DakotaGypsy
Active Member
I'm stealing this from:
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/84mag/othercommandments/othercommandments.htm
The Other Five Commandments:
When Moses descended from the heights of Mount Sinai, he held in his arms not two but three Tablets of the Covenant, with five commandments inscribed on each. At least that's how Mel Brooks tells it in his History of the World, Part I. "Hear me, o hear me! All pay heed!" the movie Moses proclaims. "The Lord, the Lord G-d, has given unto you these fifteen [One stone tablet drops and shatters. A perplexed Moses looks down and mutters "Oy!"]......ten, TEN commandments for all to obey!"
Of course, it never really happened that way. But what if it had? What if God had originally meant to give us fifteen commandments, and five got lost?
Indeed, have you ever wondered why there were only ten to begin with? According to the Talmud, the number of commandments and even their content corresponded to ten statements God had uttered during his creation of the world. A nice round number, to be sure, like the number of fingers and toes God later handed out in Eden. But, again, why the number ten?
Of course, we should note, the so-called "Ten" Commandments are just an abridged version of the Torah. The full count of mitzvot is 613. Reducing the commandments to ten thus constitutes an exercise in religious reductionism: a "Cliffs Notes" version of Judaism, if you would, with God playing the role of Cliff. But such reductionism has a long and distinguished rabbinic pedigree: when pressed, both Hillel and Akiva agreed that the whole of the Torah could be summed up in just one commandment: "Do not do to another human being what you yourself would find hateful." The rest, as Hillel said, is but commentary. Indeed, the history of Liberal Judaism itself exemplifies this reductionist tendency by eliminating ritual requirements so as to give greater prominence to Scripture's ethical demands.
But why a multiplicity of commandments to begin with, you might ask. Why not just one? Well, perhaps there's a virtue in specifics. If "the Devil is in the details," maybe God is in them too. Maybe as mere mortals we need the details spelled out. Maybe an ethics that lacks specifics is an ethics that won't work.
But getting back to Mel Brooks (Can we ever really avoid him?), the question remains: could there have been another five mitzvot? If ten is good, could fifteen have been better?
After all, the world has changed a lot since the days of Exodus. Perhaps God anticipated these changes and wanted to give humanity some extra help for the long road ahead. In fact, the Rabbis themselves believed there was more to God's message than was ever written down at Sinai. Our duty, they taught, is to study and interpret the written Torah in order to unfold its fullest truth, a truth that will inevitably illuminate our lives in whatever era we live.
So if we may be permitted to engage in an act of Chumashic chutzpah, what additional commandments might we propose to make the traditional set even more applicable to our times?
When our ancestors departed from Egypt, for instance, they left behind a land of many gods and idols: hence they were given commandments "one," "two," and "three" to keep them from spiritually regressing. But if we're no longer traversing the wilderness of Sinai, what new commandments might we need to guide us on our own moral journey?
In asking this, I don't mean to suggest that the first ten are no longer valid. As the auteur of The Ten Commandments (not God but Cecil B. DeMille) once aptly stated: "You cannot break the Ten Commandments; you can only break yourself against them." It is precisely their enduring human relevance that accounts for the Commandments durability down through the ages, for while our nation is no longer populated by images of pagan gods, ample opportunities for idolatry still exist. "You are what you own" declares the gospel of contemporary materialism, and the glib priests of advertising bid us bow down before its altar. In short, the Golden Calf is alive and well.
But how can you own things if you don't have money? Hence the abiding need for commandment number "four" (to remember the Sabbath) so we don't, in a compulsive pursuit of possessions and the means to obtain them, lose sight of our souls. Equally pertinent to materialism is commandment number "ten" that warns us of the danger of wanting things we cannot have, commandment number "eight" that forbids us from taking what is not ours to have, and commandment number "nine" that forbids us from lying to get what we want.
Also rampant in popular culture today are materialism's corollaries, selfishness and the quest for shallow pleasure, corollaries that can not only cheapen life but the respect for life as well. Hence commandments "five" (the need to honor one's parents), "six" (the prohibition against murder), and "seven" (the forbidding of adultery).
In summary, it seems God had us very much in mind in foreseeing the spiritual obstacles and temptations that would lie in our path.
But, to return to our original question, could He really have had more to say on the subject? Or, to put it another way, might He have wanted us to figuratively "add" to his list? After all, since the year 1789, twenty-seven amendments have been added to the U.S. Constitution, including the famous Bill of Rights, that were not originally foreseen by our nation's Founding Fathers. To be sure, they were human and God is not, but He did create us in his image, and wanted us to keep his Torah alive.
If then we are to begin a process of amendment, what commandments might we theoretically propose?
In the case of the U.S. Constitution, amendments were proposed in part to suit the evolving needs of a changing America. Perhaps that is a good place for us to start as well. Let's therefore explore the spiritual challenges of today's America, challenges that seemingly are not covered by the traditional Ten.
At least five major cultural forces can be identified that conspire to challenge our souls today: the influence of materialism, the power of technology, the impact of speed, the increase of artificiality, and the decline of historical memory.
(More)
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/84mag/othercommandments/othercommandments.htm
The Other Five Commandments:
[SIZE=+1]The fast-moving times we live in call for a reevaluation of the traditional Ten Commandments. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]By Stephen Bertman [/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]By Stephen Bertman [/SIZE]
When Moses descended from the heights of Mount Sinai, he held in his arms not two but three Tablets of the Covenant, with five commandments inscribed on each. At least that's how Mel Brooks tells it in his History of the World, Part I. "Hear me, o hear me! All pay heed!" the movie Moses proclaims. "The Lord, the Lord G-d, has given unto you these fifteen [One stone tablet drops and shatters. A perplexed Moses looks down and mutters "Oy!"]......ten, TEN commandments for all to obey!"
Of course, it never really happened that way. But what if it had? What if God had originally meant to give us fifteen commandments, and five got lost?
Indeed, have you ever wondered why there were only ten to begin with? According to the Talmud, the number of commandments and even their content corresponded to ten statements God had uttered during his creation of the world. A nice round number, to be sure, like the number of fingers and toes God later handed out in Eden. But, again, why the number ten?
Of course, we should note, the so-called "Ten" Commandments are just an abridged version of the Torah. The full count of mitzvot is 613. Reducing the commandments to ten thus constitutes an exercise in religious reductionism: a "Cliffs Notes" version of Judaism, if you would, with God playing the role of Cliff. But such reductionism has a long and distinguished rabbinic pedigree: when pressed, both Hillel and Akiva agreed that the whole of the Torah could be summed up in just one commandment: "Do not do to another human being what you yourself would find hateful." The rest, as Hillel said, is but commentary. Indeed, the history of Liberal Judaism itself exemplifies this reductionist tendency by eliminating ritual requirements so as to give greater prominence to Scripture's ethical demands.
But why a multiplicity of commandments to begin with, you might ask. Why not just one? Well, perhaps there's a virtue in specifics. If "the Devil is in the details," maybe God is in them too. Maybe as mere mortals we need the details spelled out. Maybe an ethics that lacks specifics is an ethics that won't work.
But getting back to Mel Brooks (Can we ever really avoid him?), the question remains: could there have been another five mitzvot? If ten is good, could fifteen have been better?
After all, the world has changed a lot since the days of Exodus. Perhaps God anticipated these changes and wanted to give humanity some extra help for the long road ahead. In fact, the Rabbis themselves believed there was more to God's message than was ever written down at Sinai. Our duty, they taught, is to study and interpret the written Torah in order to unfold its fullest truth, a truth that will inevitably illuminate our lives in whatever era we live.
So if we may be permitted to engage in an act of Chumashic chutzpah, what additional commandments might we propose to make the traditional set even more applicable to our times?
When our ancestors departed from Egypt, for instance, they left behind a land of many gods and idols: hence they were given commandments "one," "two," and "three" to keep them from spiritually regressing. But if we're no longer traversing the wilderness of Sinai, what new commandments might we need to guide us on our own moral journey?
In asking this, I don't mean to suggest that the first ten are no longer valid. As the auteur of The Ten Commandments (not God but Cecil B. DeMille) once aptly stated: "You cannot break the Ten Commandments; you can only break yourself against them." It is precisely their enduring human relevance that accounts for the Commandments durability down through the ages, for while our nation is no longer populated by images of pagan gods, ample opportunities for idolatry still exist. "You are what you own" declares the gospel of contemporary materialism, and the glib priests of advertising bid us bow down before its altar. In short, the Golden Calf is alive and well.
But how can you own things if you don't have money? Hence the abiding need for commandment number "four" (to remember the Sabbath) so we don't, in a compulsive pursuit of possessions and the means to obtain them, lose sight of our souls. Equally pertinent to materialism is commandment number "ten" that warns us of the danger of wanting things we cannot have, commandment number "eight" that forbids us from taking what is not ours to have, and commandment number "nine" that forbids us from lying to get what we want.
Also rampant in popular culture today are materialism's corollaries, selfishness and the quest for shallow pleasure, corollaries that can not only cheapen life but the respect for life as well. Hence commandments "five" (the need to honor one's parents), "six" (the prohibition against murder), and "seven" (the forbidding of adultery).
In summary, it seems God had us very much in mind in foreseeing the spiritual obstacles and temptations that would lie in our path.
But, to return to our original question, could He really have had more to say on the subject? Or, to put it another way, might He have wanted us to figuratively "add" to his list? After all, since the year 1789, twenty-seven amendments have been added to the U.S. Constitution, including the famous Bill of Rights, that were not originally foreseen by our nation's Founding Fathers. To be sure, they were human and God is not, but He did create us in his image, and wanted us to keep his Torah alive.
If then we are to begin a process of amendment, what commandments might we theoretically propose?
In the case of the U.S. Constitution, amendments were proposed in part to suit the evolving needs of a changing America. Perhaps that is a good place for us to start as well. Let's therefore explore the spiritual challenges of today's America, challenges that seemingly are not covered by the traditional Ten.
At least five major cultural forces can be identified that conspire to challenge our souls today: the influence of materialism, the power of technology, the impact of speed, the increase of artificiality, and the decline of historical memory.
(More)
