The Distribution of Mitzvot in the Torah

The Torah is primarily thought of as a book of law. While the word "Torah" means "a teaching / the teaching" generically, some translate the word as "law". This comes from the idea of God giving commandments to Israel through his prophet Moshe. These 'laws' are the 613 mizvot (commandments).

The 613 mitzvot are distributed among the five books as follows:
1. Sefer Beresheet - 3 mitzvot
2. Sefer Shemot - 111 mitzvot
3. Sefer Vayiqra - 247 mitzvot
4. Sefer Bamidbar - 52 mitzvot
5. Sefer Devarim - 200 mitzvot

If you've been reading the weekly Parshah, know that the mizvot will be scarce in Sefer Beresheet. So far, we have only encountered the mitzvah to "be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:28) and the mitzvah that "every male among you shall be circumcised" (Gen. 17:10).

Why are there so few mitzvot in the first book of the Torah? The purpose of the first book is to first set the stage and define the rules of the game, otherwise there would be no context to the narrative of God giving commandments to Moses from Sinai or from the Tent of Meeting. Additionally, the rest of the mitzvot would be incomprehensible if not for the narrative context that they are embedded within.

God gave the commandments to Israel. But who is Israel? We need Sefer Beresheet to first understand how Israel came about. This is why we find detailed lists of the generations of Adam and Noah and the patriarchs in Sefer Beresheet, while very little of this type of material appears elsewhere in the Torah.

Sefer haZohar on Reciting the Shema Fulfills the Entire Torah

"When the people of Israel enact unification by this verse ─ in the mystery of twenty-five letters: שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד (Shema Yisra'el YHVH Eloheinu YHVH ehad), 'Hear O Israel, YHVH our God, YHVH is one'; and ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ועד (Barukh shem kevod malkuto le-olam va-ed), 'Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever', which contains twenty-four letters ─ focusing on each one of the, all those letters join as one and ascend to forty-nine gates, in the mystery of Jubilee. Then one must elevate ועד (va-ed), 'and ever' ─ no further ─ upon which gates are opened, and the blessed Holy One considers that person as if he had fulfilled the complete Torah, which appears in forty-nine facets, completely.

"Therefore, one should focus the will on twenty-five and twenty-four, elevating them by aspiration of the heart through the forty-nine gates that we have mentioned. Having focused on this, one should focus on the unification described by our Master ─ שמע ישראל (Shema Yisra'el), 'Hear O Israel! ...', and ברוך שם (Barukh shem), 'Blessed be the name...', are the entirety of the whole Torah. Happy is the share of one who focuses on them, for this is surely the entirety of Torah, above and below! This is the mystery of the complete Human, male and female, and mystery of all faith."

-- Sefer haZohar, 2:139b (transl. D. Matt, Pritzker ed. vol. 5, pp. 284-5)

One who recites the Shema is as one who has fulfilled all 248 positive commandments, which are body parts of the "complete Human" - supernal Adam.

The 3 paragraphs of the Shema contain 245 words. Including the 3 words אל מלך נאמן (El melekh ne'eman) 'God, faithful king', brings the count up to 248.

The 248 words of the Shema are coded for the mathematics of the exceptional simple Lie group E8, a 248-dimensional Lie group that is part of the foundations of mathematical physics, in particular string theory and supergravity. Below is an image of E8 projected into the Coxeter plane:

The Lie group E8