Our Rabbi's Message
February 5th 2010
By Rabbi Aaron KriegelThe Ten Commandments are not the only commandments in the Torah, and they are not the most important. Because people speak of them and post them in all sorts of places we have the prejudice that they are the preeminent commandments in all of Judaism. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact some of the simplest commandments at times are far more important than those ten. For example, should we find a person who is starving, the only commandment that is of any importance to him and to you should be that of getting him food to eat. When a person is drowning the only thing that matters is saving that drowning person.
When you are harvesting your field in ancient Israel what should have concerned you most is leaving a corner of the field for the poor. If somebody you loved dies, the most important commandment is going to the funeral. And if you know the survivors, no command is more important than consoling the bereaved.
For a parent raising children correctly takes precedence over any other commandments. For a doctor who has a patient sitting before him or her, helping that patient should take all of his attention. On Purim one of the most important commandments is giving gifts to the poor and to your friends. For those who were in Concentration Camps and who could not eat except what their guards gave them, the most important commandment was to eat even if the food served them was the broth of a non-kosher animal.
The bottom line is this. Of the 613 commandments, the most important is the one that you can do at a particular moment. Judaism is about doing good when good can be done. Therefore we do not say one must do this or that to gain admission into the world to come. Rather, we hold that one must act in the most productive way every minute of every day by doing right acts, which some call commandments.
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