Category: Uncategorized

You’ve probably seen the “How it Started, How it’s Going” meme on social media. For those of you who haven’t, here’s how it works: There are two posts. The first is a photo of how something (a relationship, a project, a recipe, etc.) looked when it commenced, the second is a photo of its current state. In a New York Times article, “‘How It Started…How It’s Going’ Explained,” Sandra Garcia writes “The basic concept is to show the passage of time through oppositional bookends.” It’s the social media trend du jour. 

But as the biblical book of Ecclesiastes (called Kohelet in Hebrew) teaches, there is nothing new under the sun. As innovative as this popular meme might be, the desire to know where we come from and where we are headed is a deep and ancient human need.

While we have many opportunities in the Jewish calendar to reflect on the passage of time, none is more profound than the holiday of Passover. We tell our story not through two simple photos, but through a set of rituals, songs, narratives, and shared feasting known as the Passover Seder. We dedicate time to learning the story of the Israelite emancipation from Egyptian slavery, which is commonly understood as the moment when the Israelites transform from a group of individuals into a nation, united in their service to God and to each other.

But we don’t stop when we finish telling our stories from the past. Though millennia have passed between the ancient Exodus and our modern lives, each generation of Jews is commanded to see ourselves as having been redeemed from Egypt. We therefore take the opportunity to reflect on the concepts of freedom, justice, and identity in our own day, as well as our own responsibility to help the most vulnerable in our world. After all, the commandment repeated most frequently in the Torah — a whopping 36 times! — comes directly from the foundational Jewish experience of oppression: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9).

In order to enrich your Seder experience, a journey of exploration into “How It Started” and “How It’s Going,” for the Jewish people, we at JCP have created resources that can help you and your loved ones reflect this Passover:

1. We asked community members to think about two questions related to the themes of Passover. You can find their thoughtful reflections here. Feel free to use them as discussion guides and conversation starters at your own Seders.
2. If you’re interested in digging deeper into the story of Passover, I invite you to explore my compilation of five fascinating snapshots of the Torah narrative, each presenting an ethical issue that the biblical characters must face. You can access the texts and discussion questions here. Hopefully these questions will help you to think about the Passover story in new ways, and allow you to reflect on the moral choices we all make in our own lives.
3. One of the most fun parts of the Passover Seder is the chance to sing together! If you’re looking for some inspiration, check out our Instagram Series where JCP team members share our favorite Passover songs. Feel free to play them at your own Seders and sing along!
4. For great ideas for how to talk with your children about the themes of science and truth in the story of Passover, check out How We Talk About, a podcast co-hosted by our very own Hebrew School Director, Erin Beser, and Park Avenue Synagogue’s Hebrew School Director, Jennifer Stern Granowitz. In this special Passover episode, they explore meaningful and effective ways to discuss the themes and stories of the holiday with your children, especially those children (of all ages) who ask: “did the Exodus really happen”?
5. For a phenomenal rendition of the Four Questions, take a look at this video of our HSP learners singing this classic Seder staple!
6. Finally, please join me and the JCP community online for our Passover events taking place throughout the week.

I hope you enjoy this sacred opportunity to reflect on how our Jewish story began, where we find ourselves as a community, and what lies ahead. While we often say “Next Year in Jerusalem!” at the end of our Seders, I’ll also add my hope that we can celebrate together, “Next Year at JCP!” 

Welcome to the Book of Leviticus! We start reading the third and shortest book of the Torah this week. After the narrative journey of Genesis and the story of redemption in Exodus, Leviticus deals primarily with law. While we learn laws about charity, loving your neighbor as yourself, and administration of justice throughout the book, the main concerns of Leviticus are ritual sacrifice of animals and ritual purification. You might be able to picture my reaction as a 12-year-old boy to reading my bar mitzvah Torah portion in Leviticus for the first time —perhaps some of your own children (or you yourself!) had a similar experience. Even as an adult, the detailed, and sometimes gruesome, laws of Ancient Israel’s sacrificial cult can be difficult for the modern reader.

Professor Nahum Sarna wrote, “God desires sacrifices not out of the need for sustenance but out of a longing for the devotion and fellowship of worshippers.” The laws of sacrifice, including which animals to sacrifice for what purpose and what to do with their blood, make up the entirety of this week’s Torah portion. According to Sarna’s view, these laws serve as an ancient manual for spiritual connection. These laws, however, haven’t been practical instructions for the Jewish people for close to 2000 years. When Romans besieged and captured Jerusalem in 70 CE, they destroyed the Second Temple where these sacrifices took place. Without their designated place to offer sacrifices, Ancient Israel began to evolve into Judaism as we know it. Animal sacrifice was no longer the only form of spiritual connection.

As the Rabbis in the first centuries of the common era began to adapt Judaism to fit their new context outside of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, they reimagined how we pursue the spiritual connection that ritual sacrifice once brought to our people. In response to the instruction “to love the Eternal your God and serve God with all your heart” in the Torah (Deuteronomy 11:13), these innovative rabbis ask, “What service is that with the heart?” Without the option for ritual sacrifice that they once had, they emphatically answer their own question by saying, “it is prayer” (Ta’anit 2a). The opinion of another rabbi elsewhere in the Talmud expresses this development even more clearly: “Prayer was instituted to replace the daily sacrifices” (Berakhot 26b).

While Professor Sarna explained why God wanted sacrifices, there were also critical human benefits as well. The sacrificial system gave the ancient Israelites a structure to connect with the divine. Further, each category of sacrifice touched on an important human yearning. There were offerings of gratitude, offerings to alleviate guilt, offerings for well-being, and more. These natural human yearnings are also found in our contemporary prayers. We might have prayer instead of sacrifice, but much of the original psychological and emotional underpinnings have remained. When we have the urge to connect with ourselves, each other, and the world, to offer thanks, and hope for peace, we can turn to prayer.

Without the same enforcement that the sacrificial cult or earlier iterations of Judaism had, we must actively choose to make prayer a meaningful force in our lives. There are a number of approaches to consider. Many Jews rely on the structure of the established Jewish prayer book. Some consider the established prayer book more of a coloring book, and we can color it in with the context of our lived experiences. Others don’t require a prayer book at all, like Rabbi Danya Ruttenburg, who wrote that prayer “flows naturally from an open heart reaching. It’s about connecting, about tuning into that which interlinks us all, that which is present within and between us.” Others take a human-centered approach, like Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan who wrote that prayer is an attempt to “strengthen the forces and relationships by which we fulfill ourselves as people.” And yet others, like Kaplan’s contemporary Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, orient prayer around gratitude and wonder, believing prayer is gratitude for the inconceivable awe of life. Prayer can come from a place of doubt, a place of expression, or a place to feel seen. Within this variety of approaches and beyond, there might be a meeting point where we can each find out what prayer means to us.

Amidst all of these ideas about prayer, we at JCP would love to hear from you about your understanding of prayer and what kind of prayer is most meaningful to you. We are currently thinking about our understanding of prayer as a community and how we pray together, a project that has developed over thousands of years beginning in the Book of Leviticus. I am grateful for this progression over time from animal sacrifice to beautiful prayer services. At the same time, I recognize the profound human desire for spiritual connection that originated with sacrificial offerings and has transcended time and place for close to 3000 years. I hope we all have a moment to offer our prayers this Shabbat, in any form, as we participate in this generational chain of finding gratitude and meaning in our lives.

The past week, with its radiant sunshine and warmer weather, has been the most welcome respite from the constant, necessary vigilance demanded by Covid protocol. And with more New Yorkers being vaccinated each day, our city’s streets are fuller with people of all ages, stretching their weary bones from a year of quarantine. An unthinkable sadness from the loss of life New York experienced, still present in the hearts and minds of us all, now shares the stage with the oncoming spring season and its banner expressions of regeneration and hope.

It’s as appropriate a moment as any to express gratitude for having made it this far. We have made the journey through the dark, narrow passages of this global pandemic; we have begun to conquer the indiscriminate scourge of this cruel pharaoh; and we can imagine, as we do at our Passover seders to contemplate “next year in Jerusalem,” which for most will not mean the actual Jerusalem but an abode of peace, wholeness, and togetherness with those we cherish and love.

I think we can all agree we made it until now by our shared purpose. We wear our masks and apply hand sanitizer, not only to protect ourselves but to protect our neighbors. We maintain distance not to be “anti-social” but rather to ensure the safety and sanctity of others’ lives as well as our own. And despite the annoyances and inconveniences of quarantine, we isolate in order to ultimately rejoin others in an affirmation of the reality that the human is, perhaps, the most social of all creatures on the planet.

We are winning because of sound science and we are winning because of competent leadership. But mostly we are winning because the vast majority are bringing to the shared effort of constructing a sanctuary of hope and good health — the best of our intentions as neighbors and global citizens. Our shared vigilance. As my 18-year-old daughter Minna said this past week when she received her second vaccine (she works in the food industry), “Humans can be pretty amazing.”

In this week’s Torah portion, VaYakhel/Pekudei, the Jewish people are given very specific instructions for the building of the Tabernacle which will hold, guard and protect the Tablets God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. The intricacies of production; the accumulation of material; the ordering and distribution of creating a communal vessel for the conveyance of the Divine word; could only be achieved through shared effort and cooperation.

“And they came everyone whose heart so moved them, and everyone whose spirit was willing, and brought the Eternal’s offering for the work of the Tent of Meeting” (Exodus 35:21).

These words shine with metaphor. Our ancestors knew instinctively what needed to be done to ensure the Divine presence in their midst; and we, as human beings, knew what needed to be done in order to save and preserve life, not just for our own sake or only the sake of our families but for all those with whom we have the privilege of sharing life on this fragile and precious earth.

Shabbat, which comes each week to remind us that life is a gift; that work is a requirement to make it through but so is rest demanded of us, the taking of a breath and expressions of gratitude for having made it this far, only to start the journey again.

May your Shabbat be filled with thanksgiving and hope, blessing and peace, continued vigilance and good health, and a shared commitment to live our lives to the best expressions not only of the ways “our hearts so move us” but also according to the best of what we have been given by those we have loved and may have lost. Their memories will be an eternal source of inspiration, moving us to “pay it forward” so that others after us may know the fruits of shared endeavors in love and hope.

One of my favorite parts about travel (when we could travel) was collecting Judaica from different corners of the world. Rachel Bloom, a Jewish comedian, has a parody song about how buying Judaica often turns into the main activity of Jews when they travel. She writes: “London, Paris or Milan, shopping for Judaica. Plane to Venice, off to Rome, to buy some more Judaica… Sailing the coast of Monte Carlo, shopping for Judaica. Dancing all night at the club, waiting for the Judaica store to open.” Her message resonates with me. A trip — no matter how exciting the destination — doesn’t feel complete until I have some Judaica in my suitcase. It almost makes me feel like I have found a little piece of myself to bring home with me.

The Jews’ obsession with Judaica, though, has old roots. In fact, in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, God instructs the Israelites on how to build the Mishkan, the portable tabernacle, where God will dwell as the Israelites wander through the desert. First, everyone is instructed to contribute funds — a half shekel to be exact — to build the Mishkan. God then appoints artisans to create all of the furnishings and materials for the structure, including lavers (basins), tables, lampstands, and altars. For all of these objects and items, God gives specific instructions for their precise construction, measurement, and content. No detail is too small when creating objects that will be used for worship. It is from these instructions that we learn about the commandment of hiddur mitzvah, adding beauty to our fulfillment of mitzvot.

Given the emphasis on material culture, perhaps we should not be so surprised when, later in the Torah portion, the Israelites decide to build an idol in the form of a Golden Calf. At this point in the story, Moses is off communing with God, and the Israelites start to wonder when — and if — he plans to return. In their impatience, they “gather against” Moses’ brother Aaron and say to him: “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses — the leader who brought us from the land of Egypt — we do not know what has happened to him” (Exodus 34:1). So Aaron instructs everyone to donate their gold jewelry. He melts it down and forms it into a calf. When Aaron reveals the calf to the people, they shout: “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 34:4). When God sees this act of idolatry, God is so enraged that Moses has to convince God not to destroy them all in an act of divine anger.

Why does God approve of one valuable object (the Mishkan) and denounce another (the Golden Calf)? The authors of the Women’s Torah Commentary, a contemporary anthology of insights into the Torah, highlight the similarities between these two ritual objects. They write: “In both instances, the people are invited to donate gold for the construction and do so willingly. The gold is then used to manufacture the ritual object and, upon its completion, the people offer sacrifices and celebrate” (p. 501).

There’s a fine line between using our resources for the sake of worship and worshipping our resources. When they build the Mishkan, the Israelites contribute their gold to a structure that will ultimately help them experience God’s presence. Their half-shekel contribution will be used to remind them that their own wealth means nothing without God’s sustenance. The Mishkan, though made of physical materials, will allow the Israelites to transcend their earthly experience.

When they build the Golden Calf, the Israelites cross that delicate line and no longer use their gold for the purpose of accessing God. Instead, they confuse their gold with God. The Golden Calf, though made of the same materials as the Mishkan, represents an attempt not to transcend themselves, but rather to glorify themselves and their physical wealth. When they worship the Golden Calf, God is nowhere to be found. This is why, though the Mishkan and the Golden Calf are so similar, God instructs the Israelites to build one, but condemns them for building the other.

Next time we use our Judaica, each piece with its own story, memory, and beauty, let’s remember that no matter how stunning they are, they are there to help us access and connect to something beyond themselves, something even more beautiful.

The Purim story, also known as the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible, is a unique narrative in our literary canon. In addition to stylistic anomalies, such as its use of Persian words, its departure from the strict grammatical rules of Biblical Hebrew, and the fact that God isn’t mentioned once in the story, evidence suggests that the Book of Esther stands alone as a book of the Hebrew Bible likely written simply to entertain. This certainly fits with our contemporary celebration of Purim, in which we focus on entertainment through costume, song, food, and drink.

As we find with other sources of entertainment, such as books, TV shows, movies, or plays, stories can still carry important lessons even while their primary purpose is to entertain. In the case of the Book of Esther, we have two strong female leads who offer two different approaches to feminism and social activism writ large. Rabbi Diane Cohler-Esses, the first Syrian woman to become a rabbi, suggests that Queen Vashti and Queen Esther create a map for social change through their respective storylines.

While Queen Vashti’s storyline is relatively short, she provides a strong example by rejecting a problematic system. When King Ahashverosh demands that she “show her beauty” to his party guests, which later sources think is a euphemism for parading around naked, she simply refuses (Esther 1:11-12). She chooses to face the repercussions of standing up to authority rather than subject herself to this treatment. We see the potential impacts of such a strong refusal when the King’s advisors fear that Vashti’s protest will encourage women all around Persia to defy their husbands (Esther 1:17). The King turns this insecurity into policy, publishing an edict that both banishes Vashti from the kingdom and encourages all wives throughout Persia to honor their husbands (Esther 1:20). While Vashti’s refusal removes her from the rest of the story, her protest has implications throughout the kingdom, and shows us the power of saying “no” when encountering sexism and exploitation.

Queen Esther offers an alternative model of feminism and activism. When King Ahashverosh brings women from all over Persia for a sexually exploitative competition to become his next queen, Esther participates (Esther 2:14-15). She not only participates in this sexist system, she rises in power to the position of queen, keeps her Jewish identity a secret, and effectively becomes a part of the system that she eventually subverts. Esther’s position of power becomes extremely useful when the Jews are facing danger. When Mordechai refuses to bow to King Ahashverosh’s esteemed advisor Haman, all Jews are at risk of being killed. In Chapter 4 of the Book of Esther, she prepares to approach the King about this matter, an act that can be punishable by death (Esther 4:11). However, Esther had effectively played within the system, and used her status as the favorable queen to plan a series of banquets. It’s at that last banquet that Esther reveals her true identity, advocates on behalf of the Jews, and successfully lobbies against Haman’s evil plot to destroy the Jewish people (Esther 7:3-6). Queen Esther shows us the potential of working from within a system, and using a position of power to stand against injustice.

Vashti and Esther both present valid approaches to feminism and activism. Vashti’s protest against the kingdom and its far reaching impact is an illustration of rejecting an unjust system. Esther, on the other hand, used her power to work for social change from the inside out. Both approaches can lead to meaningful progress and can even complement each other for greater efficacy. As we reflect on the joy of Purim, I hope we are also able to glean some of the holiday’s implicit lessons as well, such as Vashti and Esther’s examples of social activism.

None of us could have really imagined what community would look or feel like when the pandemic first hit New York City. All at once, our lives were overcome with a kind of journey we had never really experienced before. With the exception of a few rare news items in which an occasional survivor of the 1918 pandemic holds our attention with their witness, we have traveled through time together in unknown territory.

But we have surprised ourselves, haven’t we? We have celebrated births, baby-namings and brises; bat and bar mitzvahs; weddings and anniversaries. We have mourned lost loved ones, deaths made all the more poignant as the result of our confounding and heart-breaking inability to share the love and warmth of human intimacy in our grief.

Like many innovations throughout history, the materiality of technology has been empowered by human ingenuity for the benefit of humankind.

Two things have made this abundantly clear in the past week. The first relates to my experience of receiving the second dose of the Covid vaccine last Sunday. My location was a large public school gym in Bushwick, where, upon arrival, I waited in the cold with hundreds of others in a four block long line, the demographic make-up of which was every New Yorker imaginable. Age, gender, race, ethnicity, language, ability, faith — differences rendered relatively superficial to the greater good and goal that was before us all: mass vaccination, herd immunity, whatever we choose to call it, was and remains our ultimate aim, which is the preservation of human life.

A selfless pride, if one can offer such a description, suffused the experience. To a person, we were all united in this purpose of preserving life — our own and that of our neighbors. It is nothing short of awe-inspiring when we consider what we can do as people when we organize and set our hearts to the task. “Choose life,” the Torah commands, “so that you and your offspring shall live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Ibn Ezra, the medieval commentator, writes that the command to “choose life” is twofold. First, we are obligated to choose life for ourselves, with our bodies, materially, as it were, in order to survive and pass life itself down to the next generation, our offspring. But second, and equally important, is to choose a life that lives on the path of ultimate meaning, which is love. Love of life, love of God who is the creator of life, and love for the path of goodness that God sets before us: love thy neighbor as thyself; be kind to the stranger, the widow, the orphan.

Standing on a sidewalk in Bushwick I heard Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and, oh, right, English. But this was not the Tower of Babel, an idol of human ingenuity attempting to pierce the veil and stand beside God; rather, this gorgeous aggregation was the most refined expression of patience, resiliency, ingenuity, organization and kindness. It took a while, and a national reckoning with leadership, but we got there. We have a long way to go; but we got there, to that place, to that time. More journeys lie ahead.

The second example that comes to mind when thinking about community in a time of transitional crisis relates to this week’s Torah portion, Terumah. Here we read about God’s commandments to Moses with regard to building the Tabernacle which will house and protect the commandments that Moses is in the midst of receiving on Mount Sinai.

“Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him” (Exodus 25:2).

In my House of Study class today, we honed in on this commandment that God gives the Jewish people and many appropriate and challenging questions arose. Is it really a free-will offering, however our hearts may be moved, when commanded by God? And why all the embarrassing material wealth, some of which we know had been pillaged from the Egyptians when we escaped? “The Israelites had done Moses’ bidding and borrowed from the Egyptians objects of silver and gold, and clothing. And the LORD had disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people, and they let them have their request; thus they stripped the Egyptians” (Exodus 12:35-36).

So we can’t build a Golden Calf with all this precious material but we can build a Tabernacle, as long as the worship is for our deity and not “theirs?” As a community of Jews wandering through our own metaphorical desert, the pandemic and a nation undergoing a major identity crisis, we approached the borders and boundaries of discourse and inquiry with lovingkindness toward each other, as well as curiosity and respect for the many places of origin our group represents while also acknowledging that we are also pulling in the same direction.

One voice raised an objection: Isn’t the Tabernacle its own idol? Another voice posited, well, yes and no. Its materiality is channeled toward a superior God, ineffable, unable to be depicted, beyond comprehension. This suggests, she argued, an evolution of human development. And yet, added a third voice, is any of this material expression the point? He pointed us to a passage in Isaiah, where the prophet, half a millennium after the Exodus, tells the Jews who have been settled in the Land of Israel for more than 500 years, “‘What need have I of all your sacrifices,’ says the LORD. ‘I am sated with burnt offerings of rams, And suet of fatlings, and blood of bulls; and I have no delight In lambs and he-goats’” (Isaiah 1:11).

Material expression, ostentatious in its essence, has never really been what God wanted. Rather, Isaiah says, “Learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17).

The clothes don’t make the person. The deeds do.

For a moment (a very brief moment, this group can TALK) we were held in the warm embrace of community; of learning; of peoplehood; and of common purpose. Not only the Torah but generations of those who read it, struggle with it, turn its words over and over again, revealed to us in that still, small voice of revelation that what truly makes a difference in this world is our innate and divinely inspired will to love and do good.

There is so much beauty to behold in materiality: the highest expressions of the artistic impulse and the ingenious structures that convey sustenance and shelter for all in need. But is there any greater beauty than the human capacity for limitless love and generosity? To give as our hearts so move us toward a greater purpose?

Indeed, let us pause to remember what a blessing it is to “choose life” so that we and all who we share this earth with, and all who will come after us, may live.

What does true love feel like? Is it fostered when two people share a set of values, expectations, and ideals? Or is it unbounded and unconditional, lacking any rationality, containing only sparks of passion?

This week’s Torah portion tells us that true love entails both.

Upon first glance, one might think that this week’s Torah portion, called Mishpatim (“Rules”), has nothing to do with love and relationships. After having received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai in last week’s Torah portion, Moses now recites a list of 53 additional rules that the Israelites must follow in order to enter into a relationship with God.

Many of these laws seem rational, even to our modern-day sensibilities. Torah law prohibits murder, theft, and the abuse of parents. The Israelites must care for the stranger, the orphan, and the widow in their midst, lest God’s anger “blaze forth… and your own wives will become widows and your children orphans” (Exodus 22:22). The Israelites must make sure their animals do not cause bodily injury to others and are required to pay restitution if they do. Not only are they forbidden to commit usury, they cannot charge interest on any loan. They are taught to avoid bribes, “for bribes blind the clear-sighted and upset the pleas of those who are in the right” (Exodus 23:8).

Taken together, these rules comprise a set of expectations that God has for the Israelite people, with whom God is about to enter an eternal covenant. In fact, scholars refer to these rules as the “Covenant Collection.”

But perhaps we can think about them as God’s relationship criteria. Just as a dating app or website gives people the opportunity to list their preferences and expectations for a potential partner, this is God’s opportunity to set out a vision for what God expects from the Israelites, referred to elsewhere in the Torah as God’s “kingdom of priests and holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). In this Torah portion, God sets forth the values and aspirations that God hopes to share with the Israelites as they formalize and deepen their relationship with each other. This process of discovering shared beliefs, standards, and scruples is deeply important when entering any relationship — apparently even a relationship between humans and the Divine.

But after all the rules are discussed, and God’s expectations are clarified, we get to witness the spark of true, unconditional love that exists between God and the Jewish people. At the close of the Torah portion, Moses performs a ceremony that ratifies the Covenant Collection and signifies the Israelites’ acceptance of it. He sets up twelve pillars to represent the twelve tribes of Israel, sacrifices bulls as offerings to God, and ritualistically sprinkles their blood on all the people while saying “This is the blood of the covenant that Adonai now makes with you.” And all of the people shout in response: “All that Adonai has spoken, we will obey and we will listen!” (Exodus 24:7-8).

This response has puzzled commentators for generations. Why do the Israelites first say they will obey the rules, and only afterwards promise to listen to them? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

To me, this is a moment of unbounded love between God and the Israelites. The Israelites will try to understand this complex and detailed list of laws and expectations that God has for them. But for now, they simply accept these statutes, since they know that the love between themselves and God is bigger than any set of rules. At this moment, God and the Israelites just want to be close to each other. They have faith that this relationship will work, and they can sort out the details later.

Right after this moment of accepting the Covenantal Collection, the leaders of the Israelites ascend toward God. Though they can’t gaze lovingly into God’s eyes, the Torah tells us that “they saw the God of Israel, under whose feet was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the purity of the sky” (Exodus 24:10). They were able to behold God’s beauty, and to be in God’s presence, no rules or standards holding them back.

As we enter this Shabbat (and Valentine’s Day!), may we know the rational love that is cultivated through logic, as well as the unconditional love that defies all reason. True love contains both.

At the synagogue-turned-church next to my bus stop growing up, there was a replication of the Ten Commandments right above its entrance, in perfect view as my friends and I got off the bus from school. Beyond synagogue and church architecture, the Ten Commandments have captured the popular imagination, both in our tradition and in our country, for generations. In Judaism, the Ten Commandments represent the moment when the Israelites receive the very Torah that has served as its backbone for 2500 years. 

In America, the Ten Commandments have inspired a number of interesting responses.

In Princeton University Professor Jenna Weissman Joselit’s book, Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments, she offers a number of examples. These range from an 1860 false alarm when an amateur archaeologist in Ohio mistook material culture from a Native American burial mound to be the shards of the plaques containing the Ten Commandments, to a Kansas lawmaker’s attempt at codifying the Ten Commandments into American law in the 1890s, to Cecile B. Demile’s 1956 hit movie The Ten Commandments. 

However, as the Ten Commandments have made it into American popular culture, so too have they become more a symbol to be revered than an ancient text to be studied and questioned as Jewish tradition encourages. When I looked over the Ten Commandments in this week’s Torah portion with a classmate, I noticed a subtle, implicit prioritization of significance among the commandments. Of the 13 verses used to describe the Ten Commandments, eight of those verses are dedicated to just two of the ten instructions (Exodus 20:2-14). That’s over 60% of the verses used on 20% of the commandments! 

Four verses are dedicated to the commandment against idol worship, and another four are dedicated to remembering the Sabbath. For context, all four commandments against murder, adultery, theft, and false witness are squished into one verse. As opposed to the popular depiction of the Ten Commandments, each taking up one line of a neat two-by-five stone tablet, the Ten Commandments found in the Book of Exodus give much more space to the prohibition against idol worship and instruction to remember the Sabbath. 

What is it about idol worship and the Sabbath that warrant 60% of the Ten Commandments’ airtime? The historical answer is that prohibiting idol worship and remembering the Sabbath were unique Israelite innovations. These two commandments distinguished the Israelites from other Ancient Near Eastern religions who practiced polytheism and didn’t have a religiously commanded day of rest each week. On the other hand, prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft, and false witness were already included in other Ancient Near Eastern legal codes, such as the Code of Hamurabi, and were therefore more familiar. Idol worship and the Sabbath needed to be explicated as newer concepts that aren’t innate to humanity’s moral code. 

The Torah, however, isn’t merely a historical document, and the fact that idol worship and the Sabbath take up more than half of the actual words of the Ten Commandments points toward deeper spiritual, emotional, and moral truths that hold up today. Commandments like the prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft, and false witness are essentially formalities. According to the school of moral emotions, such universal wrongs elicit feelings of shame and guilt without any sort of commandment prohibiting them. Avoiding idol worship and remembering the Sabbath aren’t as inherently programmed in us, requiring the lengthier explanation in the Ten Commandments.

The Hebrew Bible is highly concerned with idol worship. After all, monotheism was one of its major religious innovations. In the Ancient Near East, people believed their gods inhabited certain statues and figurines, using them for prayer and divination. And while these cultic practices are less prevalent today, idol worship is still ubiquitous in our world. David Foster Wallace in his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College said: 

“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things… then you will never have enough… Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly… On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths and proverbs… The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid… Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.”

If worshipping idols is our default, no wonder we need four full verses of the Ten Commandments to explain it. These verses seek to break us out of our default setting, and inspire us to strive for what is enduring and true. Rather than worship the statues of the Ancient Near East, the Ten Commandments urge us to have faith in the one invisible God. And instead of worshipping the glory, status, and immediate gratification of the items on David Foster Wallace’s list, the prohibition against idol worship in the Ten Commandments urges us to consider the deeper, eternal values we wish to live by.

Remembering Shabbat is another value that might not come as naturally to our social-emotional sensibilities, and warrants another four out of the 13 verses of the Ten Commandments. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8). There is much to be said about Shabbat — the day of the week dedicated to self-care, family time, rest, and reflection. The commandment goes on, however, to say “you shall not do any manner of work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates” (Exodus 20:9-10). Remembering the Sabbath extends beyond self-care and requires us to recognize the dignity of all those around us by granting everyone a day of rest. 

The reason is provided in the next verse, “for in six days the Eternal God made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11). We recognize the divine spark in each of us and honor it by reflecting God’s behavior at the end of creation and taking a beat. While it might not be our natural inclination to intentionally mark time and rest — I assume I’m not the only one who has gotten lost in the days this pandemic — the four verses that command the Israelites to remember the Sabbath also remind us to honor the dignity and divinity of each human life with a day free from labor. This is an essential reminder in a world where it is commonplace to get caught up in our own individual affairs.

The Ten Commandments don’t each take up the same amount of space, and for good reason. Some values are less intuitive to our innate moral compasses. Consciously avoiding idol worship challenges us to break the default human settings of immediate gratification. And remembering Shabbat honors the divinity in each person as we take a pause from the production of life. All of the Ten Commandments impart important lessons, but some offer more unique insights for our lives today.