Day #104–Rambam DAILY Sefer HaMitzvos

today is day number 104 of our daily study ramam save her mitzvahs and uh Mazel Tov because we're finishing and chapters 12 13 14 in the three chapters a day of mishna tarah and our Mitzvah today is positive commandment 148 and it is a continuation of the Mitzvah that we learned yesterday if you remember yesterday we learned negative commandment 306 which was not to take the eggs or the baby birds while the mother is there in the nest well here's positive commandment 148 which is to shoo away the mother bird and then you can take the eggs or the uh the baby birds uh it's interesting that there's a discussion about what is the purpose of this Mitzvah what is the meaning of this Mitzvah there is a teaching of our sages in the uh mishnah that says if a person says in his prayers basically praising Hashem for being so merciful that he is even merciful upon the the birds in the nest that He commands us to show away the mother birds so she doesn't have to be there to experience the anguish of her eggs being taken if somebody says such a prayer he is silenced we silence him because it's a heretical prayer meaning to say you should not attribute to Compassion or Mercy to this mitzvah so it's interesting because the rambam discusses this in his commentary on the mishnah and explains it very logically and says the reason you can't attribute compassion to this Mitzvah is because if you really want to be compassionate then you would just prohibit taking the eggs at all or for that matter prohibit and eating animals and if you want to be really compassionate just be vegan so the fact that Hashem says shoo away the mother bird in order to take the eggs it doesn't really make sense to uh to praise Hashem for the compassion of that Mitzvah rather it is a supra-rational decree that has no logic that conforms to Limited mortal thinking but in uhm and the guide to the perplexed also by the rambam he actually says that and this is consistent with dramam's General approach to hokim and super rational decrees the ramam says although yes it is a Supra rational decree it transcends intellect however to whatever extent it's possible we should seek to appreciate reasons for all of the mitzvahs and so in this case rambam says that you can learn something from this Mitzvah which is that if we show away the mother bird so that she does not experience the anguish of watching her eggs taken from her nest that how much more so should we be compassionate on our fellows we can learn that lesson from that midsole although that's not ultimately the reason for the Mitzvah the Mitzvah is above our capacity to understand okay we have finished and we have finished the book of kedusha we have finished another one of the 14 books of mishna Torah Mazel Tov we're going to be starting a new book tomorrow called hafla and you're going to find out what that's all about tomorrow God willing