DISTRIBUTION OF LAWS IN JEWISH LEGAL LITERATURE

QUESTION:

With regard to the distribution of laws in Jewish legal literature, as to how many there are in the various codes in their chronological succession; that is to say, how many are there in the Mishna Torah, how many in the Shulchan Aruch, etc.? (Rabbi Allen S. Mailer, Culver City, California.)

ANSWER:

IF YOU MEAN how many were added in the various codes, this question is impossible to answer, because it was a fixed doctrine, mentioned clearly in the Talmud, that all the 613 commandments are in the Torah itself. In Maccos 23b the doctrine is based on the verse in Deuteronomy 33:4, “Torah tsiva lonu Moshe,” which means that the word Torah itself numerically adds up to the number 613. In other words, all of the commandments are already given in the Torah itself. And notice, too, that Aaron of Barcelona (13th century) wrote a book, Sefer Ha-Chinuch, showing how all the commandments are connected and derived from the Torah. And this book was expanded in the last generation to a still larger book, Minchas Chinuch, by Joseph Babad.

Of course, it sometimes required careful homiletics in the Halachic Midrashim and in the Talmud to prove the Biblical derivation of certain commandments, but they proved it to their satisfaction.

Perhaps the question should be asked as follows, and perhaps this was the intention of your question, namely, not which commandments were added in the later codes, but which were omitted from them. This can be more directly answered. Maimonides included all of them, even the detailed laws of the animal sacrifices in the Temple. Jacob ben Asher in the Tur omitted the Temple and the Palestinian agricultural laws. In other words, he left out all laws which could not be observed in the Diaspora. In this he was followed, of course, by Joseph Caro in the Shulchan Aruch.

As a practical fact of modern life, it must be added that nearly all the business laws are fading away. You rarely find a question on Choshen Mishpot in present-day responsa volumes. In fact, if you will look on the front page of the Vilna editions of the Shulchan Aruch, you will find a statement that most of the Choshen Mishpot laws are no longer in practice. I remember that Schechter, in his Studies in Judaism, has an essay on the 613 commandments in which he records many of them as no longer in actual observance. My answer to you, therefore, is as follows: By theory, all 613 were found in the Torah, but then they gradually diminished as indicated above.