Thursday, September 2, 2010
Nitzavim-Vayelekh: The Last Mitzvah
Deuteronomy 29:9 – 31:30
By Moshe Sokolow
A well-known talmudic tradition reports that there are exactly 613 mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah. Of the total, 248 are positive (the do's), while 365 are negative (the don'ts). Not all the sages are in complete agreement on this enumeration, with some arriving at a higher number. But the custom has long been to speak of 613 mitzvot—or, in Hebrew, taryag mitzvot, based on the numeric values assigned to letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
