Post by Questor on Jan 14, 2014 23:58:29 GMT -8
A few threads ago, -grace" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.theloveofgod.proboards.com/thread/3300/on-
-grace I was talking about the fact that the Ten Commandments, although not followed well by Christians, were very much to be prized as the most important of commandments.
The reason I spoke about this was that these First Ten Commandments given in Exodus 18:1–20:23 were the ones that were most important, even the most needed in a society.
They were the commands that were given in all of the Israelites hearing, and that after the Israelites suffered through the hearing of them, they begged Moses to takes notes, and not force them to hear all the rest of them.
Being that YHVH knows all things before they are thought, much less before they were spoken, YHVH must have known that the Israelites would only be able to stand up to the most critical of the Mitzvot being given. If He had wanted them to hear all of the commands that day, YHVH could have enabled them to hear them. Yet He did not.
Because of this, Christians seem to think that the other commandments are not required of them, added to by the minimum requirements of what commands to keep that James gave to the Gentiles at the Jerusalem council.
Others objected on the basis that other laws given later were specified as the Ten Commandments, and were not the same ones. Then I stumbled on the following, as it appear that many Jews believe the same:
G-d proclaims the Ten Commandments, commanding the people of Israel to believe in G d, not to worship idols or take G d’s name in vain, to keep theShabbat, honor their parents, not to murder, not to commit adultery, not tosteal, and not to bear false witness or covet another’s property. The people cry out to Moses that the revelation is too intense for them to bear, begging him to receive the from G d and convey it to them. www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/36271/jewish/Yitro-in-a-Nutshell.htm
The Custom That Refused to Die
By Lord Jonathan Sack of Britain
Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Retired
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 theShema, but four. The Mishnah
1 tells us that in Temple times the officiating priests would first say the Ten Commandments, and then the three paragraphs of the Shema.
We have several pieces of independent evidence for this. The first consists of four papyrus fragments acquired in Egypt in 1898 by the then secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, W. L. Nash. Pieced together and located today in the Cambridge University Library, they are known as the Nash Papyrus. Dating from the second century BCE, they contain a version of the Ten Commandments, immediately followed by the Shema. Almost certainly the papyrus was used for prayer in a synagogue in Egypt before the birth of Christianity, at a time when the custom was to include all four paragraphs.
Tefillin from the Second Temple period, discovered in the Qumran caves along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, contained the Ten Commandments. Indeed a lengthy section of the halachic midrash on Deuteronomy, the Sifri, is dedicated to proving that we should not include the Ten Commandments in the tefillin, which suggests that there were some Jews who did so, and that the rabbis needed to be able to show that they were wrong.
We also have evidence from both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds that there were communities in Israel and Babylon who sought to introduce the Ten Commandments into the prayers, and that the rabbis had to issue a ruling against doing so. There is even documentary evidence that the Jewish community in Fostat, near Cairo, kept a special scroll in the ark called the Sefer al-Shir, which they took out after the conclusion of the daily prayers and read from it the Ten Commandments.
So the custom of including the Ten Commandments as part of the Shema was once widespread, but from a certain point in time it was systematically opposed by the sages. Why did they object to it? Both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds say it was because of the “claim of the sectarians.”
Jewish sectarians—some identify them as a group of early Christians, but there is no compelling evidence for this—argued that only the Ten Commandments were binding, because only they were received by the Israelites directly fromG d at Mount Sinai. The others were received through Moses, and this sect (or perhaps several of them) held that they did not come from G d. They were Moses’ own invention, and therefore not binding.
There is a midrash that gives us an idea of what the sectarians were saying. It places in the mouth of Korach and his followers, who rebelled against Moses, these words: “The whole congregation are holy. Are you [Moses and Aaron] the only ones who are holy? All of us were sanctified at Sinai . . . and when the Ten Commandments were given, there was no mention of challah or terumah or tithes or tzitzit. You made this all up yourself.”
So the rabbis were opposed to any custom that would give special prominence to the Ten Commandments, since the sectarians were pointing to such customs as proof that even orthodox Jews treated them differently from the other commands. By removing them from the prayer book, the rabbis hoped to silence such claims.
But the story does not end there. So special were the Ten Commandments to Jews that they found their way back. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, author of Tur(14th century), suggested that one should say them privately. Rabbi Joseph Caro argues that the ban applies only to reciting the Ten Commandments publicly during the service, so they can be said privately after the service. That is where you find them today in most prayerbooks—immediately after the morning service. Rabbi Shlomo Luria had the custom of reading the Ten Commandments at the beginning of prayer, before the start of Pesukei de-Zimrah, the Verses of Praise.
That was not the end of the argument. Given that we do not say the Ten Commandments during public prayer, should we nonetheless give them special honor when we read them from the, whether on Shavuot or in the weeks of Parshat Yitro and Va’etchanan? Should we stand when they are being read?
Maimonides found himself involved in a controversy over this question. Someone wrote him a letter telling the following story. He was a member of a synagogue where originally the custom was to stand during the reading of the Ten Commandments. Then a rabbi came and ruled otherwise, saying that it was wrong to stand, for the same reason as it was forbidden to say the Ten Commandments during public prayer. It could be used by sectarians, heretics and others to claim that even the Jews themselves held that the Ten Commandments were more important than the other 603. So the community stopped standing. Years later another rabbi came, this time from a community where the custom was to stand for the Ten Commandments. The new rabbi stood, and told the congregation to do likewise. Some did. Some did not, since their previous rabbi had ruled against doing so. Who was right?...So, despite strong attempts by the sages—in the times of the Mishnah, theGemara, and later, in the age of Maimonides—to ban any custom that gave special dignity to the Ten Commandments, whether as prayer or as biblical reading, Jews kept finding ways of doing so. They brought it back into daily prayer by saying it privately and outside the mandatory service, and they continued to stand while it was being read from the despite Maimonides’ ruling that they should not.
“Leave Israel alone,” said Hillel, “for even if they are not prophets, they are still the children of prophets.” Ordinary Jews had a passion for the Ten Commandments. They were the distilled essence of Judaism. They were heard directly by the people from the mouth of G d himself. They were the basis of the covenant they made with G d at Mount Sinai, calling on them to become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Twice in the they are described as the covenant itself:
Then the L rd said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” Moses was there with the L rd forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.2
Then the L rd spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which He commanded you to follow, and then wrote them on two stone tablets.
That is why they were originally said immediately prior to the Shema, and why, despite their removal from the prayers, Jews continued to say them—because their recital constituted a daily renewal of the covenant with G d. That, too, is why Jews insisted on standing when they were being read from the: because when they were being given, the Israelites “stood at the foot of the mountain.”4 The Midrash says about the reading of the Ten Commandments on Shavuot: “The Holy One, blessed be He, said to the Israelites: My children, read this passage every year, and I will account it to you as if you were standing before Mount Sinai and receiving the .”
Jews kept searching for ways of recreating that scene, by standing when they listened to it from the, and by saying it privately after the end of the morning prayers. Despite the fact that they knew their acts could be misconstrued by heretics, they were too attached to that great epiphany—the only time in history G d spoke to an entire people—to treat it like any other passage in the . The honor given to the Ten Commandments was the custom that refused to die.
FOOTNOTES
1.
Tamid 5:1.
2.
Exodus 34:27–28.
3.
Deut. 4:12–13.
4.
Exodus 19:17.
www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1750073/jewish/The-Custom-That-Refused-to-Die.htm
The content in this page is produced by Chabad.org, and is copyrighted by the author and/or Chabad.org. If you enjoyed this article, we encourage you to distribute it further, provided that you do not revise any part of it, and you include this note, credit the author, and link to www.chabad.org. If you wish to republish this article in a periodical, book, or website, please email permissions@chabad.org.
I find it fascinating that it is not just the Christians who believe the Ten Commandments that were first given of all the instructions to be special mitzvot.
-grace I was talking about the fact that the Ten Commandments, although not followed well by Christians, were very much to be prized as the most important of commandments.The reason I spoke about this was that these First Ten Commandments given in Exodus 18:1–20:23 were the ones that were most important, even the most needed in a society.
They were the commands that were given in all of the Israelites hearing, and that after the Israelites suffered through the hearing of them, they begged Moses to takes notes, and not force them to hear all the rest of them.
Being that YHVH knows all things before they are thought, much less before they were spoken, YHVH must have known that the Israelites would only be able to stand up to the most critical of the Mitzvot being given. If He had wanted them to hear all of the commands that day, YHVH could have enabled them to hear them. Yet He did not.
Because of this, Christians seem to think that the other commandments are not required of them, added to by the minimum requirements of what commands to keep that James gave to the Gentiles at the Jerusalem council.
Others objected on the basis that other laws given later were specified as the Ten Commandments, and were not the same ones. Then I stumbled on the following, as it appear that many Jews believe the same:
G-d proclaims the Ten Commandments, commanding the people of Israel to believe in G d, not to worship idols or take G d’s name in vain, to keep theShabbat, honor their parents, not to murder, not to commit adultery, not tosteal, and not to bear false witness or covet another’s property. The people cry out to Moses that the revelation is too intense for them to bear, begging him to receive the
from G d and convey it to them. www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/36271/jewish/Yitro-in-a-Nutshell.htmThe Custom That Refused to Die
By Lord Jonathan Sack of Britain
Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Retired
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 theShema, but four. The Mishnah
1 tells us that in Temple times the officiating priests would first say the Ten Commandments, and then the three paragraphs of the Shema.
We have several pieces of independent evidence for this. The first consists of four papyrus fragments acquired in Egypt in 1898 by the then secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, W. L. Nash. Pieced together and located today in the Cambridge University Library, they are known as the Nash Papyrus. Dating from the second century BCE, they contain a version of the Ten Commandments, immediately followed by the Shema. Almost certainly the papyrus was used for prayer in a synagogue in Egypt before the birth of Christianity, at a time when the custom was to include all four paragraphs.
Tefillin from the Second Temple period, discovered in the Qumran caves along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, contained the Ten Commandments. Indeed a lengthy section of the halachic midrash on Deuteronomy, the Sifri, is dedicated to proving that we should not include the Ten Commandments in the tefillin, which suggests that there were some Jews who did so, and that the rabbis needed to be able to show that they were wrong.
We also have evidence from both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds that there were communities in Israel and Babylon who sought to introduce the Ten Commandments into the prayers, and that the rabbis had to issue a ruling against doing so. There is even documentary evidence that the Jewish community in Fostat, near Cairo, kept a special scroll in the ark called the Sefer al-Shir, which they took out after the conclusion of the daily prayers and read from it the Ten Commandments.
So the custom of including the Ten Commandments as part of the Shema was once widespread, but from a certain point in time it was systematically opposed by the sages. Why did they object to it? Both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds say it was because of the “claim of the sectarians.”
Jewish sectarians—some identify them as a group of early Christians, but there is no compelling evidence for this—argued that only the Ten Commandments were binding, because only they were received by the Israelites directly fromG d at Mount Sinai. The others were received through Moses, and this sect (or perhaps several of them) held that they did not come from G d. They were Moses’ own invention, and therefore not binding.
There is a midrash that gives us an idea of what the sectarians were saying. It places in the mouth of Korach and his followers, who rebelled against Moses, these words: “The whole congregation are holy. Are you [Moses and Aaron] the only ones who are holy? All of us were sanctified at Sinai . . . and when the Ten Commandments were given, there was no mention of challah or terumah or tithes or tzitzit. You made this all up yourself.”
So the rabbis were opposed to any custom that would give special prominence to the Ten Commandments, since the sectarians were pointing to such customs as proof that even orthodox Jews treated them differently from the other commands. By removing them from the prayer book, the rabbis hoped to silence such claims.
But the story does not end there. So special were the Ten Commandments to Jews that they found their way back. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, author of Tur(14th century), suggested that one should say them privately. Rabbi Joseph Caro argues that the ban applies only to reciting the Ten Commandments publicly during the service, so they can be said privately after the service. That is where you find them today in most prayerbooks—immediately after the morning service. Rabbi Shlomo Luria had the custom of reading the Ten Commandments at the beginning of prayer, before the start of Pesukei de-Zimrah, the Verses of Praise.
That was not the end of the argument. Given that we do not say the Ten Commandments during public prayer, should we nonetheless give them special honor when we read them from the
, whether on Shavuot or in the weeks of Parshat Yitro and Va’etchanan? Should we stand when they are being read?Maimonides found himself involved in a controversy over this question. Someone wrote him a letter telling the following story. He was a member of a synagogue where originally the custom was to stand during the reading of the Ten Commandments. Then a rabbi came and ruled otherwise, saying that it was wrong to stand, for the same reason as it was forbidden to say the Ten Commandments during public prayer. It could be used by sectarians, heretics and others to claim that even the Jews themselves held that the Ten Commandments were more important than the other 603. So the community stopped standing. Years later another rabbi came, this time from a community where the custom was to stand for the Ten Commandments. The new rabbi stood, and told the congregation to do likewise. Some did. Some did not, since their previous rabbi had ruled against doing so. Who was right?...So, despite strong attempts by the sages—in the times of the Mishnah, theGemara, and later, in the age of Maimonides—to ban any custom that gave special dignity to the Ten Commandments, whether as prayer or as biblical reading, Jews kept finding ways of doing so. They brought it back into daily prayer by saying it privately and outside the mandatory service, and they continued to stand while it was being read from the
despite Maimonides’ ruling that they should not.“Leave Israel alone,” said Hillel, “for even if they are not prophets, they are still the children of prophets.” Ordinary Jews had a passion for the Ten Commandments. They were the distilled essence of Judaism. They were heard directly by the people from the mouth of G d himself. They were the basis of the covenant they made with G d at Mount Sinai, calling on them to become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Twice in the
they are described as the covenant itself:Then the L rd said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” Moses was there with the L rd forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.2
Then the L rd spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which He commanded you to follow, and then wrote them on two stone tablets.
That is why they were originally said immediately prior to the Shema, and why, despite their removal from the prayers, Jews continued to say them—because their recital constituted a daily renewal of the covenant with G d. That, too, is why Jews insisted on standing when they were being read from the
: because when they were being given, the Israelites “stood at the foot of the mountain.”4 The Midrash says about the reading of the Ten Commandments on Shavuot: “The Holy One, blessed be He, said to the Israelites: My children, read this passage every year, and I will account it to you as if you were standing before Mount Sinai and receiving the .”Jews kept searching for ways of recreating that scene, by standing when they listened to it from the
, and by saying it privately after the end of the morning prayers. Despite the fact that they knew their acts could be misconstrued by heretics, they were too attached to that great epiphany—the only time in history G d spoke to an entire people—to treat it like any other passage in the . The honor given to the Ten Commandments was the custom that refused to die.FOOTNOTES
1.
Tamid 5:1.
2.
Exodus 34:27–28.
3.
Deut. 4:12–13.
4.
Exodus 19:17.
www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1750073/jewish/The-Custom-That-Refused-to-Die.htm
The content in this page is produced by Chabad.org, and is copyrighted by the author and/or Chabad.org. If you enjoyed this article, we encourage you to distribute it further, provided that you do not revise any part of it, and you include this note, credit the author, and link to www.chabad.org. If you wish to republish this article in a periodical, book, or website, please email permissions@chabad.org.
I find it fascinating that it is not just the Christians who believe the Ten Commandments that were first given of all the instructions to be special mitzvot.
But I've asked before and never got an answer, so ... 
Sorry if you thought I was avoiding it before on your previous thread on this subject alon.
Masters)
C
