[Avodah] The Scope of the "7 Mitzvos d'Rabbanan"

[Micha Berger]

I never understood the import of R Simla'i's words about the original
613, never mind the additional 7 derabbanan. Here we have a maamar from
a single tanna that we can group the thousands -- millions? potentially
infinite? -- dinim deOraisa into 613 mitzvos. And based on this we have
an entire genre of seifer in which geonim and rishonim figure out
systematic ways to do so.

Why? A din is just a binding whether it qualifies as the umbrella
under which are subsumed many other dinim, or is organized as one of
the details. I don't get how machloqesin about how to count the 613
could be so heated. Or how it motivates all that effort to find a system
that works.

I would have just taken R Simlai as drawing a parallel between mitzvos
to time (the 365 days of the solar year) and body (rama"ch eivarim).
(No, R' Simai doesn't refer to shasa"h gidim.)

As Cantor Wolberg noted just under a year ago
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol26/v26n016.shtml#01>, R' Saadia Gaon
gives the source for 620 mitzvos not from the gematria keser, but the
number of letters in the 10 diberos in Yisro. Except that his additional
7 are the 7 mitzvos benei Noach.

Interesting implications about the nature of lo sirtzakh as a mitzvah
miSinai vs the 7MBN version.

The variant in which the extra 7 letters correspond to the derabbanans
is R' Moshe Cordovero's. I don't know if he's first, I just found it in
Pardes Rimonim 8:3. It's also in the Tanya, IhQ ch. 29.

And I think I found why they couldn't say like Rav Saadia. The Leshem
writes (Derushah Olam haTohu a/k/a "Dayah" 2:3:16, tr. R' Pinchas
Winston):
    This is done as a result of Bris Avos, which is in the 620 Amudei
    Ohr in Keser; there is the sod of Bris Avos and Yisroel, and from
    there the Torah was given, and this is the 620 letters of the Aseres
    HaDibros, because the beginning of redemption is not possible except
    from very high up in a place that the actions of men cannot affect -
    the beginning of the will for all revelations of G-d, and from there
    redemption from Egypt originated. In the merit of Bris Avos the
    world survives ...

IOW, al pi qabbalah (both the Gra's and the Besht's variants, it would
seem), the message underlying the diberos has to be specifically Jewish.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The Maharal of Prague created a golem, and
micha at aishdas.org        this was a great wonder. But it is much more
http://www.aishdas.org   wonderful to transform a corporeal person into a
Fax: (270) 514-1507      "mensch"!     -Rav Yisrael Salanter