“Take care lest you forget Havayah your God.... Lest your heart grow haughty and you forget Havayah your God....” (Deuteronomy 8:11-14)
Halachah from a Dream
I have brought here with me a Sefer Mitzvot Gadol (SeMaG). Why? Among the Rishonim, he can be called the “master of dreams.” It is very possible—though we do not determine reincarnations, we suggest this as a possibility, that the author of the SeMaG, Rabbi Moshe of Coucy—who was a great Meshichist who calculated the end times and pursued them—was a reincarnation of Joseph who had and interpreted dreams.
The SeMaG is one of the Ba’alei HaTosafot, one of the eight pillars of halachah according to the Beit Yosef. His entire book is based on a dream—as he writes in his introduction. What led him to write this book—something he did not initially want to do, nor did he think he was worthy or qualified to do so—was a dream in which he was instructed from Heaven that he must write down the sermons he was delivering.
What did Rabbi Moshe of Coucy do in his life? He was a preacher who traveled around, initially in France, alongside the other Ba’alei HaTosafot of his generation. Incidentally, besides the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, he is also the author of the Tosafot Yeshanim on Tractate Yoma, which, for those familiar with them, are something very special. In any case, he had a dream in which he was told that it was fitting for him to write down his sermons in the form of a book. He traveled and preached throughout France until four years before the end of the fifth millennium—the millennium associated with the sefirah of hod (acknowledgment), the millennium marking the peak of the darkness of exile, about which it is said, “My hod was turned into destruction.”
So he had a dream, receiving a kind of prophecy from above, that the redemption was near—that the end of the fifth millennium was the designated time, and he understood that to bring this about, it was necessary to bring the Jews to do teshuvah, likely based on the Rambam’s ruling that “Israel will eventually repent at the end of their exile, and immediately they will be redeemed.”
Where was it most necessary to strengthen the Jewish people? Specifically in Spain. In that generation, there was a significant decline in observance in Spain. To bring the redemption according to his dream, he left France and went to Spain. He was there for four years, traveling around and delivering sermons everywhere to strengthen the Jews. It was specifically these sermons that he was told in his dream to write down in a book.
However, in the very year marking the end of the fifth millennium, the Disputation of Paris took place. The Disputation of Paris was an event where a Jewish apostate priest instigated a decree to burn all the Talmud, all Jewish literature, the core of the Oral Torah. To testify and be involved in the Disputation of Paris, he returned from Spain to France. These, in brief, are some important points from his life.
The Dream to Add the Prohibition of Pride to the Count of the Commandments
In this book, there is one commandment that he introduces in Parashat Eikev, a commandment that is not found in the Rambam. He holds the Rambam in high regard; his principle is to organize the commandments according to the Rambam. However, there are places where he adds and removes—every change requires both additions and subtractions to maintain the count of 613 commandments. There is one place, the most important place in the entire book, where he added a commandment based on a dream.
A Commandment that Encompasses All Books of Ethics
Let’s read from within the SeMaG. What we are going to read is very special. Whoever reads this mitzvah does not need any other book of ethics. Perhaps he needs to learn a little bit of a Chassidic text, but ninety-nine percent of the work one needs to do on one’s character, according to the study of the inner dimensions of the Torah, can be fulfilled just by reading this commandment in the SeMaG.
“Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God”
