Yoma, Chapter 8 – Lesson 5

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because there has to be—this is the scoundrel paradox. What is a scoundrel, from his own heart? Nachmanides says: a scoundrel within the permission of the Torah. Why? Why? Because if he had counted this explicitly, your problem would arise. If he had counted it, then it wouldn’t be a scoundrel within the permission of the Torah; it would be a scoundrel outside the permission of the Torah. The Torah deliberately wants to leave some things to our judgment, things that are not halakhic / of Jewish law, and still it expects of us—not commands us, but expects of us—not to do them. Now, in a place where there was no prohibition stated, it could still be that the act was a forbidden act. Okay? But it would not be a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition; rather, it would be something one ought not do, morally or otherwise, doesn’t matter, but not a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition. And the Talmud / Talmudic text apparently assumes that in order to punish—at least with the punishments of a religious court, and also karet and death at the hands of Heaven, the formal punishments, not those cases I spoke about earlier, into which I also include karet and death at the hands of Heaven—they require a warning prohibition. Why? Because the warning prohibition turns the act into an offense on the halakhic plane. The warning prohibition is not meant so that I won’t be an unwitting sinner. True, a prior warning is given to distinguish between inadvertent and intentional action, but that is prior warning. A warning prohibition, when the Torah speaks—not the warning by witnesses—the purpose of the warning prohibition is not specifically to place me in the category of intentional rather than inadvertent, because the punishment itself also does that. Once the punishment verse is written and I know it, then I know there is a punishment for this. So what’s the problem? I’m already warned and standing. There is no room here for me to say, “Look, I didn’t know what you wanted from me.” Therefore the warning prohibition is not meant to accomplish what prior warning is meant to accomplish. The warning prohibition comes to accomplish something else. It comes to turn this action into an action that is halakhically forbidden. Meaning, without there being a command in the Torah about it, it will not become a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition. You can see this in many examples. I mentioned Maimonides in the second root, where he says that if we… if we, if the Torah commands several times regarding the same prohibition or commandment, we count it only once, we count it only once. In the second half of the ninth root there, I mentioned this. Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla asks about a contradiction. In the second half of the ninth root, Maimonides says that if there is a general prohibition, meaning one verse from which many prohibitions are learned, that too is counted only once. And we do not count each of the prohibitions separately. So Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla asks: what contradiction? In the first part of the root we see that we follow the contents, not the number of commands. If there is one content and twelve commands, that is one commandment. In the second half of the ninth root we see that we follow the commands, not the contents. Because the fact is that a general prohibition has one command, and although it has five different contents, if there is one command it will be counted as one prohibition. It is specifically the commands that determine things, not the contents. So Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla asks: which is decisive, the commands or the contents? And the answer is, as it says there, it requires further analysis; I don’t understand him so well. The answer is apparently that you need both. For a commandment to be counted, two things are required. It must have a command attached to it, and it must have unique content that does not appear in another counted commandment. Okay? Two conditions. And therefore there is no problem in the two parts of the root; you need both things. But what do we see from here? That in order for something truly to be counted among the commandments—or really, I’m broadening this now, in order for something to be forbidden—you need a command. Without a command, it may be improper, but it is not forbidden in the halakhic sense of the term “forbidden.” And therefore, when it says: we do not punish unless we also warn, the meaning is not that if there is a punishment I won’t understand that this act is not okay. I will understand that this act is not okay. But I will not know that it is a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition. Because for a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition, it is not enough that I understand the act is not okay; there has to be a command that forbids this act. Only then is the prohibition a halakhic prohibition. If I understand on my own that something is not okay, that is not a prohibition. And if I understand on my own that something ought to be done, that is not a positive commandment. It probably does not really belong to Jewish law at all. So that is why you need a warning prohibition. And the purpose of the warning prohibition is not functional; it has a constitutive role. Meaning, once there is a warning prohibition, it becomes part of Jewish law. So it is not that I don’t know something; it is not coming to fill the function that prior warning fills. Okay? That is the point, I think, and therefore the Talmud / Talmudic text indeed asks everywhere: we have heard the punishment, from where do we derive the warning prohibition? Because the Talmud assumes that there is no such thing as punishment without a warning prohibition. Why? Because any punishment that the Torah gives is always for something that is a halakhic offense. And something cannot become a halakhic offense if there is no verse commanding it. Without that verse, from the punishment I would learn that it is forbidden, but I would not know that it is halakhically forbidden. I would think maybe it is just an act that is improper or something like that. The Talmud says there is no such thing; punishments always come for a halakhic offense. Now, one could still ask: fine, now that I know punishments always come for a halakhic offense, then the punishment verse can teach me that this is a halakhic offense, not merely a general offense. And once again the verse that forbids it becomes redundant. Okay, so here there is apparently some formal requirement: every halakhic offense needs a verse that makes it explicit, okay? By the way, as an aside, which we’ll return to later, Maimonides in the second root argues—Maimonides in the second root argues—that a warning prohibition learned from an exposition is not a warning prohibition. Something learned from an exposition is rabbinic law. You do not receive lashes for it and are not punished for it; it is rabbinic law. So of course many commentators and disputes have arisen around these words of Maimonides. Most later commentators at least, from the Tashbetz onward, explain that he does not mean that it is not Torah-level / of biblical origin, but only some technical point, not one with halakhic significance. I think they are mistaken, and there are several fairly clear proofs of this, and Nachmanides in his glosses understands Maimonides this way, in the glosses to the second root: Maimonides means that it is not a Torah-level law. Something learned from an exposition. What is the idea behind this? What I said here. Something learned from an exposition—I know it is forbidden. The expositions were given to us at Sinai. We make the exposition, “The Lord your God shall you fear”—to include Torah scholars—so I know I am obligated to fear Torah scholars; there is an exposition. But it is not a positive commandment. Why? Because it is not written in the Torah. It has to be written in the Torah in order to enter the halakhic definition, to enter Jewish law, Torah-level Jewish law. After all, the rabbis can add whatever they want, but Torah-level Jewish law has to be written in the Torah. If something comes out of an exposition, it is something not written in the Torah; we only include it in some way. If it is not written in the Torah, it is not part of Torah-level Jewish law. Okay, so that is regarding the need for a warning prohibition. Now we’ll see two examples in which, apparently, maybe there is a possibility of punishment without a warning prohibition, which Sefer HaChinukh denies. The first example appears in Minchat Chinukh; let me share the screen again for a second. The seducer? Why, who said there is no prohibition there? It isn’t written.

[Speaker C] What? Because it doesn’t say there’s a prohibition. Does it say a prohibition? I don’t think so. The seducer? I’ll look there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t

[Speaker C] remember—maybe it doesn’t say a prohibition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it doesn’t say a prohibition, then that’s a problem. I’m sure there is a prohibition there; I’ll check. About the seducer? Whether it says it or not, we have to check, but clearly there is a prohibition there. Let’s look in Maimonides at the beginning of the laws of the virgin maiden; I assume he brings the prohibitions there and their sources. Fine, we’ll check that later. In any case, look at Minchat Chinukh on commandment 519. “And one who suppresses his prophecy is liable,” says the Minchat Chinukh, “also from the verse that we read as ‘he shall not listen,’ and it is said there that one who suppresses his prophecy is lashed, and his fellow prophets warn him, and all this is known and explained there.” And who warns one who suppresses his prophecy? A prophet who received a prophecy and does not pass it on to its intended recipients—he is lashed. The Talmud asks: who warns him? After all, no one knows that he received the prophecy, so his fellow prophets warn him; they know. Okay. “And Tosafot wrote that he does not receive formal lashes, because there is no prohibition here, and also there is no action; rather, they beat him until his soul departs.” “Now we have heard the punishment in the case of one who suppresses his prophecy”—I’m here—“but the command in the verse is not explicit, that he is obligated to say his prophecy. And although the punishment of ‘if he wants to’ is not relevant here, because that applies only to prohibitions and not to positive commandments—and here this is a positive commandment, that he must say his prophecy; there is no prohibition here—nevertheless, according to what the author wrote in commandment 69,” and that is the commandment we just read, regarding cursing judges, “that if the warning prohibition and the punishment were separate, it would imply that if one wants to transgress and accept the punishment, that would be fine, and he would not be acting against the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, etc.—therefore the Torah gave a warning prohibition to inform us that God does not desire this, etc., see there. If so, even in a positive commandment, since no verse is written, it would be possible, if he wants, to suppress the prophecy and accept the punishment, and that would be fine.” So he says that even for a positive commandment there is punishment—really this is disciplinary lashes, they beat him only in order to make him fulfill the commandment; it is not punishment in the sense of lashes for a prohibition—but even there, this principle of the Chinukh might apply, where he says that maybe you are allowed to do it, it is not forbidden, but if you do it, know that you’ll be beaten. And this is even stranger, because the purpose of disciplinary lashes is to make you do it; it is not even punishment. So how can it be that there is no issue of doing it? There it is really strange what he says, but for our purposes what matters is that he really learns from the Chinukh in commandment 69 that we read earlier that in principle there can be situations in which there is punishment, but the act is not in itself a forbidden act; meaning, you are not violating the will of God. And one who suppresses his prophecy, for example, might be an example of this matter. “And perhaps”—this is a very nice interpretation—“perhaps this was the reason of the prophet Jonah.” For it is explained in the Talmud here that he was suppressing his prophecy. Yes, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent him to prophesy about Nineveh, and Jonah fled. Okay? This is a strange thing. A prophet, after all, is not a little child. The Holy One, blessed be He, tells him, sends him to deliver a prophecy, and he runs away from the Holy One, blessed be He, goes to a ship there. What, the Holy One, blessed be He, won’t see him? What is this fleeing? So he says: “Heaven forbid that the prophet Jonah would commit a transgression against the will of God, blessed be He. So why did he flee? Why did he suppress his prophecy? Rather, because this is not against His will; it only brings punishment.” According to what the Minchat Chinukh says here, then this is possible. Why did he stay silent and not go to Nineveh—why did he need to run away? Fine, so that’s… Did he have more prophecies?

[Speaker C] What? Supposedly, so that he wouldn’t have more prophecies.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe. In any case: “And the prophet Jonah intended for the good of Israel, as explained—that idolaters would come close in repentance, etc.” Yes, and this would arouse prosecution against the Jewish people: they would repent, while the Jewish people would not repent. So he is basically acting for the sake of the Jewish people. And that itself also needs explanation—how can it be that certain people are sacrificed for the sake of others? All the considerations here seem like very strange considerations. In any case, the claim is that he does this for the good of the Jewish people, and there is no transgression in this act, because suppressing prophecy—there is no commandment or warning prohibition about it; there is only the punishment that he is beaten. So he was willing to be beaten; he was willing to bear the consequences. “But in truth,” says the Minchat Chinukh, “here no warning prohibition is needed, because the warning prohibition is to the prophet himself,” like Jonah, “for the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him, ‘Go to Nineveh.’ If so, it was His will that he go, and He did not say to him, ‘Do not go,’ etc., but rather by way of command. If so, no command in the Torah is needed here, because the prophet who is sent is commanded by the Holy One, blessed be He, to prophesy, and the matter is simple and clear.” What is he saying? Of course, when the Holy One, blessed be He, speaks to the prophet and says to him, “Go prophesy” and tell Nineveh such-and-such, that itself is the command. There is no need for a command in the Torah that says that every prophet who receives a prophecy must prophesy. And this isn’t Torah-level? Why isn’t it Torah-level? Because it wasn’t written in the Torah; that doesn’t matter.

[Speaker C] No, but here too this is a punishment of lashes. What we said before was about

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a punishment of lashes—it has to be halakhic. Here, with one who suppresses his prophecy, they beat

[Speaker C] him so that he will go,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] but there is no warning prohibition here at all.

[Speaker C] No, he claims that the warning prohibition is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a warning prohibition here—not, there isn’t no warning prohibition, even in prophecy. This is a positive commandment. The lashes are not punishment; the lashes are disciplinary lashes, something that is not punishment, it’s to prod you, basically, into doing it. So it doesn’t have to enter the halakhic categories; it is enough that the Holy One, blessed be He, commands it, enough that it is not okay.

[Speaker C] Not okay, but not in the halakhic sense? And this punishment is not punishment in the halakhic sense.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the Holy One, blessed

[Speaker C] be He, told him this personally. So for that, do we need to add a warning prohibition? No, that’s not… because the punishment he receives is not a halakhic punishment. After all, the punishment he receives is not punishment on him; it’s not formal lashes. Disciplinary lashes are not a halakhic punishment. Disciplinary lashes can also be given to someone who behaves immorally. I saw that Sefer HaChinukh says… the Minchat Chinukh says something else, so I’m saying that it’s not

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] correct.

[Speaker C] You disagree with him?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t disagree with him, I’m just not sure what he means. In any case, that’s what I’m saying.

[Speaker C] I’m not sure what he means. Maybe he meant that there is something halakhic here—he combines it with the command. What’s halakhic?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But this is not punishment.

[Speaker C] Someone who accepts the distinction between Jewish law and not, so he tries to claim that it is Jewish law, and that there is

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the warning prohibition in the form of prophecy to the prophet. Not sure. But this punishment still has to be punishment for a command of the Holy One, blessed be He, even if it is not halakhic in the full sense. But he asks: where is the command? The command was given to the prophet himself. I’m not sure the Minchat Chinukh meant otherwise; in any case, I’m saying this. Not important. For our purposes, what I see here is that the Minchat Chinukh, in principle, holds that in light of the words of the Chinukh there really could be a situation where there is punishment and the act is not forbidden. Here, in this case, there is no problem, but that is what he infers from the Chinukh. That is what matters for our purposes here. I can argue with him about one who suppresses prophecy. By the way, in the Jerusalem Institute edition you’ll see that they claim there is a warning prohibition, and therefore this is not difficult in the Minchat Chinukh. But for my purposes, the precise parameters of suppressing prophecy aren’t important. What matters to me is that the Minchat Chinukh basically takes the words of the Chinukh in commandment 65 and learns from them that there really can be a situation where there is punishment and nevertheless the act is not actually a forbidden act. Another example appears in the topic / passage in tractate Temurah. The Talmud there raises the possibility—we won’t go into it because it is a bit more complicated—the Talmud raises the possibility there that a person could be obligated according to Jewish law to swear a true oath and nevertheless receive lashes for it. In Temurah 3b, the Talmud discusses there exactly whether one receives lashes for a prohibition accomplished through speech—one who curses, one who substitutes, one who swears, and all kinds of things like that. These are prohibitions of speech, so the question is whether one receives lashes or not. So among other things, the Talmud raises some possibility that the lashes for an oath are given where the person swore a true oath: a religious court required him to swear, and he swore. Not only was he permitted to swear; he was obligated. The religious court obligated him to swear. So he swears and receives lashes. How can that be? There it is clear that he did not do… the religious court obligated him, and he even did a commandment, and he is obligated to obey the religious court. So not only is it not forbidden; it was his choice to do it and it was permitted. Not permitted—it was obligatory. He was obligated to swear. So how could one say that he was lashed for such a thing? And once again we see this—one time in a note by Dov Lando, one of the heads of the Slabodka yeshiva—he also brings this as an example of a case as we formulated it, where there is punishment even though the act in itself is not a forbidden act. True, this depends somewhat on how one explains the Talmud there; there may be a difference between Rabbeinu Gershom and Rashi there in the Talmud, because some of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) imply that your swearing is in fact forbidden, because you could have paid and not sworn. The fact that you insist on holding onto your money and swearing—that is what you receive lashes for. Not for the oath itself. Had you no other option, maybe you would not receive lashes. But you do have another option: pay, and you won’t need to swear. And about that the Talmud says that you receive lashes. So maybe there is again some prohibition here. To what extent this is a prohibition, and exactly for what prohibition he is lashed here—for a false oath, maybe—I don’t know. In any case, according to this it may be that there is no proof here. But according to the interpretation of Rabbeinu Gershom there, from which it sounds like he really is lashed not because he didn’t pay, but for the very true oath—you swear and receive lashes, like buying and selling, as we said. Yes, but one has to remember that there too, in the Talmud in Temurah, this is rejected in the end. So it comes up as some possibility that he would receive lashes for a true oath, but it is rejected. Except that if you look there in the Talmud, it is rejected because of a verse. There is an explicit verse saying that here one does not receive lashes. So once again that leaves us with some possibility that in principle there could be a situation where there is punishment and the act in itself is not forbidden. Here, regarding a true oath, there is a verse that says this is not the case. But apparently, from the fact that a verse is needed, it seems that at the conceptual level such a situation could still exist. If we find a place where there is punishment and we do not find a warning prohibition, it may really be that this is punishment of the sort of buying and selling—unless there is some verse saying it is not. So in the end, the possibility remains here that there can be punishment even though the act in itself is not really forbidden. Fine, so up to here this is some initial groundwork. Now we can enter the warning prohibition regarding affliction on Yom Kippur. So as I said again beforehand, regarding affliction on Yom Kippur we do find a commandment to fast; we do not find a warning prohibition. There is no prohibition. What do we find? Karet. “Every person who shall not be afflicted shall be cut off.” Okay? So there is karet and there is a positive commandment, but there is no warning prohibition in the form of a negative commandment. Now I expect clarification: we have heard the punishment; from where do we derive the warning prohibition? Surely there has to be some warning prohibition. But as I said before, since there is a positive commandment here, there is a conceptual possibility of saying that in the case of Yom Kippur the karet is given for failing to fulfill the positive commandment, and in fact there is no warning prohibition. All in all, we have two other examples of karet given for a positive commandment: Passover and circumcision. There is a Mishnah in tractate Keritot that Passover and circumcision are cases of karet for neglecting a positive commandment. So if that is so, there is room to say that on Yom Kippur too the karet is for neglecting a positive commandment. Therefore, according to this approach, it would come out that there really is no prohibition regarding affliction, and the karet that is stated is karet for the positive commandment, not for a prohibition. Maimonides—sorry, before Maimonides—in the Mishnah on Yoma 81a, if you want to look there, take a look there later, and I’ll also move on to the Talmud. The Mishnah says this: “If he ate and drank in one lapse of awareness, he is liable for only one sin-offering. If he ate and performed labor, he is liable for two sin-offerings,” etc. Meaning: if he ate and drank in one lapse of awareness, he is liable for only one sin-offering. What does that mean? We find that karet is given for a positive commandment, not only for prohibitions. A sin-offering is only for prohibitions. Right? There is no sin-offering for a positive commandment. A sin-offering is only for a prohibition. One who violated a prohibition unintentionally, where the intentional violation incurs karet—the unintentional violation incurs a sin-offering. Meaning, if he ate and drank and that makes him liable for a sin-offering, that means there is a prohibition regarding affliction. An explicit Mishnah says there is a prohibition regarding affliction. Okay? So we do not have the option of saying that… Yom Kippur is the third example of karet given for a positive commandment. The Mishnah says there is a prohibition here. That still does not solve the question of where we derive the prohibition. Okay? That is still a question. But first of all, as a given, it is clear that there is a prohibition here. This is not one of the examples where we are punished with karet for a positive commandment. Now let’s see what happens with the source of the prohibition. I’m sharing again. Maimonides—I’m looking again in Maimonides, prohibition 194: “He warned us against eating on Yom Kippur. But the Torah did not state a warning prohibition for this act,” meaning for this action, “rather it mentioned the punishment and made karet obligatory for one who eats. And we knew that eating is warned against.” Amazing. Maimonides says the Torah did not state a warning prohibition. There is no warning prohibition for the negative commandment of affliction—for affliction. But there is a punishment, the punishment of karet. And since there is a punishment of karet, “we knew that eating is warned against,” because if there is a punishment, it is impossible that punishment is given without a warning prohibition. So if there is punishment, then clearly there is also a warning prohibition. That of course directly contradicts everything we have seen until now. And everything we have seen until now is that the Talmud says: “We have heard the punishment; from where do we derive the warning prohibition?” Even when the punishment is written, I still have to have a source for the warning prohibition, and I do not learn from the existence of a punishment that the act is also forbidden. Okay? “As it says: ‘For every person who shall not be afflicted on that very day shall be cut off.’ And at the beginning of Keritot, when they counted those liable to karet, they included among them one who eats on Yom Kippur.” So there is karet for eating on Yom Kippur. “And they explained there that everything for which one is liable to karet is a negative commandment, except for Passover and circumcision. Only two examples of positive commandments carrying karet. Behold, it has already been established for us that eating on Yom Kippur is a negative commandment.” This, by the way, one could also bring from our Mishnah about liability for a sin-offering, right? He brings it from Keritot. Doesn’t matter. “And therefore one is liable for its intentional violation to karet, and for its unintentional violation to a fixed sin-offering, as they explained at the beginning of Keritot and as was explained in tractate Horayot, that this rule applies only to negative commandments alone. As it says regarding those liable to a fixed sin-offering: ‘One of all the commandments of the Lord that shall not be done.’” A sin-offering is only for prohibitions. Okay? So therefore, once there is a sin-offering, clearly there is a prohibition here. The Mishnah in Keritot also says that karet on a positive commandment exists only for circumcision and Passover. From here it follows that Yom Kippur has a prohibition. But what is the source for the prohibition? There is no prohibition, says Maimonides. There is no source in the Torah for the prohibition. So who said there is a prohibition? Maybe the prohibition—maybe the karet is given for a positive commandment? He says: impossible. From the Talmud this cannot be, because the Talmud obligates a sin-offering. The Talmud also says that only Passover and circumcision have karet on a positive commandment, not Yom Kippur. So the Talmud obviously assumes there is also a prohibition here. So I’m not asking about Maimonides, because Maimonides is right. He can prove from the Talmud that there is a prohibition here. I’m asking about the Talmud: from where does the Talmud know there is a prohibition here? There is no warning prohibition in the Torah. You can’t learn from the fact that there is punishment that there is a prohibition. We’ve seen: we have heard the punishment; from where do we derive the warning prohibition? So the fact that the Mishnah says only Passover and circumcision are positive commandments carrying karet—very nice. Where did it get that from? Maybe Yom Kippur is like that too. Where did the Mishnah get that from? So this still hasn’t solved the question of the source of the prohibition. More than that, the question becomes sharper in light of what Maimonides says explicitly. He says here positively, not as a difficulty: there is no source for the prohibition. Maimonides says: “The Torah did not state a warning prohibition for this act.” There is no warning prohibition for the negative commandment. So according to Maimonides this is already really unclear. It could be that I missed something. The Torah somehow produces a warning prohibition, the Talmud somehow derives a warning prohibition in one way or another—I missed it. Fine, that’s possible. But Maimonides says: no. The Torah did not state a warning prohibition for this matter. And especially according to Maimonides’ own position, that even a warning prohibition learned from an exposition is not a warning prohibition. A warning prohibition has to be something written in the Torah. Maimonides says: there isn’t one; the Torah did not write a warning prohibition for affliction. So I ask: according to Maimonides, from where did the Talmud and the Mishnah know that there is a prohibition?

[Speaker C] Rabbi, how is it generally supposed to be written?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The difficulty, once again, is on the Talmud and not on Maimonides. Of course the difficulty is about the… the punishment. The punishment does not testify to the existence of a prohibition; for that you need a source.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, later in the discussion—Rabbi, can you hear?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides brings the Sifra in that same commandment, later on. “And the language of the Sifra, Parashat Emor: ‘For every person who shall not be afflicted shall be cut off’—this is the punishment for affliction. But the warning prohibition for affliction for the day itself we have not heard. When it says the punishment for labor—something that is not needed, since it could be derived by an a fortiori argument: if affliction, which does not apply on festivals and Sabbaths, is punished, then labor, which does apply on festivals, all the more so should be punished. If so, why was the punishment stated? Just a second, I’ll get to that. Why was the punishment stated? To derive from it a warning prohibition for affliction. Just as the punishment for labor comes after a warning prohibition, so too the punishment for affliction comes after a warning prohibition. Behold, what we said has been explained.” So he brings from the Sifra an exposition, where the exposition derives a warning prohibition for affliction on Yom Kippur from the surplus in the punishment. Yes? The surplus of the punishment regarding labor on Sabbaths and festivals is unnecessary; it comes to teach me to make an analogy between Yom Kippur and Sabbaths and festivals. The surplus makes it available. And once it is available, one can make the analogy. Okay? And therefore we learn that there is a warning prohibition for affliction. Now, this might have solved everything I said before. Because it basically says there is a warning prohibition. The warning prohibition is learned from this exposition. So why does Maimonides write above that there is no warning prohibition? There is a warning prohibition. Except he says that in the Torah we did not find a warning prohibition; in an exposition we did. That is what he brings from here. But Maimonides’ own view in the second root is that even a warning prohibition learned from an exposition is not a warning prohibition. True, all the medieval authorities (Rishonim) disagree with him on this. But Maimonides’ view is that a warning prohibition learned from an exposition is not a warning prohibition; it is not a Torah-level prohibition. So according to Maimonides, the difficulty still remains. And here is the solution. In the introduction to the counting of the commandments, at the end of the fourteenth root—there are fourteen roots—at the end of the roots there is an introduction to the counting of the commandments. By the way, in some editions it is printed as one continuation, a continuation of the fourteenth root; it is not clear where the introduction to the counting of the commandments begins. In the Frankel edition it starts on a new page, and there they sharpened this more. He says as follows, because there really is a connection between the things, a conceptual connection. It somehow “is also fitting that this be attached to it.” Look, I’m reading now. This is the introduction. Attached to what? Attached to the fourteenth root. The fourteenth root deals with the Torah’s punishments. Therefore this section also serves as a continuation of the explanation in the fourteenth root, but it is also an opening to Maimonides’ counting of the commandments. So there is a sort of literary editorial move here. In any case, Maimonides says this: “And it is that everything for which one is liable to death by religious court or karet is necessarily a negative commandment, except for Passover and circumcision, which are subject to karet even though they are positive commandments, as they mentioned at the beginning of tractate Keritot. And under no circumstances do we have any positive commandment besides these for whose violation one incurs karet, and all the more so death by religious court.” Why “all the more so”? Because karet is death at the hands of Heaven; there is less need for a warning prohibition. Karet is a punishment at the hands of Heaven; there is less need for a warning prohibition. In death by religious court, that is punishment by human beings; there it is obvious that a warning prohibition is needed. “And everything written in the Torah that one who does such-and-such an act shall die or incur karet, we know in truth that the act is warned against and that it is a negative commandment.” There must be a warning prohibition. “Now,” he continues in the second passage, “sometimes the warning prohibition is explained in the text and the punishment is not explained, and sometimes the punishment is mentioned and the warning prohibition is not mentioned.” Sometimes there are both punishment and warning prohibition—that is the normal case. Sometimes there is only a warning prohibition and no punishment. What happens in that case? Lashes. We spoke about that, right? But yes, he says, like desecrating the Sabbath and idolatry—there it says, “You shall do no labor” and “You shall not worship them,” and afterward he is liable to stoning if he performed labor or worshiped. Like in our case, on Yom Kippur, or one who strikes his father or mother, or curses his father or mother, or things like that. “But the root accepted among us”—by the way, one of the sources he brings is Yoma 81, our sugya—“is that Scripture does not punish unless it first warned, and it is impossible that there not be a warning prohibition for everything for which there is a punishment. And if there is a punishment, that is not enough; there must also be a warning prohibition. Therefore they say everywhere: we have heard the punishment; from where do we derive the warning prohibition? The verse teaches such-and-such. And when the warning prohibition is not explained in the text, they derive it by analogy from one of the Torah’s forms of derivation, as they mentioned regarding the warning prohibition for one who curses his father or mother and one who strikes his father or mother, where it is not explained in the text at all. For it did not say, ‘Do not curse your father,’ and it did not say, ‘Do not strike your father,’ but it imposed death on one who struck or cursed. Behold, we know they are negative commandments, and we derived for them and others like them the warning prohibition from another place by way of derivation.” What does that mean? In a place where punishment is written and warning prohibition is not written, sometimes we learn the warning prohibition through an exposition, through one of the methods of exposition. Then that is fine, says Maimonides. Maimonides asks: “And this does not contradict their statement, ‘We do not warn from derivation,’ nor their frequent statement, ‘Do we issue warnings from derivation?’” The same question. What is the contradiction? In a moment he will explain why it is not a contradiction, but what is the contradiction? This contradiction is a result of Maimonides’ position in the second root, as I said earlier, that when we learn something through exposition, that is not considered a warning prohibition. More than that: Maimonides claims that this is the meaning of the rule, “We do not warn from derivation.” Usually, how do we understand “we do not warn from derivation”? From an a fortiori argument. If there is an a fortiori argument, we do not derive a warning prohibition from it; you cannot derive a warning prohibition from it for purposes of punishment. You can derive a prohibition, but punishment will not be given for that matter. But Maimonides claims: “we do not warn from derivation”—what does the word “derivation” mean? What does “from derivation” mean? The Talmud says “and is it enough,” what is that? An a fortiori argument, always an a fortiori argument. Maimonides says no. Maimonides claims that “derivation” means all the methods of exposition, not just an a fortiori argument. An a fortiori argument is the first method—or all the methods of exposition. And “we do not warn from derivation” means that anything learned through any method of exposition cannot serve as a warning prohibition. And Nachmanides indeed attacks him on this point, and Nachmanides says that “we do not warn from derivation” applies only to an a fortiori argument; all the other methods are regular Torah-level law and they do serve as a warning prohibition; only an a fortiori argument does not. But Maimonides argues not so, and he feels that what he says here seemingly contradicts that. Because here he says that in a place where we found punishment and did not find warning prohibition, one can indeed warn from derivation, one can learn it through a method of exposition. So how does this fit with the rule “we do not warn from derivation”? So he says as follows: “We only say ‘we do not warn from derivation’ in order to forbid something for which no specific prohibition was stated except by way of derivation.” Meaning, “we do not warn from derivation” applies when we do not have a prohibition in the Torah and we have a source through derivation, in one of the methods of exposition; that will not count as a warning prohibition, and one will not receive lashes for that warning prohibition. “However, when we find the punishment explicitly in the Torah for one who does this act—if it has a punishment and only the warning prohibition is missing—we know necessarily that this is a forbidden act, one that is warned against. We then derive by analogy the warning prohibition, in order to reinforce for us the principle of their statement that Scripture does not punish unless it first warned. And after we obtain the warning prohibition for that matter, then one who violated and did it becomes liable, whether to karet or to death. And know this introduction and remember it together with the previous roots in all that will be mentioned.” Maimonides says this: when we are in a situation where we have no punishment and no warning prohibition, and we learned something through one of the methods of exposition, then one does not receive lashes for it. One does not receive lashes for it because we do not punish based on derivation. But if the punishment appears in the Torah, and without a warning prohibition we still said that is impossible—we have heard the punishment; from where do we derive the warning prohibition?—but here, if the warning prohibition is supplied by way of exposition, that is okay. Why? Because the punishment itself reveals to us that there is a prohibition here. So the exposition is interpreted for us as an exposition that produces Torah-level law. The hint the Torah gives us by writing a punishment, together with the source from exposition, is enough to produce here a prohibition that is a Torah-level warning prohibition. If there were exposition alone, then no. By the way, one would have to elaborate here as to why exactly this is so, but for that we would need to study the second root in detail, and I won’t go into that here. Briefly, I’ll only say that Maimonides claims that a supportive exposition is Torah-level. Only a creative exposition is not Torah-level. And therefore Maimonides says that here this is really a supportive exposition, because after all, the punishment reveals to me that there is a warning prohibition. I know—true, it always has to be written in some source—but the punishment already reveals to me that there is a warning prohibition. Now when I find an exposition, that exposition is really only a supportive exposition, because that exposition tells me what the source of the warning prohibition is, the one for which the punishment is given, and the punishment is written in the Torah. So therefore Maimonides says that this is Torah-level law.

[Speaker C] Not in every punishment do I know that it’s a punishment—that’s the problem. Huh? Not in every punishment do I immediately know that it’s a punishment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker C] Again I return to the example of rape, of the rapist and the seducer—there too there was…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is whether there are examples like that. With the rapist and the seducer one could say that maybe there too the warning prohibition would be derived by exposition, and then it would still be okay because the punishment is written. No, but the concern is that there

[Speaker C] it would be a creative exposition, because from what is written in the Torah I don’t know that this is punishment; I could interpret it as payment. That’s the point—not all punishments announce themselves as punishments. Sometimes I need the context.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And how could it be payment in the case of the rapist and the seducer?

[Speaker C] It could be payment because he damaged

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] her value.

[Speaker C] So what? And with their consent. Fine, but all in all he damaged her father, and in the Torah that’s the problem. But there it says… if not, if there is a fixed amount. There are many… no, okay, it’s a fine, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if it’s a fine, then it’s punishment.

[Speaker C] No, we spoke about an ox.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A fine too is presumably punishment.

[Speaker C] We spoke about an innocuous ox, where it’s a fine and… where that isn’t punishment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it is punishment.

[Speaker C] Oh, there it is punishment?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Every fine is punishment. The purpose of the punishment there is to ensure that you guard your ox, but it is still clearly punishment; it’s not just anything. After all, suppose you didn’t guard it and the ox still didn’t go out—you would still pay half damages, in order to motivate you to guard it. But in this case, where there is a fixed amount, I don’t know whether that reveals to me that it’s punishment. Every fixed amount is a fine; that’s a rule in the Talmud. Every fixed amount… in Rashi, sorry—in the Talmud I don’t remember at the moment—Rashi in Bava Kamma there, on pebbles kicked up by an animal. Rashi says there, and in many places Rashi writes, that anything that is a fixed amount is a fine. By the way, half damages is not a fixed amount. Yes, it’s just not the full amount. There are two criteria for a fine: either the amount is fixed, or it is not the exact amount of the damage—less or more—even if it is not fixed. That’s a basic rule.

[Speaker C] There are amounts that aren’t… for example, if a person makes a vow and assesses himself, then it’s a fixed amount and it’s not a fine. There it’s something else.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because he obligated himself, not from the section of payments. Someone who vows what the Temple pays—assessed valuations—fine. Yes, but it’s fixed. Clearly it’s not a fine; you didn’t do anything wrong. The question is what you vowed—after all, you vowed a fixed amount, fine. That doesn’t enter into the question of whether it’s a fine or monetary payment.

[Speaker C] And the payment for that case of a slave that killed is the same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everything—every such thing—is a penalty. Any fixed amount is a penalty. So Nachmanides, here in his glosses… I brought him below. Nachmanides says: “And I saw that the Rabbi also wrote in the introduction he prefaced to enumerate the commandments,” and so on—he brings this Maimonides that we just read. And this—you see the highlighted line?—“and all of this is a mistake and a distorted compromise that he introduced in order to uphold his view,” because he casts doubt on the exegetical principles. Everything is built on Maimonides’ position that something derived through the hermeneutical principles is not Torah-level; the methods of interpretation are not Torah-level. Nachmanides disputes him sharply. Nachmanides says that his whole book is sweetness and altogether delightful, except for this one thing that hangs over the whole book—this mistake that destroys the entire Torah. It appears there explicitly in the second root. So here too he basically says: “This is all a mistake and a distorted compromise,” but Maimonides is just following his own method consistently. “For they only meant, when they said ‘one does not derive a prohibition from logical derivation,’ that one does not derive it from an a fortiori argument.” Nachmanides says: it’s not that one does not derive a prohibition from legal inference in general; it’s only from an a fortiori argument, not from all interpretive principles—only from a fortiori. That really is the accepted explanation of all the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and it’s the plain sense of the Talmudic passages. All the sources in the Talmud that you find saying “one does not punish based on legal derivation” mean an a fortiori argument. You won’t find “one does not punish based on legal derivation” applied to some other interpretive rule. Maimonides will say: true, but it really applies to all the rules. That’s forced—as though by chance they only said it regarding an a fortiori argument. So Nachmanides says that really isn’t correct; it applies only to an a fortiori argument. And on that basis, in line with his own approach, he disagrees with Maimonides. He disagrees with Maimonides on two points. First, he argues that a prohibition derived through an interpretive principle is indeed Torah-level; even when no punishment is written explicitly in the verse, it is still Torah-level. And second, he disagrees with Maimonides in holding that “a prohibition derived by legal reasoning” means only one derived by an a fortiori argument, not by the other interpretive methods. Clear? And therefore, for example, if there is an explicit punishment in the Torah, it turns out there are two kinds of practical differences between Maimonides and Nachmanides. If there’s nothing explicit at all in the Torah, and we learn a prohibition by verbal analogy or by a general paradigm—not by an a fortiori argument—then according to Nachmanides one would receive lashes for that, while according to Maimonides one would not, because that is called “a prohibition derived by legal reasoning.” According to Nachmanides, only with an a fortiori argument would you not; with the other interpretive methods, one would receive lashes. A second practical difference: what happens when there is a punishment—when there is a punishment and… wait, all right, that’s actually the same practical difference—and there is no prohibition except one derived by legal reasoning. Then according to Maimonides, that’s fine because of the punishment; according to Nachmanides, that’s fine regardless of the punishment, because he claims that a prohibition derived by legal reasoning, or from the interpretive principles, is a full-fledged prohibition. Clear? A prohibition derived from an a fortiori argument, for example—that’s the second practical difference. What happens when there is a prohibition derived from an a fortiori argument, and the punishment is explicit in the Torah? According to Maimonides, one would receive lashes or be punished; according to Nachmanides, not so. Because according to Nachmanides, even when the punishment is explicit in the Torah, one still does not derive a prohibition from legal reasoning; meaning, for him that principle applies only to an a fortiori argument, but if it is an a fortiori argument, it still does not count as a prohibition. Even if the punishment is explicit in the Torah, you still need to find some other prohibition; an a fortiori argument won’t help here. And in fact the sources that appear for us, for example, are sources of the “if it is not needed for this case” type, not an a fortiori argument. It seems maybe there is an a fortiori argument there—I don’t know if we’ll get to it. All right, now let’s look at the Talmud on page 81; that’s enough introduction. I’ll do this briefly. Do you have the Talmud text in front of you? Good. I simply prefer seeing the actual page here and not sharing it on the screen, so come to the class with Talmud volumes, okay? Even in this Zoom format. Reish Lakish said on page 81, after the Mishnah—the Mishnah we read above with the sin-offering—Reish Lakish said: Why was no prohibition stated regarding affliction? It says this explicitly about the question. Because it was impossible. It was impossible to formulate a prohibition; we had no option. How could Scripture write it? There’s no way to formulate the prohibition for affliction. If Scripture were to write “he shall not eat”—eating is in the amount of an olive, not a date-sized measure, so that would miss the required measure. If Scripture were to write “you shall not afflict yourselves,” that would imply: get up and eat. “You shall not afflict yourselves” means the opposite—it would be a warning against fasting, meaning it would expect you to eat and not to afflict yourselves. You can’t prohibit eating with the wording “you shall not afflict yourselves.” On the contrary: “you shall afflict yourselves.” But “you shall afflict yourselves” is positive language, so how do I insert the word “not” in order to turn it into a prohibition? Rav Hoshaya challenged this: let Scripture write, “Take heed lest you not afflict yourselves,” which does create a cancellation of two negatives. “Take heed lest you not afflict yourselves.” Really three negatives. “Take heed lest” is one. So that would create a positive force by way of a prohibition against not afflicting oneself. So the answer is: if so, there would be two prohibitions here—both “take heed” and “not,” so two prohibitions. “Take heed,” “lest,” and “do not” are all prohibitive formulations. Rav Beivai bar Abaye challenged this: let Scripture write, “Take heed regarding the commandment of affliction.” “Take heed regarding the commandment of affliction” is a prohibition. And if so—the term “take heed” when applied to a prohibition is a prohibition, but “take heed” when applied to a positive commandment is itself a positive commandment. Because the commandment of affliction is a positive commandment. Guarding a positive commandment is a positive commandment; it is not a prohibition. Rav Ashi challenged this: let it write, “Do not depart from affliction.” Difficult. That’s wording that indeed could have been written, and from the fact that it wasn’t, that remains difficult. And again, it’s not a refutation but only a difficulty, and the later authorities already note that a difficulty can be answered—but not important; that’s where the Talmud leaves it. Now Reish Lakish—let’s look for a moment at the structure of this whole matter. Reish Lakish basically says first—what does Reish Lakish assume from the outset? There must be a prohibition. Which, in light of what we said earlier, is clear—even though there is the punishment of excision, there still must also be a prohibition. But then he asks: we didn’t find the prohibition. Reish Lakish says: true, there is no prohibition stated. There’s no prohibition stated, but that doesn’t bother me. Why doesn’t it bother me? Because there’s no way to formulate the prohibition. Now let’s set aside the difficulty for a moment and say that really there is no way to formulate it. What would I say in that case? That there isn’t one? Or at least that there is doubt whether there is a punishment. You could say: maybe there is one—the Torah just couldn’t formulate it because there is no way to formulate it—but maybe there isn’t one, because there simply isn’t one. So at most we have a doubtful prohibition here. Right? So how does Reish Lakish explain the Mishnah? The Mishnah says there is liability for a sin-offering. And we inferred above from that that liability for a sin-offering means there is a negative commandment. That’s the Mishnah. Now Reish Lakish is an amora trying to understand the Mishnah. He says: no problem, I’ll explain the Mishnah. There is a prohibition. Why isn’t it written? Because there’s no way to write it. So what? If there’s no way to write it, who told the Mishnah that there is a prohibition? My difficulty is with the Mishnah according to Reish Lakish—just as I asked earlier about the Mishnah according to Maimonides. Right? According to Reish Lakish, how does the Mishnah know that there is a prohibition if it isn’t written anywhere? You can have explanations: if there were a prohibition, then I understand why they didn’t write it, because it couldn’t be written—but who says there is one? Especially since in our case there is a positive commandment. So how does the Mishnah know that the excision for Yom Kippur is not excision for violating a positive commandment? And we have three examples of excision for violating a positive commandment—not only Passover and circumcision, but also Yom Kippur. It’s unclear. Reish Lakish’s whole mechanism is unclear. Reish Lakish is trying to offer an explanation; he is not just leaving the question unanswered. He’s saying, in effect: there is a prohibition here, and it doesn’t trouble me that the Torah doesn’t write it, because there was no way to write it. So he sees that as an explanation. What exactly is the explanation there? It’s strange. After that the Talmud brings another opinion: “And from where does the tanna derive it? From here.” By the way, this is a tannaitic opinion; it’s a baraita. Which is itself strange. Reish Lakish offers an explanation, sort of saying the difficulty isn’t really a difficulty, and in practice he would stand behind his explanation if there were no possible formulation. But why? We have a tannaitic source already, which the tanna in the baraita brings. Reish Lakish is an amora. So why does he stick with what he says? All right, we’ll come back to that. “You shall afflict yourselves, and you shall do no work.” Might one have thought that there is a warning regarding an extension of the prohibition of work? Scripture therefore says, “any work”—in short, all this is about adding time onto the holy day; I’m skipping a bit. “One might have thought that he is not warned regarding the extension of work…” But wait, no, sorry. This still isn’t about our issue; we’ll return to it in a moment. “But a prohibition regarding affliction on the day itself we have not learned.” Yes? A prohibition regarding affliction—that’s what we’re looking for. This is all from the baraita. From where? Scripture says… it does not need to state a punishment regarding work, for it is learned from affliction. And just as affliction… what does the end of the earlier section of the Sifra that we already saw say? “Is it not all the more so?” Why was it stated? To leave the term available for a verbal analogy and to derive from it. A punishment is stated regarding affliction, and a punishment is stated regarding work. Just as with work Scripture did not punish unless it had first warned, so too with affliction Scripture did not punish unless it had first warned. Fine, there are objections and so on; in short, they bring other sources. So several questions arise here. First, why does Reish Lakish remain with the difficulty and not accept these tannaitic sources? Second, these tannaitic sources are very good, because according to Nachmanides there is no problem with them at all, and even according to Maimonides—since this is a derivation—still, because there is a punishment, a derivation is sufficient to provide the prohibition. That’s exactly what Maimonides says about the Sifra. We saw that. Right? So that is really the obvious explanation. Why doesn’t Reish Lakish accept it? The problem may be that Reish Lakish really learns like Maimonides. He stands with Maimonides’ conception that when a prohibition comes from a derivation, it is not a real prohibition. And he does not accept that even in a place where there is a punishment. Maimonides raises that issue, and then he answers: no, when there is a punishment, then a prohibition derived through interpretation is fine. But Reish Lakish adopts the position that no—even where there is a punishment, a prohibition derived through interpretation is not sufficient. And then the tanna of the baraita comes and says: no, where there is a punishment, then a prohibition derived through interpretation is fine. Okay? And therefore Maimonides ultimately really rules like the tanna of the baraita, especially since Reish Lakish remains with a difficulty. And from here he derives exactly his idea: if there is a punishment in the Torah, then a prohibition derived through interpretation is also sufficient.

[Speaker C] What Reish Lakish is asking, after he already knows the answer, is: why doesn’t the Torah say it explicitly?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then the Torah still has to say it afterward.

[Speaker C] In the editorial arrangement of the sugya.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You need to bring the source first, and then ask, okay, but why isn’t it written explicitly in the Torah?

[Speaker C] It’s a major difficulty that isn’t…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but it’s still a major difficulty. And in any case that’s not reasonable, because otherwise you would have to say this regarding every derivation you bring; you could ask—

[Speaker C] Why didn’t they write these things explicitly. This is exceptional, because everywhere else the prohibitions are written explicitly, and here suddenly they aren’t. That’s also a kind of answer that fits such a question that you raised.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also regarding one who strikes his father or mother. In any event, they should have asked it there too; that really is a question. Why? That’s the question, but the Talmud doesn’t ask it.

[Speaker C] Fine, so because there’s nothing here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not reasonable that that’s the situation here, especially given the sequence, the way the sequence works here. In any case, that’s one possibility: that Reish Lakish really learns like Maimonides, but in a more extreme way—even when the punishment is written. And Maimonides follows the baraita, where the baraita says that when the punishment is written, then even a prohibition derived from legal reasoning is fine. Now there’s another question here. The baraita needs an a fortiori argument—look here. Now I’m going back to the underlined passages. You see? This speaks about the extension, so it’s not directly our issue, but look what it says here: “One might have thought that he is not warned regarding an extension of the prohibition of work, but is warned regarding an extension of affliction. And this can be derived logically: just as work, which applies on Sabbaths and festivals, does not generate such a warning, affliction, which does not apply on Sabbaths and festivals, should all the more so generate such a warning.” That is an a fortiori argument. But one does not derive a prohibition from legal reasoning. So how can there be a prohibition here based on an a fortiori argument? This is difficult for Nachmanides, but in fact it is also difficult for Maimonides. Why? Because here we are talking about the extension of the day, and with the extension there is no excision. So the punishment of excision does not apply to the extension. If so, then even according to Maimonides, this should count as a prohibition derived by legal reasoning. So how can Maimonides derive this prohibition regarding the extension of work through legal reasoning? It’s difficult both for Maimonides and for Nachmanides. You have to notice carefully that in this a fortiori argument we are not really learning the law from the a fortiori argument. We are only saying that there is an extra word here, and that extra word is then used to create a verbal analogy. Clear? And therefore it may be that this is not called punishment derived from legal reasoning, at least according to Nachmanides. At least according to Nachmanides, for whom only an a fortiori argument counts as deriving punishment from legal reasoning—because here, from the a fortiori argument itself, we are not learning the law. In fact, both in Tosafot Yom HaKippurim and in Gevurat Ari they raise this very question: why use the a fortiori argument only to free up that word? Learn the law itself from the a fortiori argument. And on the contrary—that is exactly the reason: because one does not punish by legal reasoning, or does not derive a prohibition by legal reasoning, so you could not have learned the prohibition directly that way. You need the legal reasoning only to make the word superfluous; then, once the word is available, you make a verbal analogy, and from the verbal analogy we actually derive the punishment. And from a verbal analogy, at least according to Nachmanides, one may indeed derive punishment. For Maimonides it is still difficult, because there is no excision for the extension. Although it may be that since there is excision for the day itself, and on the day itself there is already a prohibition because we derive it through legal reasoning, then the extension to the added time—if according to Maimonides we understand that the extension is not a separate prohibition but rather a continuation of the excision, though it is the same prohibition—then it is only an expansion of the prohibition that we already have for the day itself, now applied to the extension. And there is some support for this, because the baraita I brought you, when it excludes the extension from excision, brings a verse for that: “on that very day… and that soul shall be cut off.” But that is talking about the same prohibition; it’s just that the excision for that prohibition applies only to “that very day” and not to the extension. And therefore, even according to Maimonides, that is fine. One final comment and I’ll finish with this: there would only be room to distinguish and say that with punishments of excision the situation is different. With punishments of excision, perhaps one may punish by legal reasoning, and then there is no problem. Why? First of all, regarding the extension that won’t help, because the extension has no excision. But in principle, maybe this whole issue of not punishing by legal reasoning does not apply to punishments of excision. Why? That already depends. There are later authorities—Tosafot Yom HaKippurim raises this—who ask: why do we need a source here for a prohibition? The Holy One, blessed be He, says there will be a punishment of excision; He already knows whether there is a transgression here or not. Why does the Torah need to write a prohibition in order to teach the Holy One, blessed be He, that there is a transgression here so that He can impose excision? Excision is a punishment at the hand of Heaven, so why do I need a prohibition? But I think that’s not correct. There are several proofs—there is a Rashba and several medieval authorities (Rishonim), see later in the summary—who say that even regarding excision there is the rule that one does not derive a prohibition from legal reasoning. And why? The simple conception is that the person himself must understand that he is committing a halakhic prohibition. That is a condition for his being punished with excision by the Holy One, blessed be He. It’s not so that the Holy One, blessed be He, will know that there is a prohibition here. The person needs to know that there is a prohibition here, because otherwise there is no excision. Then he does not deserve excision if he did not know there was a prohibition. Then yes, maybe it was an act that was not proper, but he did not know that there was a prohibition here. So the person must know that there is a prohibition here, and therefore this rule is said even regarding excision as punishment as well: that one needs a prohibition in order to punish, as we discussed in Avodah Zarah 20, in Tosafot, in Hullin, and elsewhere. Clear? So therefore this law applies to excision as well. By the way, one more comment: Tosafot Yom HaKippurim doesn’t go in that direction. Tosafot Yom HaKippurim asks the question: why, in the case of excision, do we really need an explicit prohibition? Why isn’t a prohibition derived by legal reasoning enough—or why is no prohibition needed at all? So he says that the baraita here holds that one may punish by legal reasoning. Tosafot Yom HaKippurim asks about this baraita: why does it derive punishment from legal reasoning? That was the previous question. Why does it punish? And he claims that this baraita holds that one may punish by legal reasoning—that indeed one may punish that way. He claims it is a tannaitic dispute; it’s not so simple, but that’s his claim: this baraita holds that one may punish by legal reasoning. If so, I return to Reish Lakish: then it is clear why Reish Lakish did not accept the baraita, because he holds that one does not punish by legal reasoning. Or, more precisely, he rules in accordance with the accepted law that one does not punish by legal reasoning. So Reish Lakish said: fine, then there has to be an explicit prohibition in the Torah, and an explicit prohibition in the Torah we did not find—we did not find one, because it is impossible. Okay? And therefore one does not punish by legal reasoning. But then of course the question arises: so what? What does “it’s impossible” help? It could still be that there really is no negative commandment here. Maybe here it really is enough for me that there is a punishment, as Maimonides said regarding a prohibition derived by legal reasoning. Since there is a punishment, and together with that I know there is no way to formulate the prohibition as a negative commandment, then in this doubt—whether there is or is not a negative commandment—I incline to the side that there is one. According to Reish Lakish, the same reasoning that Maimonides used regarding a prohibition derived by legal reasoning where there is a punishment, I would use where the prohibition is only doubtful: once there is a punishment, then obviously this prohibition is not merely doubtful; there must be a prohibition, otherwise there would be no punishment. Okay, I’ll stop here. If anyone wants to ask or comment, then I’ll open it here—actually I can’t do that until I open my city computer. We’ll try to do it with the echo. Ah, wait, one second, wait—before you leave, one second, before you leave, I’m writing down Binyamin here. Binyamin what?

[Speaker C] There were two Binyamins here.

[Speaker D] There was really loud noise just now, Rabbi; it was hard to hear you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait one second. Say that again?

[Speaker D] There was really strong noise just now.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Two Binyamins.

[Speaker B] Binyamin what?

[Speaker C] Binyamin ben Yitzhak. Ah, okay. Binyamin what? Steiner? Eisner. Aleph, yod, zayin, nun, resh.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Now I know there’s an echo; I don’t know how to do this without the echo, so anyone who wants to comment or ask is welcome.

[Speaker C] You’d turn it off as time goes on.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe mute the computer on the side. There, mute. So why is there still…? Because I’m speaking from here. All right, that’s it, so we’re… Rabbi, can we go? Yes.