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Our Rabbi's Message
September 7th 2007
By Rabbi Aaron Kriegel"You are standing here today . . ." so begins the Torah portion that we read this week. It is a short portion, one of the shortest of the year, and yet it is one of the most interesting because it holds an idea that is sacred to the Jewish people.
We were at Sinai. We witnessed God's theophany. We heard the Heavenly Voice utter the first word of the First Commandment. For the Jew Revelation was not a Déjà vu experience. It was an experience that so burned into our being that, according to tradition whenever a Jew hears the Ten Commandments for the first time; he always asks if he has heard it before. We have an historical memory of that event, which does more than just pass from father to son, but is ingrained in the very Jewish soul.
So goes the traditional belief as defined by our Torah portion. We might not accept the midrash, but we have to accept one point. The most important aspects of Judaism, which Jews do receive anew from their parents, is the belief that moral law is far more important than ritual law. The Ten Commandments is made mainly of moral laws. The ritual laws are described only to protect the divine origin of the Sabbath.
It is that moral law which is in our genes, which is the main bulk of teaching that we learn in the home. The teaching is so important that if the midrash is correct to say that the lessons of the Ten Commandments are taught at such an early age, it is as if we are at Sinai learning them. The giving of those lessons is among the strongest memories that we have.
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