The Ten Commandments: Premise and Promise
by Rabbi Jim Rosen
You've seen the bumper stickers. They are the way we make our beliefs known these days.
'The Ten Commandments – they are not a multiple choice question.' Or 'What God gave on Mt. Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions.'
If they are not suggestions or multiple choice possibilities what are they?
Well they are all commandments aren't' they? 'Honor your parents, don't bear false witness, don't murder'' but what about the rest? All of them – commandments?
The 1st one begins 'I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt.' Where is the commandment there? With minor exception – Maimonides being one of them, most of our commentators tell us this is an introduction not an imperative. The God who saved you from the horrors of endless slavery has something to say to you. It's the premise of everything that follows.
And what of the last one Lo Tachmod 'you shall not covet?' You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his ox, nor his ass or anything that is your neighbors.
Well at face value of course that would be a lovely thing. No more drooling over your neighbor's brand new Mercedes. No more angst over someone else's stock portfolio. No more 900 mile trips by an astronaut trying to confront a love rival in Florida. No more broken homes.
But can you really command an abrupt halt to coveting? Can you command a person to believe, to think, to feel something?
Of course thoughts matter, as we think and as we do so we become. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik once said 'religion is a raging, clamorous torrent of man's consciousness with all its crises, pangs and torments.' We bring in other words our biographies to the task of confronting eternal truths. We all know that the ability to think big, to dream large, to imagine the very best that we as individuals and a culture are capable of becoming is crucial. Benjamin Disraeli had it right when he stated 'nurture great thoughts, for you will never go higher than your thoughts.' And the famous text As a Man Thinketh 'good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results.'
Generations before psychology and bitter human experience suggested that 'our thoughts are cords that pull us along wherever they chose to take us' we had the ten utterances.
Again Maimonides – do not covet means: 'don't act covetously, don't behave that way. That's the commandment.' You can urge good thinking, but you can only direct behavior.
But what if the last commandment is not a commandment at all but rather something different. A possibility mentioned in the Etz Hayim commentary sememingly as a throw-away line. But it is the essence. From Yechiel Michael of Zloczow the Chassidic teacher. 'You shall not covet' is a promise. A person who is careful to observe the preceding nine Holy utterances will not covet.
It is a promise. An outcome.
In my mind that is why the Hebrew chosen for these revolutionary words is crucial. These are not the Aseret Hamitzvot they are Aseret Hadibirot the Ten Statements. Between premise, 'I am the Lord your God' and promise, you will not need to covet, to be enslaved by envy, there are requirements. Do them and your life will never be the same.
Here is not a listing of what you must think – a legislation of beliefs. It is an explication of the good life. Of possibility.
Imagine for just a moment 'you shall have no other gods.' Imagine a world where nobody gawked at those who humiliate themselves on the hit TV program American Idolatry – oops Idol. Imagine if our teen girls did not have as role models, Brittany, Nicole and Lindsay. Imagine a place and time where we fired Donald Trump.
Imagine, too, a world in which strategic withdrawal from the constancy of production into a Sabbath of delightful respite became the norm. Where we could say without any internal conflict whatsoever, 'no' to yet another email, phone call, transaction and 'yes' to a conversation, to a structured way of thinking the big thoughts with others who want to dream with you. It is called Shabbat.
Imagine, too, a world in which we honor the past by being serious students of it. We honor parents. No, it doesn't say love because relationships can be problematic, and maybe love is the one thing you can't legislate, but you can honor parents and parenthood. Because doing so means you honor the transmission of life itself in which, you whether you have kids or not, are an active participant.
Imagine a world in which justice and truth really prevail. No theft, no murder, no excusing outright evil in the name of pet theories, that's false witness. A world in which nobody whitewashes terror as a commando operation by freedom fighters. A world in which no one dares to contemplate an act of genocide for everyone will be watching and the consequences would be too swift. A world in which our relationships to each other are cherished; where we keep our promises, where we strive to be the men and women we all believed we were on the day we pledged our hearts to each other.
Imagine a world where we formally change the awkward English term adultery to childish+ery. Because adults know how to remain true to a promise it is only the immature that allow themselves to be swayed.
Think that you are here to promote ultimate meaning. And you will. Couple it with resolve to be a ten utterance person, a person passionate for justice, for respite from life's conflicts, for touching the transcendent at every imaginable opportunity, do all of these things and what would you be envious of? What will you need to covet? No – there will be others who will be coveting you.
Between premise and promise is life as sacred duty that is the message of Sinai; it is the message of Torah. And one day it will be the message of all of our lives.