July 17, 2026 Parsing Mitzva Counts & Keeping Science G-dly
Parshat Va’etchanan – Shabbat Nachamu – Tu b’Av
This is a difficult column to write because I am writing on Sunday during Shavua Shechal Bo Tish’a b’Av but the topics focus on after the period of national aveilut when the nechama begins. And this edition of The Jewish Press will probably hit the stands before and on Tish’a b’Av (depending on where you are), but most people will probably read it from Shabbat Nachamu and on. So, I will start with a takeaway from Tish’a b’Av and then focus on nechama – Shabbat Nachamu, Tu b’Av, and beyond.
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Let’s start with a startling pair of numbers. It has been about 1,958 years since the destruction of the Second Beit HaMikdash. But that’s not the startling number.
How many years were there from the first building of the Mishkan until the destruction of the Second Beit HaMikdash? Try for a guess before you continue reading.
The Mishkan was first erected on the first of Nisan 2449 (from Creation). Its tenure in the Midbar was 39 years. Following entry into the future Eretz Yisrael, the Mishkan stood in Gilgal for 14 years. Then it was rebuilt – stone walls replacing the gold-plated wood wall planks, same dimensions, same coverings, same furnishings inside – in Shiloh, where it stood for 369 years. After the destruction of Mishkan Shiloh, a new Mishkan was built in Nov, where it stood for 13 years, and then another 44 years in Giv’on.
And then: Yerushalayim. The First Beit HaMikdash stood for 410 years. After 70 years of Babylonian exile, the Second Beit HaMikdash stood for 420 years.
Total time from Moshe’s Mishkan through the Second Beit HaMikdash is 1,379 years. That’s “bruto,” as we say in Israel. In real English, it means gross rather than net.
We have been without a Mikdash (or Mishkan) over half a millennium longer than the total time we had it.
Where are we going with this new perspective?
For almost 2,000 years, we’ve been longing and praying for the rebuilding of Yerushalayim and the Beit HaMikdash. We’ve been dreaming and praying for the coming of Mashiach and the Geula Sh’leima. As Rambam put it, “I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Mashiach, v’af al pi (and even though) he might delay in coming, in any event I will wait for him whatever day he shall come.”
And when we are reminded – by the numbers – that we have been waiting a very long time, our reaction can go in either of two directions, or both.
One is to say to G-d in the Monday and Thursday version of Tachanun, “Habeit miShamayim ur’ei…” Look from heaven and see how we have become a scorn and a derision among the nations; we are accounted as sheep brought to the slaughter, to be slain and destroyed, or to be smitten and reproached – yet despite all this, we have not forgotten Your Name. Please do not forget us.
The other approach is to do our share to hasten the Geula. Torah and mitzvot – Torah and mitzvot with the right attitude and enthusiasm. To help spread that to our fellow Jews. To support and hopefully make aliya to Eretz Yisrael. Living in Israel, too, should include the right attitude and enthusiasm.
From the beginning of our nationhood, G-d’s plan was to take us out of Egypt, to take as His People and for Him to be our G-d – our only G-d. And to bring us to Eretz Yisrael to live a life of Torah and mitzvot in the location He gave to us for that purpose.
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Which brings us to Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat that follows Tish’a b’Av – the Shabbat on which we read Parshat Va’etchanan which focuses us on the direction our Judaism should take. In the sedra, we have the second account of Matan Torah and Maamad Har Sinai – the Giving of the Torah and Revelation at Sinai. We have the Aseret HaDibrot and the first passage of Sh’ma. Good candidates for being the foundation upon which Jewish life is built.
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Here is a riddle for you to give your family and guests at your Shabbat Nachamu table:
Name four Shabbatot of the year that are named for their haftara.
Then, name four Shabbatot that are named for their maftir.
Then name two Shabbatot that are named for the sedra read.
Work them hard, but not too hard. Give them a hint or two to help them get the answers.
And because you are readers of Torah by the Numbers, I’ll make your task easier. Here are the answers:
Chazon, Nachamu, Shuva, HaGadol;
Sh’kalim, Zachor, Para, HaChodesh;
B’reishit, Shira.
Interestingly, we read the beginning of Va’etchanan at Mincha of Shabbat D’varim-Chazon. Then we read it again on Monday morning. But on Thursday, we also read from Va’etchanan, but not from the beginning of the sedra. The reading for Tish’a b’Av morning is in the middle of the sedra. And then we read the whole sedra this coming Shabbat.
And now, after explaining that, you have another riddle to ask: When else will Parshat HaShavua be read from during the week, but not from the beginning of the sedra? (Unlike Va’etchanan, it doesn’t happen every year – only sometimes, about 40% of years, if you must know.) The answer to this one will appear in brackets somewhere later in the column, so keep reading.
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Va’etchanan has some interesting stats which cause its ranking among the 54 sedras of the Torah to fluctuate, depending on the measurement standard.
Va’etchanan’s 122 p’sukim tie it with Vayak-hel and Ki Tavo for 17th place, putting it at the bottom of the top third of the sedras, pasuk-wise. Although tied with the other two sedras, it is longer than both of them.
When it comes to words (1,878) and letters (7,343), its rank rises to 10th place because its p’sukim are longer than average.
And because of more than average blank spaces in a Sefer Torah, due to many parshiyot – 21 of them (which are separated from each other with blank space) – it rises to number 7 (of the 54) line-wise. It takes up 249 lines in a Sefer Torah.
As far as Sedra Stats go, it gets more interesting with the count of mitzvot. Officially, there are 12 mitzvot (of the 613 mitzvot of the Torah) in Parshat Va’etchanan. That might not seem like that many, but only 17 sedras (a bit less than a third) have a double-digit mitzva count.
Add to this that Va’etchanan is a good example of a sedra (there are others) which contains significantly more mitzvot than the official number indicates, because the mitzvot are counted elsewhere in the Torah.
For example, the second presentation of the Aseret HaDibrot is in Va’etchanan. I hope you, dear reader, realize that calling the Aseret HaDibrot “the Ten Commandments” is a misleading term. The Torah itself refers to the Ten as the “Aseret HaD’varim.” The Ten Sayings or Utterances is more accurate than “the Ten Commandments.” Even the fancy term of Greek origin works well – the Decalogue. Deca means 10 and logos means word or saying. The Ten Words or the Ten Sayings (or the Ten Statements) all work better than the Ten Commandments. (No offense to Charlton Heston, Yul Brenner, or Edward G. Robinson, among others.)
The Aseret HaDibrot consist of 13 p’sukim (both in Yitro and in Va’etchanan) and contain 14 mitzvot in the Yitro text and 15 mitzvot in the Va’etchanan text. The 14 mitzvot are counted from Yitro, but they are just as much in Va’etchanan, just not counted again.
The 15th mitzva of the Big Ten (as we sometimes call it) is “V’lo tit-aveh,” not to lust after that which your fellow has. Those words do not appear in the Yitro text. So, 14 mitzvot are counted from Yitro and are repeated in Va’etchanan, and “V’lo tit-aveh” is counted from Va’etchanan.
Just by adding the 14 mitzvot from the Decalogue, we’re up to 26 mitzvot, and there are more. There are two prohibitions: not to add to and not to subtract from the Torah – Bal tosif and Bal tigra. They occur in Va’etchanan but occur again in Parshat R’ei, from where they are counted. If you ask why honoring parents is counted from Yitro rather than Va’etchanan, the answer is easy – Parshat Yitro comes first. If you ask the same question about Bal tosif and Bal tigra, the answer, if there is one, is not easy, because Va’etchanan comes before R’ei. I do not have an answer, hard or easy, for this question.
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To generalize, a mitzva that occurs just once in the Torah will obviously be counted from that one point. But what about a mitzva that occurs more than once? Let’s take t’filin as an example. There are five places in the Torah that mention the mitzva of t’filin. Actually, I should say the mitzvot of t’filin, because Rambam and the Chinuch, among others, count t’filin of the arm and t’filin of the head as two separate mitzvot in the Torah. They are counted from Va’etchanan, and we quote the pasuk together with five other p’sukim in the first passage of the Sh’ma – from Va’etchanan.
My point is not only to question why a mitzva is counted from one place and not the other. It is also to state that to get a clearer picture of the mitzva in any given sedra, we would need to include those mitzvot counted among the 613 as well as mitzvot not counted in the given sedra, for whatever reason.
On a different note: I recently saw a statistic (which I had seen in the past) that 22% of all Nobel Laureates were Jewish, even though Jews make up only a fifth of a percent of the world’s population. This brought to mind the p’sukim in this week’s sedra (D’varim 4:5-6), “Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, as Hashem, my G-d, commanded me, to do so in the midst of the land to which you are coming to possess. And you shall keep [them] and do [them], for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the peoples...” Res ipsa loquitur. The numbers speak for themselves.
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Further on in the sedra, Moshe Rabbeinu seems to be anxious and insistent about warning the people about avoda zara (idolatry). Specifically, he says to the people (and all of us, as well) that during the Revelation at Sinai, we had heard G-d’s voice but had not seen any image of Him. (I would add that as human beings, we have a difficult time dealing with the invisible, intangible characteristics of Hashem.) So be very careful not to worship images of any sort. (It seems that there is a temptation to do so, not necessarily to replace G-d but even to give oneself a physical focus for worship.)
Then Moshe adds (4:19), “And lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and see the Sun and the Moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, which Hashem your G-d assigned to all peoples under the entire heaven, and be drawn away to prostrate yourselves before them and worship them…”
With the warning against venerating the heavenly bodies, perhaps one would think that looking at the sky and studying the heavenly bodies might not be a good idea.
Comes the Navi Yishayahu in this week’s haftara and says (40:26), “Lift up your eyes on high and see Who created these, Who takes out their host by number; all of them He calls by name; because of His great might and because He is strong in power, no one is missing.”
Pondering the heavenly bodies, studying them and nature in general, can be a way of getting to know the Creator better and appreciating all that He did and does for us.
I would like to add another warning to that of Moshe’s concerning pondering the heavenly bodies or any other aspect of nature.
His fear was that people might come to worship this or that element of nature. Mine is that people will look at nature and consider it as having nothing to do with G-d. Science is science. Nature is nature. And Torah is something else entirely. Science and nature are physical things in this world. G-d is in the spiritual and religious world. Don’t mix the two.
Wrong. Oh, so wrong. I have to take care not to go on and on about this topic – maybe some other time I will. But for now, let me quote and explain a Mishna in Pirkei Avot which was in this past Shabbat’s perek in Israel but is in Va’etchanan’s perek in Chutz LaAretz.
The Mishna is in the third perek; the numbering of the mishnayot within a perek differs in different editions, so I can’t really tell you which number Mishna it is. In fact, it might not help to tell you that the Mishna is in the name of Rabbi Yaakov because some versions attribute the teaching to a Rabbi Shimon. But if you are looking it up, hopefully you will find it.
Rabbi Shimon (or Rabbi Yaakov) says: A person who is walking on the road and reviewing [a Torah topic, in his head], umafskik mimishnato – and interrupts his learning – and says, ‘What a beautiful tree that is or what a beautiful field that is,’ the verse in the Torah indicates that he is putting his life in jeopardy.”
The standard understanding of this Mishna is that Torah learning should not be interrupted for anything else, even the admiration of nature.
Another way of understanding this Mishna (which I came up with on my own many years ago and then later saw in Ethics from Sinai by Irving M. Bunim) is to view the person walking on the road and learning Torah in a broader sense, as a Jew who is walking on the road of life learning and living Torah. “Umafsik mimishnato” – let’s say he shuts off his Torah mind when he admires nature, not as the Creation of Hashem but as just nature, science, biology, et al. Such a person puts his life in jeopardy.
And what verse is the Mishna talking about that says he is putting his life at risk? It doesn’t tell us in this Mishna, but I would suggest it is the passage of Moshe’s concern that the people will begin to venerate nature at the expense of their faith in G-d. Because that passage from our sedra also has a flip side. Lest a person look towards the heavens and see the Sun or the Moon... and go in the other direction – and not see them as G-d’s Creations.
Let’s run with this for a moment. With the danger of overdoing one’s admiration in the direction of idolatry or going the other way and disconnecting nature and the study of science from one’s Torah study, we might want to conclude that maybe it is better not to get involved in the sciences.
Comes the prophet Yishayahu in this week’s haftara, the very last pasuk, where he says: “S’u marom eineichem…” Lift up your eyes on high and see Who created these, Who takes out their host by number; all of them He calls by name, because of His great might and because He is strong in power, no one is missing.
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I guess I did get carried away. But let’s just mention what follows Tish’a b’Av and (this year) Shabbat Nachamu: the 15th of Menachem Av, known as Tu (actually T”U) b’Av. The last Mishna in Taanit tells us that there were no more joyous holidays in Judaism than Tu b’Av and Yom Kippur. There are a number of reasons given for the joy of Tu b’Av. I can only suggest that you see the link on PhiloTorah.co for details.
Briefly, I will end by offering another perspective on the timing comparison the column started with. If we count 1,958 years back to Churban Bayit Sheini and then go back another 1,958 years, we will find that Avraham’s father Terach had not even been born yet. [Taanit Esther/Ki Tisa]
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Have an extra special Shabbat Shalom as we begin the period of nechama (comfort) following the days of mourning for Jerusalem.
