Thursday, May 8, 2014

Talmud Bavli Makot on the 613 Commandments of Torah

"Rabbi Simlai expounded: 613 commandments were related to Moses: 365 negative commandments, corresponding to the days of the solar year, and 248 positive commandments, corresponding to the number of parts of the human body. Rav Hamnuna said: Which verse teaches this? 'Moses commanded us the Torah as a heritage' (Deuteronomy 33:4). The numerical value of the word Torah is 611. To this we must add the first two of the Ten Commandments, 'I am YHVH your God' and 'You shall have no other gods', which we heard directly from the Almighty, and are thus distinct from the 611 commandments that we heard from Moses. All told, then, there are 613 mitzvot in the Torah."

 -- Talmud Bavli, Makot 23b

613 = 365 + 248 is probably the most important equation in Torah mathematics.

Every one of the 613 mitzvot is a fractal subspace of Torah, that is, it is resonantly self-similar to the overall 304,805-letters in the complete Torah codespace.
  

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