Hooray! Why- aanot is back!! I would just like to express my appreciation for the blog, and how much I enjoy, learn from, and stalk the blog. It was an amazing initiative for Maayanot, and reading it daily is truly a favorite past time of mine.
As for my question: Over the summer and in school, I encountered the idea of mitzvot being di'oraita or d'rabanan many times. On the one hand, we see mitvot d'rabanan as very important commandments, and some even go as far as to say that they are considered d'oraita based on a pasuk in Devarim, about listening to the words of the rabbis. On the other hand, we see that there is a major discrepancy between d'oraita and d'rabanan when discussing the severity of the mitvot. It seems like we sometimes inply that breaking a mitzva d'rabanan isn't so bad. It is understood that we must keep the mitzvot, and they are still very important, but they seem almost second rate to d'oraita. How do we reconcile these two ideas about mizvot d'rabananan?-- -Penina Cohen
Hi Penina!
Rather than answer your question, I thought I would add more food for thought (or more confusion!) regarding the issue. On the one hand, it seems pretty clear, as you wrote, that de'oraitas take precedence over de'Rabbanans. After all, the former is from God Himself and the latter, "only" from the Rabbis. But on the other hand, consider the sugya that you may have learned back in 9th grade in Masechet Rosh HaShanah (29b) about what happens when RH falls on Shabbat (as it did this year) - Even though GOD gave us an explicit commandment to blow shofar on RH (without saying that Shabbat should be any different), the RABBIS decided that due to a concern that people might come to carry the shofar and thereby desecrate Shabbat, we should NOT fulfill our mitzvah de'oraita of blowing shofar on RH. The principle behind this is called yesh koach be'yad Chachamim la'akor davar min haTorah. It only applies in situations of shev v'al ta'aseh (the Rabbis can tell us to refrain from fulfilling a Torah obligation but cannot tell us to actively violate a lo ta'aseh), but still, the very fact that the Rabbis can essentially take precedence over the Torah in certain situations does raise exactly your question - what exactly is the relationship between de'oraitas and de'rabbanans? Interestingly, in the RH example, the Rabbis told us to refrain from fulfilling one de'oraita (shofar) only so as to protect another de'oraita (Shabbat); they did not simply decide to override a de'oraita for their own sake. But the fact that they have this power at all is still fascinating.
Another related issue: Did you ever learn the sugya of osek b'mitzvah patur min hamitzvah - if you're involved in performing one mitzvah, you're exempt from performing another? (We used to teach it in Ma'ayanot but then too many of the elementary schools started doing it.) Anyway, a really interesting question debated by Rishonim and Achronim is: what if the first mitzvah you're involved in is a mitzvah de'Rabbanan and then a mitzvah de'oraita comes along - Does your involvement in a de'Rabbanan exempt you from the de'oraita??? Hmmm....
Anyway, hope you're not too frustrated that my response contains more questions than answers but you raised an excellent and very complicated issue that doesn't have a simple, clear-cut, straight-forward answer. Keep thinking about it and let us know what you come up with!
Mrs. Dena Knoll
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