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Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
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Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
In this week’s parasha, God gives us the Ten Commandments. Prof. Moshe Benovitz, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, gives us a new perspective on the accessibility of ancient laws, pointing out that most of the commandments are phrased in the negative (“Thou shall not…”) and that they rely on ethics instead of rituals. Benovitz further explains that God gives us guidelines on devotion, expressing clear rules on how to worship in a down to earth manner.
Read below or Watch here:
The Ten Commandments, which form the centerpiece of this week’s parashah, were spoken directly by God to the Israelites with much fanfare at Mount Sinai. They are immensely popular, and are often considered the ethical legacy of the Jewish people to the Western world.
Two features make the Ten Commandments so palatable to the western mind: the fact that most of the commandments are prohibitions, and the fact that most are ethical rather than ritual in nature. The demands are minimal: Do not hurt one another, and do not deny the truth that I am the one God who created the world in six days. A person can easily keep to himself or herself and avoid idolatry, false oaths, work on the Sabbath, murder, adultery, theft, false testimony in court, and a greedy attitude toward the property of others. The only commandment that requires effort or expenditure, and the only one that alludes to a particular positive vision of what society should look like, is the commandment to honor one’s parents.
One might say the ethos of the Ten Commandments is not only liberal, but libertarian: Live and let live. Don’t cause me grief by worshipping false gods, and don’t cause others grief. So long as you make sure you are not stepping on any toes, you can and should develop your own values, and fill the world with your own individual content. This is all in keeping with the western liberal ethos. Oh, and make sure you take care of your parents.
At the very end of the parashah, God seems to have remembered that he barely provided any content in the world that He outlined in the Ten Commandments, and He adds a ritual appendix with a very particular vision of what our lives should look like. The individual should devote his life to the worship of God through the sacrifice of livestock, not in an ornate temple, but in nature:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites this: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven: Do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold to be alongside me. Each of you shall make an altar of earth for me and sacrifice on it your whole offerings and fellowship offerings, your sheep and your cattle. Wherever I have my name mentioned, I will come to you and bless you. If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with hewn stones, …’” (Exodus 20:18-21)
This vision is very different from the sacrificial cult as practiced in ancient Israel, and commanded elsewhere in the Bible. It is reminiscent of the spontaneous offerings of Cain and Abel in Genesis, and the high places at which the Israelites worshipped before and after the erection of the first Temple. The entire passage is addressed to each Israelite in the singular. There is no public tabernacle or temple adorned with gold and silver; in fact, gold and silver are frowned upon in God’s presence. God wants an unadorned, natural simple altar of earth or rock. There is no tabernacle or temple with bronze altar, there are no priests, no pilgrimages, and no specifically ordained offerings. Food is to be shared with God or given to Him by the individual livestock farmer, outdoors, in the context of fellowship meals, on altars consisting of mounds of earth or natural rock. God will come to these private altars and bless the individual who invokes His name upon them.
It seems to me that in the past few years the world is seeking a message in the Torah about bringing God into our world, beyond the ethos of the Ten Commandments. We would be wise to heed God’s own ritual appendix as we shape our vision of bringing Him into the world, if not literally by building altars and sharing our meat with Him, then at least in terms of the basic values of sharing with God in the context of our daily lives, in the natural world which he created.
Shavua Tov from Schechter!
Moshe Benovitz is Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. He is the author of Memoirs of Isaiah (2024 Resling Press) and Kol Nidre: Studies in the Development of Rabbinic Votive Institutions (Atlanta 1998) and several volumes of comprehensive critical commentary on sections of the Talmud, as well as numerous scholarly articles on various aspects of Talmudic scholarship and rabbinic history, including oaths and vows, liturgy, and Jewish festivals.
