Letter 10: Classification of the Mitzvos
Beginning of Part 2 — Horeb. Reasons for mitzvos, pet peeves, and Rav Hirsch's incredible scholarship as a 28-year-old
Summary
After exploring The World —> Mankind —> History —> The Jewish People, we are now ready to turn to the practical expression of these concepts, the mitzvos. In theory, the mitzvos should serve as opportunities to express and work towards the fulfillment of the ideas discussed in the previous section, but that is not immediately apparent when we look at halachah: “Inspired by the sublime idea of your mission, you look upon the Law that is supposed to bring about the realization of this idea — and you sense a vast chasm between them.” How do the demands of the halachic system relate to the grand, inspiring ideas of the previous letters?
Rav Hirsch points to a number of factors that contribute to the modern image of mitzvos (he’ll return to many of these ideas and flesh them out more in Letter 18):
Centuries of exile and persecution
Fear of OTD due to Haskalah
Compelled focus on prayer and contemplation rather than active participation in all areas of life
Misunderstanding of Kabbalah leading to an embrace of “magical Judaism” (#schlisselchallah)
In response, Rav Hirsch calls for a fresh start:
Dear friend, forget what you know about Judaism, listen as if you had never heard about it — and not only will you be reconciled to the Law, but you will embrace it lovingly and will allow your whole life to become a manifestation of it.
Rav Hirsch shares his guiding questions in extracting the meaning he believes is built into every mitzvah:
What have I heard here?
What is the essential meaning of this particular thing?
What is its purpose?
What symbolic act was ordained for it?
What is its underlying significance, as comprehended from its context and intent?
After all that:
What do you think you will find in the Torah? You expect, no doubt, the revelation of how to fulfill God’s Will by means of everything that is put at your disposal and toward everything that surrounds you; in other words, how to practice justice and love through everything and toward everything. Take this idea and add to it the concept of the mission of Yisrael, which is not only to practice these principles in daily life but also to guard the underlying ideas and to give expression to them. Add to this, too, all that derives from the conception of Yisrael’s former statehood and is inapplicable outside the land and in the absence of the state.
Rav Hirsch comes up with six categories of mitzvos, based on the different terms used by the Torah, to be developed over the next four letters:
Toros: Fundamentals about God, character of man and Jew, and their implications
Mishpatim: Expressions of justice toward beings equal to yourself (other humans)
Chukim: Expressions of justice toward subordinate beings (land, plants, animals, body) based on the principle that all things exist in God’s service
Mitzvos: precepts of love toward all beings, even when they have no claim to it
Edos: Symbolic expressions of basic principles
Avodah: exaltation and sanctification of our inner, spiritual life — to help us accomplish our mission in the world — by refining our thinking through word and symbolic action (mainly tefillah).
He further breaks these six categories down into three concepts: Justice, Love, and Education.
Diving Deeper
Reasons for Mitzvos
Rav Hirsch has already done us a significant service by presenting the hashkafah, the worldview that underpins everything we do. If he stopped here, dayeinu — that would have been enough. But Rav Hirsch is now going farther — he is going to show how those same ideas are expressed by the mitzvos that we do all the time without understanding what we’re meant to be taking from them.
The concept of taamei ha’mitzvos, reasons for mitzvos that we are able to apprehend and supposed to incorporate into our thinking through the practice of the mitzvos, is sometimes taken as controversial. “How can you be so arrogant as to think that you can understand the mind of God?!” some say. “We’re not supposed to need reasons — we listen just because Hashem said so!”
This is an important topic, and one too large to fully address here (I talk about it in the introduction to Halachic Worldviews). Suffice it to say that most Rishonim embrace the concept of taamei hamitzvos, most notably the Rambam, Ramban, and Sefer Hachinuch. Additionally, it is surprising to note how often Rishonim relate to the taamei hamitzvos in discussions of the halachos themselves, as much as this is supposed to be out of bounds based on the machlokes on the topic in the Gemara (examples in the book; see also Rav Zalman Nechemia Goldberg’s Nesiv Mitzvosecha). Rav Hirsch comes down squarely on the side of endorsing understanding reasons for mitzvos.
To me, this seems especially important nowadays, when so much of the way we think is based on scientific or logical reasoning. While it is true that we follow all of halachah because Hashem said so, in most cases (for Rav Hirsch, including chukkim!) we are not meant to suffice with that. Torah is meant to teach, l’horos, not just to command without understanding. Reasons can never change the rules — rather, they flow from the rules themselves. Also, if we don’t yet understand a mitzvah, we’re obligated to do it anyway, and continue studying until we come to an understanding that resonates and works well with the sources.
A Pet Peeve
One of the dangers of the taamei hamitzvos approach is that it is possible to extract the wrong ideas from a mitzvah. This is not a concern for the approach that rejects the existence or importance of finding reasons — we just do it without trying to learn anything from it. But when looking to understand the why of the mitzvah, it is possible to walk away with the wrong why.
What rubs me the wrong way is when mitzvos (and, by extension, other aspects of Jewish practice) are used for “fluffy” ideas or to justify ideas that don’t at all flow from the sources. For example, portraying Shabbos as existing to provide a digital detox or to facilitate family time. The first is a benefit of Shabbos, but can hardly be called a reason for Shabbos itself. The second, one could maybe make an argument for, but the fact that the halachos of Shabbos could easily lead to a person being separated from family rather than together with family would seem to indicate that at the very least, family time isn’t at the essence of what Shabbos is meant to call to mind.
If mitzvos are really supposed to be teaching us things, we should be careful to find the intended message rather than imposing ideas that happen to be in vogue in 2025.
Rav Hirsch as a Young Talmid Chacham
I wanted to highlight one line from this letter:
“Every opinion which I shall express is the product of of many years of study of Tanach, Talmud and Midrash. Ever detail and every point find corroboration in the Talmud, if only we seek to grasp their basic meaning…”
Rav Hirsch was only 28 when he published the 19 Letters! And he wasn’t just saying that he had these ideas worked out — he had already written the entire Horeb, which includes these ideas fleshed out as well as basic halachos relating to each mitzvah!
Wild.
Symbolism in Mitzvos
One of Rav Hirsch’s major contributions to understanding mitzvos was his writing on symbolism. The third volume of his Collected Writings is dedicated to the topic, first as a general outline and then a deep dive into mitzvos like bris milah, tefillin, and tzitzis. This will be discussed more in the letter on Edos, but many of our most recognizable mitzvos fall into this category. While understanding is important for all mitzvos, they are especially important for symbolic mitzvos, because if the symbol fails to call anything to mind, then it is essential useless.
Next up — Letter 11: Toros, Mishpatim, Chukim