Maimonides ties the second root to the rule that one does not receive punishment unless one has been warned. It seems he holds that things learned by derivation do not constitute a warning. Things that constitute a warning are only things written in the Torah, so I can say: you were warned—it is written in the Torah. But something learned by derivation? What? There is a big dispute among the interpreters of Maimonides; I think it is not Torah-level either, but there is a big dispute among the commentators of Maimonides on this issue. Most commentators of Maimonides say that it is Torah-level, only there are no lashes. Academia says it is rabbinic. Right. Why shouldn’t we say that this prohibition includes five warnings? What is this? It sounds like evasion. No, I meant the second and not the command, because I probably cannot know; the ordinary person apparently cannot understand from this prohibition all five warnings. If he learned warning number two from his rabbi, then he doesn’t know warning number one, three, or five. Therefore it is not considered a sufficiently unambiguous warning for lashes to be possible on its basis. Explain to me otherwise why one does not receive lashes for a general prohibition. That is a question—it’s a puzzle I struggled with for years. What is wrong with a general prohibition? It is a prohibition in every respect; it is Torah-level in every respect, so why no lashes? Maimonides is troubled by exactly this, and the explanation he found is this: no lashes not because it is not severe, not because it is not Torah-level, but because there is no warning, or no unambiguous warning. There is a warning, but it is not sufficiently unambiguous for lashes. In the case of something derived by interpretation, apparently it is not even considered a warning at all, not just not a sufficiently unambiguous warning, and therefore there it is even rabbinic and not Torah-level, at least as I understand it. But here at least it is not a sufficiently unambiguous warning. Fine, so that is the second part of the root, and from there on he continues with the matter of a general prohibition. Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla asks—the one who published the Book of Commandments of Rav Saadia Gaon; at the beginning he has essays arranged according to Maimonides’ roots, and in each root he discusses what the root says, who disagrees with it, whether Rav Saadia accepts it. You know, in the yeshivot they joke that it is Rabbi Yerucham Perla’s Book of Commandments with notes from Rav Saadia. Three such volumes, while Rav Saadia’s book itself is five pages, I don’t know, something like that—each commandment is two words. Six hundred and thirteen commandments in two words. In any case, he has a long essay on the ninth root, and there he claims that there is a contradiction in Maimonides’ words. Because at the beginning of the root Maimonides says that we do not count the commands but the thing they command about. The Torah says twelve times to keep Sabbath, and they are counted as one positive commandment. Why? Are there twelve commands? Yes—but the content is one. Okay, so therefore it is counted once. So we go by the content, not by the commands. In the second part he says the opposite: I have one command with five different contents, and we count it once—so we go by the command and not by the contents. So decide: do we go by the command or by the contents? What do you say? Right, there is some defect in yeshiva-style thinking, yes—that when we do a conceptual split it must be either A or B. Is it the negligence in guarding that obligates one for one’s animal causing damage, or is it the person’s responsibility for his property? Not the negligence, but the very fact that my property caused damage. Maybe it’s both? Why always this dichotomy, that it’s either this or that, and always one of them? It’s not exclusive—it’s not “or,” it can be “and.” It can be both. Okay, so here too, same thing. This is what often gets us stuck, by the way. I can show even regarding negligence—I once wrote an article about this, about liability for one’s property causing damage. I can show, for example, that objections raised against Pnei Yehoshua, that in one place he seems to say it’s because of negligence, in another place he seems to say it’s because of the very fact that my property caused damage and that obligates—and the answer is that he requires both to obligate. But here too, “you shall not eat over the blood” was one command. It’s just that here it is one command but five instructions, five different contents. There too with Sabbath there are many prohibitions. No, with Sabbath there are twelve times the same prohibition, the same content. So twelve commands with one content. Here it is one command with content—with five contents. Now if in both cases you count once, then there is ostensibly a contradiction. The second part seems to say you go by the commands and not by the contents, and therefore you count once even though there are many contents, because there is one command. In the first part you say I count once because there is one content, even though there are twelve commands. So you go by the content and not by the command. So decide: do you go by the content or by the command? The answer is simple; I don’t know why he gets tangled up in it. Clearly, you need both. For a commandment to be counted, it needs to have unique content of its own, distinct from the others, and it needs to have its own command, distinct from the others. Once I have a commandment that has a command not shared with other things—only with it—and content that is only its own, it is a commandment to be counted, a Torah commandment. If I have a commandment with separate content but no separate command over it, then it will not be counted—that is the second part of the root. If I have a commandment that has no separate content but does have a different command over it, it also will not be counted—that is the first part of the root. The first and second parts only each speak about a different aspect of the two that is missing. But in practice you need both. There is no contradiction here whatsoever. Now why indeed do you need both? Right? Why indeed do you need both? I think this connects to what we saw earlier. Since what I brought from Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto and Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman is that every commandment has two aspects. There is the aspect of obeying the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, and there is the aspect of utility, the content, why we are commanded thus. Running a red light is dangerous—not only is it against the law. Okay? Those are two things. And the same in transgressions, in commandments and transgressions. Okay? Now he cannot count five commandments because there is only one command. In order to count five commandments, there must be five commands each with its own independent content. Here there is one command with five independent contents. So here is it five commandments? No, one commandment because there is one command. “Do not place a stumbling block before the blind”—isn’t that five commandments? One commandment. “Do not place a stumbling block before the blind” is not to give bad advice, not to trip him on the road, not to cause him to sin—and all that is one prohibition, “before the blind.” And here too is the count according to content? No, there is one command, but three contents. One command is counted once. And “do not place a stumbling block before the blind” as opposed to “you shall not eat over the blood.” No, no, “do not place a stumbling block before the blind” is a different commandment, unrelated to “you shall not eat over the blood.” Those are just two examples of one commandment that branches into five different instructions, one command, one verse that branches into several different instructions. Those are two examples: “before the blind” is one example, “you shall not eat over the blood” is another example, and in all these examples we count one commandment even though several different instructions are learned from this command. Okay? This is very interesting, by the way. One more second—the Minchat Chinukh wants to claim—he has all sorts of wild ideas—the Minchat Chinukh wants to claim that there is no prohibition against making a blind person stumble on the road. Because the Sages speak only about causing a person to sin or giving improper advice. But causing a blind person to stumble on the road, directing him to a place where he will stumble—that is not forbidden. Well, that is of course absurd. The plain meaning of the verse is entirely “before the blind.” Yes, obviously when one expounds, Scripture does not depart from its plain meaning. There is exposition, but the plain meaning remains; the exposition adds something, it does not replace the plain meaning. Yes, and he says there is no prohibition against causing him to stumble—absurd. The Yad Ramah in chapter 2 of Bava Batra is always brought in introductory lessons to Bava Kamma, when they discuss the question what the source of the prohibition against causing damage is. They bring the Yad Ramah in the chapter “Do not dig near,” chapter 2 of Bava Batra, who says there that the source of the prohibition against causing damage is “do not place a stumbling block before the blind.” So clearly he learned there is a prohibition against causing damage, meaning causing damage to the blind person. Well, you don’t need him; it is written in the Torah. There are things—I once wrote an article about this, not specifically connected to this—on what are called uprooted laws. Uprooted, meaning there are certain laws written in the Torah that do not appear in the Sages. And the question is whether that is binding, whether there is such a law. Example: the rest of one’s son. “So that your ox and your donkey may rest,” right, “your son and your daughter, your male and female servant, your ox and your donkey”—your son and your daughter do not appear anywhere. The resting of one’s son. There is the resting of one’s animal; resting of tools is a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, but the resting of one’s animal is a Torah prohibition. It is written in the Torah in the same verse, but the resting of one’s son is also written there. What about that? Does it disappear automatically? So Rashba in the chapter “One who was caught in darkness” argues that there really is a prohibition of the resting of one’s son. Therefore when you allow a child to violate a prohibition on Sabbath, then you violated the prohibition of the resting of one’s son. Magen Avraham brings this, and it is the only source among the medieval authorities, not in the Talmud, and most medieval authorities do not bring it and do not agree with Rashba and it does not appear. But it is explicitly written in the Torah. So here it really is an interesting question: if Jewish law does not anchor this in some way and it is written in the Torah, is it still binding law? Is there a Torah prohibition of the resting of one’s son? A Torah obligation of the resting of one’s son? I claim yes, for the same reason I said regarding the Minchat Chinukh and causing stumbling. It is written in the Torah. The Sages did not deal with it because they had nothing to say about it. Okay, so what? But it is written in the Torah. You don’t have to say anything. If they had something novel to say about it, maybe they would have written it. They had nothing new to say, but that doesn’t mean they uprooted the verse. They didn’t have something new to say, to spell out laws of the resting of one’s son? Obligated—the resting… they may have understood that it is the same as the resting of one’s animal, or I don’t know, something with the same parameters. I don’t know; it needs discussion. But if they wanted to uproot it, they would have had to say so, or say what indeed they do with that verse. Maybe there is a process here where the Sages defined laws of resting… authority—nobody after the Talmud has authority. The medieval authorities can offer interpretations, and I respect those Torah scholars, so I will treat their interpretation respectfully whether I agree or not. But authority—nobody has. Authority belongs to the Sanhedrin or to the Talmud. And the Talmud is an innovation, but probably the Talmud too has authority. But Sanhedrin is “do not deviate.” That’s it. There is no… In any case, yes. Which commandment includes all these examples? But in the count of the commandments it appears once? There is no practical difference. You are right. Therefore the Vilna Gaon did not deal with the enumeration of the commandments. This is a nice example of what I said at the beginning, that the enumeration of the commandments is a neglected topic, and I brought the example of the Vilna Gaon because basically there is no practical difference whether you count this or don’t count it. It doesn’t matter. It is still a Torah commandment. It is only a question of arranging how you count the commandments. Maimonides here, however, seems to imply that there is a practical difference, because you do not receive lashes for it. Right? But that really is novel. Meaning, Maimonides ties the fact that one does not receive lashes to the fact that this is not really counted. There could be other medieval authorities who say: we count all these commandments, but there will be no lashes for them. The question—which I do not know—is why not lashes for them at all? What is the problem? Maimonides at least offers an explanation. Maimonides says: because there is no warning, and there is no punishment unless there is prior warning. Fine, I don’t know. So for our purposes, what I wanted to say here from the fourth root—sorry, from the ninth root—is that you see that in every commandment there are not only two aspects, command and content, but they are required. Meaning, if one of them is missing, it is not a Torah commandment. Therefore, for example, in the second root—again, I’ll get to these things later—the second root, where he says that things learned from interpretation are rabbinic. The reason for this is because there is content there but no command. And for a commandment to be Torah-level it must have both content and command. Rabbinic commandments, for example, I claim have command but no content. No content meaning no essence. The Torah did not forbid poultry cooked in milk, right? Eating poultry cooked in milk is not problematic in itself. The Torah did not forbid poultry cooked in milk. The Sages forbade eating poultry cooked in milk by rabbinic law. Meat cooked in milk is Torah-level. The essence did not disappear; it was never there. There is no prohibition against eating poultry cooked in milk; there is nothing problematic in eating poultry cooked in milk. All you need is to obey the Sages because they forbade you to eat poultry cooked in milk. That is a prohibition on the person, not on the object. No, there is a fence here. If you eat poultry cooked in milk, maybe you’ll come to eat meat cooked in milk. So it is a safeguard. But the commandment in itself, the thing in itself—if you ate poultry cooked in milk, nothing happened, nothing problematic. I’m saying if there is a rabbinic commandment that is not a safeguard, there perhaps there can be some essence too, and even that is not enough essence for Torah-level, so it is an essence of lower intensity relative to a Torah obligation. So there too perhaps there can be some essence, even if weaker. But here there is no essence at all. And this has implications, by the way. For example, Netivot says—Netivot speaks in 234 in Choshen Mishpat—Netivot says that one who violates a rabbinic prohibition unwittingly does not have to repent. He did nothing. Unlike a Torah prohibition unwittingly. Why? He brings proof from a Talmud in Eruvin. The Talmud in Eruvin says that if a person sees his teacher about to commit a transgression, he should stop him respectfully and say: didn’t you teach us, our teacher, that such-and-such is forbidden? Okay? Maybe he missed something, so as to prevent him from doing the transgression. But in a rabbinic matter… first we do the act and afterward we raise the objection. If he is about to violate a rabbinic prohibition, leave it—let him, and only afterward ask him just in order to know. He asks why. What’s the difference? What is this—is one not supposed to observe rabbinic commandments? Is he not supposed to guard himself from rabbinic prohibitions? Of course he is. He says yes, but from here you see that if he… after all he is doing it unwittingly. You need to call his attention to it because he is doing it unwittingly. In a case of unwitting violation there is no problem with a rabbinic prohibition; he did nothing. In a Torah matter, even unwittingly, you transgressed. True, unwittingly, but you transgressed. In a rabbinic matter, if you did it unwittingly, you did not transgress at all. It’s not… In a Torah matter, if you did it unwittingly, it may carry consequence, less culpability—perhaps a sacrifice—but there are no court punishments. Okay? But in a rabbinic matter, if you did it unwittingly, there is no prohibition at all. Not just a lesser punishment. Therefore no need to repent and various other practical implications—for example, with rabbinic prohibitions of benefit: if someone sold you a rabbinically prohibited item from which one may not benefit, and you ate it, then you cannot demand your money back. But you know he is going to do it because he already told him. No, so there is the commandment not to say something that will not be heard. Maybe that applies in Torah law too. So there is a discussion whether that is in Torah law too or only in rabbinic law. But there it is not talking about that; it is talking about a case where it is clear he will listen to me, only he got confused—or at least I fear he got confused—or I made a mistake and then he will explain to me that I am mistaken. So what does that actually mean? Why is that so? The idea is because in a rabbinic commandment the act in itself is not problematic, unlike a Torah commandment. In a Torah commandment the act in itself is problematic. If he eats pork, even if it was unwitting, he ate pork; the damage happened here. Certainly I am supposed to try to prevent that, even if he is not rebelling against the command because he doesn’t know, he is unwitting. But the problematic thing that exists in the act I am supposed to prevent. But in a rabbinic prohibition there is no problematic quality in the act itself. So if he does it unwittingly, since in unwitting transgression there is no rebellion against the command because he does not know there is a command, and the problematic quality in itself does not exist in a rabbinic transgression, then there is nothing—let him do it. Yes. By the way, this is not agreed upon, but that is Netivot’s position. Regarding the matter that after Cain killed Abel, the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him: “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.” No, not Abel… Abel. So the Holy One… commentators say: Abel’s blood, and also all his descendants whom he murdered. And we see that there are also consequences to deeds for which we must give an accounting. So why here, when we say regarding rabbinic commandments that there is no physical significance at that moment, don’t we say… No, they have no significance at all, not at that moment. But their consequences—they certainly can have them. What consequences? That perhaps I’ll eat meat cooked in milk afterward? No, that someone else will see you doing it. Then he’ll eat meat cooked in milk. Yes. So he’ll eat meat cooked in milk, and then he will be punished for the meat cooked in milk that he eats. “Do not place a stumbling block before the blind.” If you violated that, maybe you transgressed “before the blind.” That is another discussion; there is a prohibition of “before the blind.” But the transgression itself… let’s say nobody… after all, a rabbinic transgression manifests precisely where what I feared would happen did not happen. Right? For example, one may not read by candlelight lest he tilt the lamp. The Talmud in Sabbath, chapter 2. It is forbidden to read on Sabbath by candlelight, because if you read, maybe when the flame flickers a bit you’ll adjust it, and then you’ll violate the prohibition of kindling or extinguishing or something like that. Okay? Now Rabbi Ishmael wanted to read, and he nearly came to tilt it, or actually tilted it—there are two versions there. Then he said: how great are the words of the Sages, and indeed one should not read by candlelight and should not take the risk. But suppose he did read by candlelight and did not come to tilt it. What problem happened here? He violated a rabbinic prohibition. If he would have come to tilt it, then you don’t need to punish him for the rabbinic prohibition because the tilting itself is a Torah prohibition. But the main meaning of the rabbinic prohibition is where you did not arrive at the Torah-level problem, only you could have arrived there. Okay? And then all that remains—one second— all that remains is that you ate poultry cooked in milk or read by candlelight. Now that in itself is not a problematic act; nothing happened. You still should not have done it because the Sages commanded. So there is here an obligation of obedience to the Sages. It is only command. But the content, the problematic or positive essence of the act, is not there in rabbinic law. Okay? But the command is meaningful… “Do not deviate”… I said “do not deviate” tells me that I must obey them. So if I violated “do not deviate,” then basically I did not obey the Sages. But the act in itself has no defect. Since we saw in Maimonides that for an action to be a Torah commandment or prohibition it must have command and it must have essence, therefore rabbinic commandments are not counted, even though according to Maimonides they emerge from “do not deviate.” They are not counted because there is only command there and no essence. And this is unlike commandments… that is the first root. The second root is commandments that come out of interpretation of verses. Commandments that come out of interpretation are rabbinic—the opposite. They are not counted as Torah-level because there is no command. There is essence, but no command. Okay? And the ninth root establishes this principle. The principle that what is required is both things in order to be counted. Okay? Therefore I said there is a connection between the ninth root and… the second. Yes, so it turns out that in every commandment and every transgression we have two aspects, the substantive aspect and the aspect of command. Now perhaps I’ll just finish with the eighth root. The eighth root of Maimonides—I’ll do this briefly. Maimonides writes there as follows: the eighth root, that it is not proper to count a negation of obligation together with a prohibition. What does that mean? He says that there are—I’ll do this briefly because our time is short—Maimonides speaks here about verses in the Torah in which the word “not” appears, which ostensibly is a prohibition, but it is not a command; rather, it describes, as we saw for example: “therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve.” It is not part of an imperative verse, not a command verse. It is a descriptive verse, right? So even when the word “not” appears, if it is not a forbidding “not,” then it is not a prohibition. The words “lest” and “do not” always appear in the context of command; in grammar this belongs to what for some reason they call tense—there is past, present, future, and command, right, the imperative. The usage of “lest” and “do not” always belongs to command verses, but the word “not” can sometimes appear in command and can sometimes appear in statement. Therefore Maimonides devotes a root to say that when the word “not” appears in the context of statement, we do not count it in the enumeration of the commandments. Usually these are simple matters. He says for example—he has a fascinating introduction here, maybe we’ll talk about it next time—but here I want just to get to the point itself. He says, for example: however, the negation of obligation is another matter, and that is when you deny a predicate of the subject, and it has no aspect of command at all. As when you say: so-and-so did not eat last night, and so-and-so did not drink wine. So the word “not” describes a fact, a negative fact, and so you describe it with “not,” but it is not a “not” that forbids; it is not a “not” that belongs to the imperative. Okay? Fine, that is trivial. Nobody would say that such a descriptive “not” needs to be counted. For that Maimonides was not needed. But later on there is this: and this has already escaped others of us—roots usually deal with Halakhot Gedolot, right, so “others of us” is basically Halakhot Gedolot. And this has already escaped others of us, to the point that he counted “she shall not go out as the slaves go out,” and he did not know that this is negation, not prohibition. Now this is already trickier. It is not like “Reuven is not the father of Shimon,” where the “not” is obviously not command; but here it is a halakhic verse. “She shall not go out as the slaves go out”—that is what he says, and this is because God already judged concerning one who strikes his Canaanite slave or maidservant and deprives him of one of the tips of his limbs, that he goes free. This is freedom through injury to a limb of a Canaanite slave. With a Hebrew maidservant, if he deprived her of one of the tips of her limbs she does not go free. And that is what this verse means, “she shall not go out as the slaves go out”: the Hebrew maidservant does not go out as the Canaanite slaves go out; there is no freedom through loss of limb for a Hebrew maidservant. Now this is a halakhic statement, not like “Reuven is not the father of Shimon,” but he says still, the “not” here does not come to create obligation. Why? He says: this verse of “go out as the slaves go out,” freedom through loss of limb, does not apply to the Hebrew maidservant. So basically the “not” does not describe, it is not a commanding “not”; it describes that a certain norm that applies there does not exist here. The practical implication: if I release this Hebrew maidservant after I injured her limb, have I violated the prohibition of “she shall not go out as the slaves go out”? No, there is no prohibition. She simply did not acquire the right to go free. The right to go free does not exist for her. I denied her the right to go free that exists for a Canaanite maidservant, but there is no “not” here that is a prohibition I can violate. Therefore this is not descriptive and not a commandment-“not,” even though the verse belongs to the halakhic genre, not the narrative genre of the Torah. But it is halakhic in the sense that it negates a norm, not in the sense that it creates a forbidding norm. And therefore it is not counted in the enumeration of the commandments. So here too, I’m doing this very briefly—perhaps next time I’ll expand a little because there is an introduction here that is very interesting—you see that Maimonides understands that for a verse to generate a positive or negative commandment, it has to belong grammatically to the imperative mood. That is basically the criterion that defines in the Torah the halakhic part as against the non-halakhic part, let’s call it that. Meaning, the verses are supposed to be command verses. Not entirely precise, because this verse for example belongs to the halakhic part even though the “not” is not a prohibitive “not,” but it deals with commands, it negates the existence of another command, and therefore it belongs to the halakhic world. If it is not a prohibitive “not,” then it isn’t—how would you define it grammatically? It is negation of obligation. That is what Maimonides says—it is negation of obligation. You negate the obligation to release through loss of limb from the Hebrew maidservant. You say: that obligation does not exist here. When you say that obligation does not exist here, the “not” in this sentence does not describe. It is not a commandment-“not.” What? Negation. It is like there is no obligation? Yes. Yes. So again, the “not” is not describing—what did you say? The “not” is not describing—not that it is not describing, not that it is not describing. The word “not” describes, okay, there is no definition here. Okay, so we’ll stop here. We’ll continue next time. More power to you, thank you very much. Explain to me afterward what the importance of the word is at the end?