ABSTRACT
Sefer ha-Hinnukh offers the student of Torah a thorough accounting of the rationales for the 613 commandments—based on the enumeration of Maimonides. It was composed anonymously in Catalonia at some time during the second half of the thirteenth century. The most historically rigorous attribution of the work links it to R. Pinhhas ha-Levi of Barcelona, 2 a student of Nachmanides, associate of R. Solomon ibn Adret, and member of an influential rabbinic family from Gerona, related on his mother’s side to the venerable sages of Lunel. Whether or not the work can be placed with such confidence, as a roughly contemporary text from northern Iberia, its account of tzedaqah may be effectively compared with the mystical rationales for almsgiving found in source B6 . 3
