Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Nitzavim-Vayeilech

Write Angles

September 26, 2024

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Dayan Yosef Greenwald

So now, write this song for yourselves, and teach it to Bnei Yisrael, place it in their mouth…

Dvarim 31:19

The Rambam says that the mitzvah to write a sefer Torah, derived from this pasuk, requires that one write it for himself. If he cannot do so, he must hire a sofer to write it on his behalf (Hilchos Sefer Torah perek 7). By contrast, the Rosh (Menachos, Hilchos Sefer Torah) understands that the mitzvah is to have a sefer Torah in one’s possession, in order to study it. Because today we study Torah from printed sfarim, Acharonim say the Rosh would hold the mitzvah is fulfilled with them instead.

The Acharonim ask that the Rambam appears to contradict himself in Sefer Hamitzvos, where he writes that one can fulfill the mitzvah by buying a sefer Torah from someone else, even if that person did not write it for him. This would seem to imply that the mitzvah is to have a sefer Torah rather than to write it. Moreover, we do not find any other mitzvah that is fulfilled just once in a person’s life. It would therefore seem that the Rambam agrees with the Rosh that the essence of the mitzvah is to learn and perpetuate Torah, but he maintains that one must do the mitzvah act of actually writing the sefer.

The Bahag does not count writing a sefer Torah as a mitzvah. Acharonim explain that he understands it to be included in the mitzvah of talmud Torah. This is also the reason the Rambam, unlike the Ramban, does not count Birkas HaTorah as its own mitzvah.