Maimonides Fails his 3 Rs - Counting the Omer

Every young child learns the three R's: 1) Reading; 2) 'Riting; and 3) 'Rithmetic. [as is said in schools in the English speaking world]. Let's see how one of the most famous rabbis stacks up.

Rabbi Moses Maimonides, the great Philospher, wrote very little philosophical arguments in favour of the Oral Law, or in fact against the Karaites - unlike Saadia Gaon or Judah HaLevi for example.

On the few occasions he does attack the Karaite practices, he makes some basic and fundamental errors in reading, writing,  arithmetic and comprehension.

In his so called "Mishneh Torah", Temidin uMusafim  Ch.7 he writes regarding the counting of the Omer:

11: "Three [questions and answers] were given regarding each matter. Why was all this necessary? Because of those who erred who departed from the community of Israel in the Second Temple [era]. They maintained that the Torah's expression [Leviticus 23:11]: "From the day following the Sabbath" [should be understood literally, as referring to] the Sabbath of the week. Nevertheless, according to the Oral Tradition, [our Sages] derived that the intent is not the Sabbath, but the festival. And so, was understood at all times by the prophets and the Sanhedrin in every generation. They would have the omer waved on the sixteenth of Nisan whether it fell during the week or on the Sabbath.
[This interpretation is also reflected in the Written Torah itself,] for it is written in the Torah [ibid.:14]: "You shall not eat bread, roasted grain, or kernels of grain until this self-same day." And [Joshua 5:11] states: "And they ate from the produce of the land on the day after Pesach, matzot and roasted grain." And if one would presume that in that year Pesach fell on the Sabbath as these fools have supposed, why would Scripture make the license for them to eat new grain dependent on a factor that is not fundamental, nor the true cause, but mere coincendence.  Instead, since [Scripture] made the matter dependent on "the day after Pesach," it is clear that the day after Pesach is the cause that permits new grain [to be eaten] and no attention is paid to the day of the week [on which it falls]."

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1013259/jewish/Temidin-uMusafim-Chapter-7.htm#footnoteRef36a1013259

[The translator notes "For according to the Saduccees' misguided conception, the fundamental point is that they ate the grain on the day after the Sabbath. If their approach was right, Scripture should have emphasized that the event took place then and not "on the day after Pesach.""]

Let us analyse the claims that the otherwise great Rambam is making here.

1) That the term Sabbath in Lev 23:11 actually means holiday.

2) That this tradition was adhered to by the Prophets

3) That in Joshua 5,  the Morrow after the Pesah refers to 16th of the Month of Aviv/NIssan.

4) The linguistic use of Pesah in Joshua  does not help the Sadducean argument, but disproves it.

Well, although a great Doctor and Astronomer, Maimonides was a very poor student of Biblical Hebrew, or Bible in general.

His claims above are quite absurd.

#1 - The term Shabbat is defined very clearly in Lev 23.

v.3 says   "Six days shall work be done; but on the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation; ye shall do no manner of work; it is a sabbath unto the LORD in all your dwellings"

Furthermore, if the Prophets, or Moses, meant that Shabbat means holiday, then the verses  15 - 16 are totally illogical, or rather they disprove Rambam's assertion. 

They read as follows:

15 And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after הַשַּׁבָּת [The Shabbat], from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the waving; seven שַׁבָּתוֹת [Sabbaths] shall there be complete;

16 even unto the morrow after the seventh הַשַּׁבָּת  [Shabbat] shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall present a new meal-offering unto the LORD.

Clearly Moses, and all other prophets, saw this as referring to the day after the Shabbat, which is a floating calendar day.   So Maimonides fails his reading class.

#3  in Joshua 5:11,  Rambam claims the day after the Pesah would be the 16th of the Aviv month.  But the Torah itself defines the Pesah as falling on the 14th of this month (  In Lev 23:5).

In Num 33 it defines the Morrow after the Pesah as being on the 15th of the Month:

3 And they journeyed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow after the passover the children of Israel went out with a high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians,

So here, Rambam fails his arithmetic class.   14+1 = 15, and not 16.

But he also fails his Writing class. since he is writing falsehoods, lies and malicious slander. His claim #4, that the use of Pesah is a cause and not coincidence is not a logical statement. It is also not a factual statement, as we have shown, i.e. the day after the Pesah does not correspond with his own claim.  The Book of Joshua is giving a specific case of when the Pesah itself falls on Shabbat, the counting will follow on the Sunday.  From this we can logically deduce that when Pesah is a Shabbat, and hence the 7th day is also Shabbat, we count from the Sunday after the Pesah, rather than the sunday after the last day of the holiday. In other words, the Sunday should fall within the  Hag HaMatzot.  Joshua does not need to restate the Torah, as it was clearly followed by Joshua himself. It is only giving a specific rule, since the first day of Hag Hamatzot is a variable weekday.

SO, Maimonides has failed his 3 Rs, and is not a reliable source of Torah Law.

An in depth article on this can be found at

http://www.karaite-korner.org/shavuot.shtml

(Thank you to Shawn for some critical comments)