Ten Commandments

Honoring parents acknowledges our human createdness. It tells us that not everything that matters is the result of our choice, chief of which is the fact that we exist at all. Other people’s choices matter, not just our own.

There’s an enthralling story about the Ten Commandments and the role they played in Jewish worship and the synagogue. It begins with a little-known fact. There was a time when there were not three paragraphs in the prayer we call the Shema, but four. The ...

If He wanted us to live up to—and be inspired by—a full set of ten expressions, why did He deliver them in shorthand?

In our nation's 3,300 year history, G‑d has directly addressed us exactly once. In doing so, G‑d also left us a perfect prototype to follow on those occasions when we really want our words to be taken seriously...

“Who took you out of Egypt”? Talk about sweating the small details! What about “who created heaven and earth”? Surely stage-managing the Exodus doesn’t even approach His role as designer and creator of the universe!

The different nuances in the Torah's repletion of the Ten Commandments bespeak Shabbat's dual purpose

Do we accept the Ten Commandments as G-d's message and an absolute moral code? Maybe we should read them again...

The Ten Commandments lay the foundation for our relationship with G‑d and our fellow man. Here’s how . . .

G-d spoke to the entire Jewish people on Mount Sinai, yet the Ten Commandments are exressed in the singular -- as if G-d is speaking to a single person

The right-hand tablet contained 146 words. The left-hand tablet had only 26 words. Yet tradition has it that both tablets were filled with writing. How did 26 words equal the space of 146 words?