TheTen Commandments 2/10/12
Fri, February 10, 2012
Shabbat Shalom,
What do you think of when you see the words THE TEN COMMANDMENTS? The older generation sees Charlton Heston holding them on Cecil B. DeMille’s Mount Sinai. Legend has it that I was born after the viewing of the film in the movies. It has always connected me to this week’s Torah portion in a special way.
For some people, the commandments are a source of choice rather than command. God, Shabbat, and certain moral behaviors are regarded as optional rather than imperative.
As children, this is the Shabbat when the commandment to honor parents should be our number one priority to revisit in words, actions, and deeds.
As Jews, we are aware that these ten are 10/613 Torah commandments designed to guide our lives on a value driven, moral path. Hopefully, this Torah portion encourages us to revitalize our lives by following Torah and its commandments as a priority rather than an option.
As we see the conflicts arising from fundamentalist Jews in Israel, who seem to feel they can write new commandments that exclude women, fellow Jews, and modernity, we know that our values demand that we speak out against all religious fanaticism, in Israel or right here in Virginia. We must use this Shabbat to remind those around us that no where is it permissable to legislate for God, or one’s view of what God wants. Enough!
In a day and age when people want to abandon “institutional religion” to seek their own Jewish path, this Shabbat reminds us that such a choice is contrary to the Torah. We are above all a community of Jews, obligated to one another and commanded to be a collective, even more than autonomous individuals before God. For when we answer to ourselves alone, and make up our own rules for convenience or because we think we can, we lose a fundamental precept of Judaism: we are commanded to stand before God in community, with precepts and guidelines that matter, because that is what makes us Jews, people of the Book, covenanted to God and one another.
Not a sermon, just a thought.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Perlin