Q&A: Enumeration of the Commandments
Enumeration of the Commandments
Question
Hello and blessings, Rabbi!
1. Sorry for my ignorance, but does a dispute about the enumeration of the commandments lead to an actual halakhic dispute in practice—for example, whether in a case of doubt one rules leniently or stringently, and the like? Or is it merely semantic?
If it is serious—why don’t we find such disputes in the Talmud? Did all these disputes begin only after the Talmud? It seems perhaps that they looked at each detail as to whether it was Torah-level or rabbinic without thinking, “is this actually my 614th commandment and now I need to remove another commandment,” or making calculations like that.
And if it is semantics—why the great passion to count the commandments if there is no practical difference? At least among those who enumerate the commandments you can see tremendous seriousness about the subject, even if that seriousness didn’t spill over to the medieval authorities who didn’t deal with it, nor to the Talmud.
2. Also—in the introduction to the principles in Maimonides, it sounds from his words as though he was somehow drawn into this in order to write the Mishneh Torah, and although he very much wanted to deal with it all those years, he didn’t do so until he had a more serious reason, namely for the sake of the Mishneh Torah?
3. In the introduction to the translation, Rabbi Moses ibn Tibbon writes that Maimonides wrote Sefer HaMitzvot in Arabic even though it is an opening to the Mishneh Torah, which was written in Hebrew, in order to separate it intentionally so that it would not be considered part of the Mishneh Torah. Why was this so important that he would go so far as to write it in Arabic? (More generally, he wrote all his works in Arabic, so how does Rabbi Tibbon know that in principle he wanted to write Sefer HaMitzvot in Hebrew, and only because of the above did he write it in Arabic?)
Thank you so, so much, and good Sabbath!
Answer
1. Not every dispute about the enumeration of the commandments concerns the question whether something is Torah-level or rabbinic. On the contrary, in most cases that is not the dispute; rather, the questions are about classification and definition. I discussed this in my article on the enumeration of the commandments.
In the Talmud you do not find discussions about the enumeration of the commandments, and the medieval and later authorities already noted this. But we do find disputes in various laws over whether they are Torah-level or rabbinic. That will have implications for the count, but the Talmud does not address those implications (because they have no practical significance). There were several medieval authorities (the Tashbetz, Nachmanides at the beginning of his gloss to Principle 1, and others) who indeed wrote that the count of 613 is not a known and fixed number but rather the result of Rabbi Simlai. And if someone disagrees with him, he will have a different number of commandments. According to this, it has no implications whatsoever. However, the majority view is that the count is indeed agreed upon.
Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla, in his introduction, addresses this and writes that there can indeed be halakhic implications to disputes over the enumeration of the commandments, because explanations will be needed as to why a certain law was included or not, and this can depend on halakhic statements. And indeed, one finds quite a few such cases between Maimonides and Nachmanides. But the Talmud does not deal with this. And this too is not relevant if one follows the Tashbetz.
This may explain why they dealt with the enumeration of the commandments. And in fact, the Vilna Gaon’s brother wrote that his brother did not deal with this at all because it has no halakhic significance whatsoever.
2. What is the question? Indeed, as he writes. From his perspective, this is the skeleton of the Mishneh Torah.
3. I have no idea. The Commentary on the Mishnah was also written in Arabic. I think this is a matter of age, not of essential division. The works of his younger years he wrote in Arabic. However, there is a different hint in his introduction: that he wrote the Commentary on the Mishnah in Arabic and not in the language of the Sages so that it would be understood. And in the Mishneh Torah he wanted distribution throughout the entire Jewish world, including among those who did not speak Arabic.
I discussed this in the above-mentioned article, which later became the introduction to our book “It Shall Send Forth Its Roots.” See here: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%9C%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%91%D7%9D/
Discussion on Answer
He is certainly not following the Tashbetz’s approach, since he dealt with this count and assumed 613. He did this as the skeleton for the Mishneh Torah. Draw whatever conclusion you want from that.
Dr. Pinchas Hayman, who developed the layered method for studying the Talmud, argued that halakhic statements—even those of the Amoraim—were always written in Hebrew, the holy tongue. The discussion itself, by contrast, was written in Aramaic. He claimed that this distinction expresses a different metaphysical status for the halakhic statements as opposed to the discussion itself, which can be conducted in any language. It may be that Maimonides also made this distinction. The Commentary on the Mishnah and Sefer HaMitzvot are discussion, and therefore they are in Arabic. Mishneh Torah is already practical Jewish law, and as such it metaphysically needed to be written in Hebrew, the holy tongue.
By the way, toward the end of his life Maimonides already regretted writing the books in Arabic. He understood that the center of gravity of Torah scholarship had shifted to Christian Europe, which did not know Arabic.
Regarding question 2, what I’m asking is whether this does not prove that Maimonides does not attribute independent importance to the subject, and at most adopts the approach of the Tashbetz.