Day #38–Rambam DAILY Sefer HaMitzvos

today is day number 38 of our daily study of Ramon say for mitsus and yesterday we started the third book of the 14 books of mishna Torah in our daily study of three chapters of mishna Torah we started safer zmanim the book of times which deals with holidays in the first holiday we deal with is Shabbos the weekly holiday and we did chapters one and two yesterday so today in three three chapters of the admission until we're doing chapters three four and five and corresponding to that in Safar Mitzvahs we have one Mitzvah the same Mitzvah we did yesterday so I'm going to repeat it now positive commandment 154 teach boys and you shall rest on on the day of Shabbos on the seventh day because we've done that Mitzvah already I want to share with you something that we learn about in today's mission of today specifically in chapter five chapter 5 is all about Shabbos candles the name of says very very clearly that lighting Shabbos candles meaning lighting candles before Shabbos that remain lit into Shabbos is not optional it's not something you can do if you would like to do it it's an obligation you must do it and in fact it is a Mitzvah now you're going to say it's a Mitzvah when are we going to study it and say for a Mitzvahs and the answers were not because it's not one of the 613 biblical Commandments it's one of the seven rabbinical Commandments so we do make abraha he who Sanctified us with his Commandments and commanded us to light the Shabbos candles but that's because it is the power of the sages to enact uh Commandments but it's it's still not one of the 613 biblical commandments so we're gonna we're gonna study it not as part of safer amitzus but I'm going to tell you what it says in the mishna Twitter specifically in chapter five so the ramam says it's an obligation it's not an option it's it's an obligation the Magid May shot him is a safer by yasifkara most famous for his he also wrote a commentary on mishna Taylor called the kasaf mishna but he also wrote a favor called Magid misharam now in the Magid mesharam he explains that the reason why the rabbis enacted that we must light candles before Shabbos not we can and it's okay to leave them lit because they were lit before Shabbos but you must do it is because the Sadducees who denied the oral law they had a fundamentalist reading of the of the biblical Commandments and they would say that even if you lit a candle before Shabbos it's not allowed to have it burning during Shabbos you can't have light during Shabbos they would sit in the dark um so the rabbi said no that's incorrect so to show that that is wrong not only you can light a light as long as it's lit before Shabbos but you must so the Magid May shot him suggests that in the rambam's time he was also dealing with a similar group not the Sadducees but the the kerites who had a large community in Egypt when the ramam lived there and he may have written very very forcefully and adamantly these words uh as a response to that or to preempt those ideas at any rate it is a Mitzvah to light Shabbos candles and we know that in our time the lab made a campaign that is one of the 10 Memphis the ten Mitzvah campaigns that that have been initiated and we know how many people were brought not just individuals but whole families were brought to Shabbos observance and observance of all of the Mitzvahs through the simple Act of lighting shabba's candles and bringing more light not just spiritually but in the case of shabba's candles literally a light that we can see with our eyes which concretizes the idea of all Mitzvahs omits was our lights but in the case of Shabbos candles we actually see it for ourselves and we know the power that that's had in our day and age the power of Shabbos candles okay we're going to continue learning Shabbos we'll see you tomorrow God willing