Michael el Chayil

As is very well known, women are not obligated in time bound positive mitzvos. As is also well know, there are three notable exceptions: Shabbos, Pesach, and Purim. As usual, just because things have a similar structure, it doesn't mean they have the same underlying reason(s). Women keep the once weekly mitzvos of Shabbos because the mitzvah of Shabbos was expressed in one edition of the עשרת הדיברות as "don't transgress" and in the other edition as "keep/guard/protect/do". We learn from the double expression that anyone who is obligated to not transgress -- all Jews, men and women -- is also obligated to keep/guard/protect/do -- all Jews, men and women. It is basically a technicality of the way the mitzvah was presented to us. The once annual mitzvos of the Pesach and Purim is because אף הן היו באותו הנס/they (f.) were also part of the miracle. Not a technicality in halacha, but a logical imperative. That being the case, one may ask why women have a differe...

The two tablets on which the (so-called) Ten Commandments were delivered had precisely the same dimension. Each tablet was inscribed with five of the commandments; Five regarding the Torah's expectations regarding our individual and collective relationship with HaShem; five regarding the Torah's expectations regarding our individual and collective relationship with our fellow Jew. See how egalitarian we are? Equal billing for "religious" obligations and for "interpersonal" obligations. The Torah sees them as equally binding. Beautiful. However, anyone who has said kiddush has surely noticed ( should surely have noticed) that just in the commandment about Shabbos there are already more letters than all the last five commandments put together. In fact, if you count (and you know I did -- what a nerd), you will find there are 533 letters on the first tablet and only 87 on the second. (Yes, indeed... they add up to 613 + 7; we can talk about that sometime, if y...