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Towards the end of the 8th of the Rambam's 13 principles of faith the Rambam states regarding the divine origins of the Torah

Similarly its interpretation as it has been handed down is also “from the mouth of the Almighty.” Those which we observe today, such as the form of Sukka, the Lulav, the Shofar, the Tzitzit, the Tefillin, and other such forms are the actual forms which God told to Moses and which he told to us. He is the transmitter of the Message, faithful in its transmission. The verse on the basis of which the eighth foundation is attested is his [i.e. Moses'] saying, "By this shall you know that the Lord has sent me to do all these things." (Bamidbar 16:28)

(Translation from Kellner, Menachem (1986), Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought, pp. 14-1 5)

I'm wondering what the bolded phrase mean. Does this mean that if we consider the 13 principles of faith halachically binding someone who disagrees with the Rambam regarding the form of these mitzvot such as Rashi who says you only should have one techelet string on each corner of a four cornered garment while the Rambam says two, is considered a heretic or are we to believe that statement to mean that the final halachic decision perforce is the one that was told by God to Moses? This question is further complicated by the fact that there are many customs regarding how the tzitzit are made.

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    Why stop at Rashi? Wouldn't this then label many people in the gemara similarly as there is argument about the Shofar and sukkah etc? – rosends Jun 01 '20 at 15:13
  • This would make Rambam himself a heretic as nobody agrees to his opinion of counting Nida/zava days. – user6591 Jun 01 '20 at 18:42

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דברי תורה עניים במקום אחד ועשירים במקום אחר. The Rambam himself, elsewhere in his writings (specifically in his Introduction to the Mishnah), carefully distinguishes between the details given to Moshe at Sinai, which are universally accepted, and the details that were derived using human analysis, some of which are subject to debate. He thus writes:

המשנה, שהיא כוללת פירוש כל המצות הכתובות בתורה. מהם קבלות מקובלות מפי משה ע"ה. ומהם דעות הוציאום בדרך הסברה ואין עליהם מחלוקת. ומהם דעות שנפלה בהם מחלוקת בין שתי הסברות...

וזה עיקר יש לך לעמוד על סודו. והוא, שהפירושים המקובלים מפי משה, אין מחלוקת בהם בשום פנים, שהרי מאז ועד עתה לא מצאנו מחלוקת נפלה בזמן מן הזמנים, מימות משה ועד רב אשי בין החכמים, כדי שיאמר אחד, המוציא עין חברו יוציאו את עינו, שנאמר עין בעין, ויאמר השני, אינו אלא כופר בלבד שחייב לתת...

אבל מי שיחשוב שהדינים שנחלקים בהם כמו כן מקובלים מפי משה, וחושבים שנפלה המחלוקת כדרך טעות ההלכות, או השכחה, או מפני שאחד מהם קיבל קבלת אמת והשני טעה בקבלתו... זה הדבר מגונה מאוד, והוא דברי מי שאין לו שכל ואין בידו עיקרים, ופוגם באנשים אשר נתקבלו מהם המצות, וכל זה שווא ובטל.

...the Mishnah, which contains the explanations of all of the mitzvos written in the Torah. Some of these are explanations received from Moshe o.b.m., some were derived by logical analysis and are not debated, and still others are subject to debate...

You must be aware of the following subtle point: the explanations received from Moshe are not subject to debate. Never, from his time until now, was there ever any debate among the sages - from Moshe through Rav Ashi - where one claims that if A puts out B's eye, then they should put out A's eye (since it says "an eye for an eye") while another says it means just a monetary payment... (and continues with several other such examples).

Now, anyone who thinks that the debated laws were also received from Moshe, and believe that they became debatable because of mistakes in deciding the halachah, or forgetfulness, or because one learned the correct version and the other learned a mistaken one... - this is an abhorrent view, and would be held only by someone who has no intelligence and no basic principles. Such a person insults the people from whom we received the [explanations of] the mitzvos. The entire idea is baseless and worthless.

In fact, earlier in the same introduction the Rambam speaks of sukkah (the first example in the Eighth Principle), noting how its various details were given to Moshe and then transmitted throughout the generations to us.

Applying this to your question, then, "the form of Sukka, the Lulav, the Shofar, the Tzitzit, the Tefillin... are the actual forms which G-d told to Moses" - i.e., the basic parameters of each of these mitzvos that were never subject to dispute among the sages. They all universally agree, for example, that there is a mitzvah to take the lulav with the other species (not as the Karaites, for example, claimed, that the relevant verse is simply telling us to use these species to build the sukkah), and what the identities of those species are, and so forth. Likewise, they all agree that a shofar is a horn of an animal, and that it has to be blown in a certain series of sounds on Rosh Hashanah. That there are disputes about the finer details - what's the minimum size of an esrog? What exact sounds constitute a teruah? - doesn't contradict that principle, because the very fact that those details are debated shows that they were originally arrived at by human analysis rather than by transmission from Hashem to Moshe to us.

Meir
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