Long before it was popularized by David Letterman, the Bible came up with its own Top 10; the Ten Commandments! And just like the Late Show's daily list, this one takes a major current issue and highlights the most important or eye-catching ten points that you need to know... though with a little less sarcasm and canned laughter. But when you don't have a team of behind-the-scenes writers, how do you decide? Whose Top 10 is this?
The obvious answer is: God's. But the Commandments are given to us, and we are meant to internalize them and observe them, so we still have to make sense of them. And in this week's Torah portion we are given ONE version of the Ten Commandments; another version with slight (but not insignificant) deviations is recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy. Furthermore, if I were to give you pen and paper, or (more likely) opened up a new Doc on your laptop or iPad, and asked you to write your own Ten Commandments, would you come up with these? Some of them perhaps, but aren't you likely to throw in one or two of your own? And I imagine that each one of us would come up with a different list of the ten essential issues in our own lives. So what do we do with the Biblical Ten Commandments?
To me, it's a symbol. It's about having a creed or set of values. In Judaism, these are our
communal Top 10, and we SHOULD learn about them, teach them to our kids, and carve them impressively somewhere on every new synagogue building. But we also need to figure out for ourselves, what are MY Ten Commandments. The Bible contains a whopping 613 different mitzvot, so if we try to take on all of them, we're more likely to get overwhelmed and frustrated and abandon the whole project. Life is the same way. We have many competing priorities and values, and we can't do everything. So we have to focus our attention on a single set of principles, and that will make everything else a little bit easier. It's not that these are the ONLY 10 Commandments; they just help ground us, and make everyday life a little more purposeful and decisive.
Right now, we're also celebrating the holiday of Tu Bishvat, Jewish Arbor Day. The rabbis tell us it's the New Year for the Trees, and in the last few years it has become a day to focus on environmentalism and preservation of the earth. It's a day, not only to appreciate trees and the benefits we receive FROM them, but to acknowledge what we are doing TO them in return, and indeed to our entire planet. But for a lot of people, environmentalism and reducing our carbon footprint seems daunting and complicated, or perhaps just tedious and insignificant. There are so many different things we could be doing greener, and so many ways to feel guilty about what we're currently doing. Yet in the end, most of us do very little. So instead of seeing it as an all-or-nothing issue, let's focus in on a smaller set of changes, a Top 10 of environmental improvements that we can each take on. Click here for one such list that might inspire you to make a change, compiled by bravenewclimate.com. But that's just one version.
Taking on obligations and responsibilities is always hard. It's easier to stick to the status quo, or
use the excuse that my small, insignificant, unnoticeable contributions won't actually change the world. If we don't start with our own lives, and our own environments, how will anything ever change? What are your Ten Commandments? What is your contribution going to be, and how are you going to make things better? You don't need 613 changes. Just start with a Top 10.
Photos in this blog post:
1. CC image courtesy of sjsharktank on Flickr
2. Image courtesy of Rabbi Gerber's iPad
4. Image courtesy of Ohev Shalom clipart
5. CC image courtesy of rweait-osm on Flickr
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