How can halachic restrictions that are not in the Torah be reconciled with the Deuteronomy 4:2 passage, which says, "Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish from it"?
Answer
Such halachic restrictions fall into two categories: those which we believe were given as part of the Oral Law along with the Torah, and those that were clearly put in place later by the rabbis.
The former is not adding, as it was part of the given word. E.g. Deuteronomy 12:21, to eat non-sacrificial meat, just slaughter it "in the manner I have prescribed"; the method of kosher slaughter does not actually appear in Tanach, it was transmitted orally until the Talmud codified it.
The latter make a strong point of being distinct from Biblical obligations.
Here's an excerpt from Maimonides' code, Hilchot Mamrim (laws regarding rebellion against rabbinic authority) Chapter 2:
As a rabbinic court can make decrees to prohibit that which had been [Biblically] allowed, and that prohibition stands for generation ... what is it that the Torah warned "thou shalt not add nor subtract?" Not to add nor subtract and establish something new forever and claim it as Biblical law, whether the Written Law or Oral Law.
How so? It is written in the Torah (Ex. 23:19) "thou shalt not cook a g'di in its mother's milk", and by oral tradition [of Biblical force] we learned that this verse prohibits cooking and eating the meat of any mammal, whether domesticated [such as sheep] or wild [such as deer], in milk; but chicken could be cooked and eaten with milk, as far as the Biblical law.
Should a rabbinic court go and allow wild-mammal meat in milk, they have "subtracted"; and if someone prohibits chicken in milk, claiming it was included in the Biblical prohibition on g'di, that would be "adding."
But if it was stated that: chicken [in milk] was permitted Biblically, but we [the rabbis] shall prohibit it, and inform the people that this is a decree to prevent problems; as people may say "chicken is okay because the Torah didn't literally say chicken, so it didn't say wild-animal either"; and the next person will say "any domesticated mammal is fine too except for goats", and the next person will say "goat meat is acceptable in the milk of cows or sheep, as it said its mother's, meaning that same species"; and the next person will say "I can cook a goat in goat's milk, as long as it wasn't this particular goat's mother" ... therefore, we shall prohibit all meat in milk, even chicken. This is not adding, it is creating a protective fence around the Torah. And so too all similar matters.
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