את כל הדבר אשר אנכי מצוה אתכם אתו תשמרו לעשות לא תסיף עליו ולא תגרע ממנו (“The entire word which I am commanding you, you shall keep to do; you shall not add to it and you shall not detract from it”; XIII, 1).
At first blush, our verse seems an unnecessary repetition, given that only two weeks ago, in Parshath Va-Ethchannan, we read: לא תספו על הדבר אשר אנכי מצוה אתכם ולא תגרעו ממנו לשמר את מצות ד' אלקיכם אשר שנכי מצטה אתכם (“You shall not add to the word which I am commanding and you shall not detract from it, to keep the mitzvoth of Ha-Shem your G-d which I am commanding you”; IV, 2).
This impression of unnecessary repetition is strengthened by the fact that Rashi makes a very similar comment, based upon the Sifrei in our parasha (פסקא ל'), on both verses, providing as examples of unwarranted addition: חמשה טוטפות בתפילין, ה' מינין בלולב, ארבעה ברכות בברכת כהנים (“five paragraphs in t’fillin [there should only be four], five species with a lulav [there should only be four; cf. Leviticus XXXIII, 40], and four blessings in the birkath kohanim [there should only be three; cf. Numbers VI, 22-27]”), the only difference being that, in the comment on IV, 2 he adds five tzitziyoth as an example (there should be one on each corner of a four-cornered garment; cf. Numbers XV, 38-39) and omits the birkath kohanim. The latter is all the more striking since, although the Sifrei adduces it in connection with our verse, the Talmud (ראש השנה כ"ח.) derives it from IV, 2.
So what is going on?
B.
We must begin our enquiry by asking what would motivate, for example, a kohén to add to birkath kohanim.
If we turn to the Talmudic citation above concerning birkath kohanim, we find that it reads: מנין לכהן העולה לדוכן שלא יאמר, הואיל ונתנה לי תורה רשות לברך את ישראל, אוסיף ברכה משלי כגון "יוסף עליכם ככם אלף פעמים", ת"ל "לא תוסיפו על הדבר" (“Whence [do we learn] that a kohén who goes up to duchan should not say, "Since the Torah has granted me permission to bless Israel, I’ll add a blessing of my own, such as ‘[G-d] will increase your like a thousand times’ [Deuteronomy I, 11]; the teaching is, ‘you shall not add to the word....’”).
Rashi quoted the midrash on I, 11 in his comment, that Moshe himself added this blessing to the Torah; hence, the Torah Tmima explains, the kohén, armed with this precedent and the certain knowledge that G-d wishes Israel to be blessed, understand our prohibition as a matter of reshuth, of “permission,” כלומר שיאמר הקב"ה איני מטריח עליכם להוסיך על המצות, אבל אם תרצו, רשאים אתם (“that is to say, that the Holy One, Blessed is He says, I am not troubling you to add to the mitzvoth, but if you wish, you have permission”).
This would seem to be a worthy motivation; after all, G-d Himself declared to Avraham Avinu ואברכה מברכיך (“And I shall bless those who bless you....” Genesis XII, 4). So why should it be that the desire to add a blessing to the blessings of Israel is suspect? Why should the Torah care?
The Torah Tmima offers in answer that the fear is that once one arrogates to himself the right to add to the Torah as he wishes, he will ultimately come to feel that the numbers in all such enumerated mitzvoth as the examples Rashi cites are lav davqa, not necessarily so, and so will be tempted also to do less than the scriptural mandate. This is why, he suggests, Chazal state that כל המוסיף גורע (“anyone who adds [to the mitzvoth] detracts [from them]”; סנהדרין כ"ט.).
The Torah Tmima goes on to quote the Maharsha’s comment to the gmara concerning our well-meaning but misguided kohén that לא אמרו בל תוסיף אלא במה שאדם מוסיף מדעת עצמו, אבל מה שתקנו חכמים לצורך אין איסור בל תוסיף (“[the Torah] does not say ‘you shall not add’ save concerning what an individual may add according to his personal opinion, but taqqanoth, corrective decrees issued by legitimate rabbinical authority do not fall under the prohibition of ‘you shall not add’”). The fear that adding something capriciously, because it feels good to do so at the moment or under the circumstances, is a temptation for individuals only; the collective action of the rabbanim in administering the Torah is exempt from this consideration.
Fair enough; but why is it necessary that there be two separate verses?
C.
The Maharal mi-Prag (גור ארי' על פסוקנו) also asks this question, and in analyzing it, details a yesod, a fundamental principle in Biblical exegesis:
There is, he asserts, a qualitative difference between the individual kohén adding his own bracha to birkath kohanim and the other hosafoth (“additions”) cited by Rashi. The difference between our verse and IV, 2 is דכאן הזהיר אפילו דלא אגידי כלל כמו ברכת כהנים, דאף על גב דברכה רביעית של ברכת כהנים בפני עצמו קאי, דלא דמיא לחמש מינין שבלולב ולא לה' פרשיות שבתפילין דהתם כיון דאגידי התוספת עמהם עובר בבל תוסיפו (“For here [G-d] has warned even when they are not unified at all, as in the case of birkath kohanim, for even though a fourth bracha of birkath kohanim stands by itself, in that it is not like five species with a lulav or five paragraphs in t’fillin, for there it is because they are unified wholes that an addition to them violates ‘you shall not add’”).
In other words, the cases of lulav and t’fillin constitute organic wholes, a fact emphasized by the Hebrew expressions arba‘ath ha-minim and arba‘ ha-parshiyoth ordinarily employed to describe them, in which the use of the smichuth, the “construct state” of the numerals indicates an integral unity, as any reader possessed of a חוש חי לשפה העברית, a “living sense of the Hebrew language” (a favourite phrase of one of my rebbe’im) will attest. To add a fifth species of plant to the lulav or a fifth paragraph to the t’fillin is tantamount to grafting a fifth leg on a cow.
Not so in the case of birkath kohanim, a grouping of three free-standing brachoth, three cows in the same patch of meadow, as it were. To introduce a fourth cow into the pasture is clearly not the same thing. If it is to be prohibited, it requires a separate statement. The Maharal finds that the wording of the Talmudic passage alludes to this difference: ת"ל "דבר", אפילו דבר לא יוסיף, הרי דבעי קרא להכי בפני עצמו (“the teaching is [based on] davar, even a davar cannot be added; for this, a separate verse is needed”). To add a species to the lulav or a paragraph to the t’fillin is to introduce a foreign component; to add a bracha to a group of brachoth is to add a free-standing entity.
It is for this reason, the Maharal explains, that Rashi does not include the example of birkath kohanim in his comment on Va-Ethchannan, דכאן מיתורא ילפינן דאף הוספה לברכת כהנים חייב (“for here we learn from yittur [“superfluity” of the verse] that even an addition to the birkath kohanim is impermissible”), whereas Rashi did add the case of five tzitzyoth, which does not actually appear in the Sifrei, כי דרך להביא ראי' מג' דברים (“because it is [good] practice to cite three things in evidence”); for this same reason, the Sifrei does cite, and Rashi does quote, the cases of lulav and t’fillin together with birkath kohanim.
ואף על גב דבספרי משמע דדריש שלא יוסיף על ברכת כהנים מלשון "דבר", יש לומר דלא מן "דבר" נפקע אלא מיתורא דקרא, דלא הוי למכתב כלל קרא דהכא כו' מדכתיב קרא מיותר שמע מינה דהך "דבר" דכתיב בקרא רצה לומר אפילו דבר לא יוסיף וגו' (“And even though in the Sifrei it is said that not to add to the birkath kohanim is drawn from the term davar, it must be said that it does not actually derive from davar, but rather from the yittur of the verse, for it was not necessary to write the present verse at all... From the fact that a superfluous verse has been written we understand that this term davar in the verse is intended to say, not even a davar should be added”).
D.
Having thus viewed our two verses through the Maharal’s prism, b’siyya‘ta di-shmayya I believe that two additional internal hints to the essential correctness of his analysis can be discerned.
The first is evident from the fact that the verbs of the verse in Va-Ethchannan are couched in the plural, lo thosifu... v’lo thigr‘u (not immediately evident from the English translation); thus, the verse applies directly to every individual member of Klal Yisra’él and has the broadest possible application to many commonly performed mitzvoth, as Rashi’s examples attest.
Our verse, on the other hand, is not only put in the singular, lo thosif... v’lo Thigra‘, a clear allusion to “the” kohén going up to duchan but it begins éth- kol ha-davar.... The accusative particle את is vocalised éth, in which form it can mean “with” as well as express the definite direct object of a transitive verb. Thus, the verse seems to hint that, with any formula of words which the Torah bids us to use, whether, as in the case of the birkath kohanim, it is contained in the written Torah, or (as the Maharsha assured us above) it is mandated by Chazal, we are neither to add nor delete anything. Each part has an independent existence, but is nonetheless part of the greater whole, part of the fabric woven by Torah.
And so we have a valuable case study in Torah exegesis, as well as an object lesson: If we view the Torah, both the written text and the oral tradition of Chazal through the stereoscope of our Gdolim (in this case, Rashi, the Maharal, the Maharsha, and the Torah Tmima), we can reach below the surface, and discern some of the Torah’s true multi-dimensional depth.
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