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2012.01.02, 1410 Among non-Orthodox (and even many Ultra-Orthodox) Jews, "Judaism" has devolved to nothing more than either of two Displacement Theologies: Nazi-defined racism or disbelief in Jesus.
To many Jews – especially Ultra-Orthodox /
To most non-Orthodox Jews, by contrast, – If a "born Jew" becomes an atheist, (s)he is still a "Jew" – as long as (s)he doesn't believe in Jesus. If one is born of a Jewish mother and becomes a Nazi, (s)he is still a "Jew" – as long as (s)he doesn't believe in Jesus. If a "born Jew" intermarries, (s)he is still a "Jew" – as long as (s)he doesn't believe in Jesus. (If the "born Jew" who becomes a Christian rises to be an important bishop or pope, on the other hand, then he's once again claimed as a "Jew.") Even some radical Orthodox organizations (e.g., Yad lᵊ-Akhim), no less apostately, reduce "Torah" to the identical Displacement Theology: anti-Christianity.
Tor•âhꞋ handed down to Mosh•ëhꞋ at Har Sin•aiꞋ must never be apostatized for the sake of "differentiating the product" from heresies or heretics. Corrupting Tor•âhꞋ in reaction to heretics and heresies reduces Tor•âhꞋ from the pristine Word of é--ä at Har Sin•aiꞋ to a human-remolded (reformed) reaction-byproduct of the heretics and heresies. This tradition of apostasy has a long history, as recounted by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain on chabad.org; accessed 2012.01.25).
The Custom that Refused to Die
By Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain
R. Jonathan Sacks 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 the
Shᵊm•aꞋ , but four. TheMiꞋshᵊnâh 1 tells us that in Temple times the officiating priests would say, first, the Ten Commandments and then the three paragraphs of theShᵊm•aꞋ .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
Shᵊm•aꞋ . 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.
Tᵊphil•inꞋ 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 halakhicmi•dᵊrâshꞋ on Deuteronomy, the Sifri, is dedicated to proving that we should not include the Ten Commandments in thetᵊphil•inꞋ , which suggests that there were some Jews who did so, and 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 daily prayers and read from it the Ten Commandments.
So the custom of including the Ten Commandments as part of the
Shᵊm•aꞋ 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 [min•imꞋ ]."Jewish [
min•imꞋ ]—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 from G-d at Mount Sinai. The others were received through Moses, and this [min ], 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
mi•dᵊrâshꞋ that gives us an idea of what the [min•imꞋ ] were saying. It places in the mouth of QōꞋrakh 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 ofkhal•âhꞋ ortᵊrum•âhꞋ or [ma•a•sᵊr•otꞋ ] ortzitz•itꞋ . 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 [
min•imꞋ ] 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 the Tur (14th century) suggested that one should say them privately. Rabbi Joseph Karo argues that the ban only applies to reciting the Ten Commandments publicly during the service, so they could 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-Zimra, 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 none the less give them special honor when we read them from the Torah, whether on Khag ha-
Shâvu•otꞋ or in the weeks ofpâ•râsh•otꞋ Yi•tᵊr•oꞋ and wâ-ëtᵊkhan•anꞋ? 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 [
min•imꞋ ], 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. Who was right?Maimonides had no doubt. It was the previous rabbi, the one who had told them not to stand, who was in the right. His reasoning was correct also. Exactly the logic that barred it from the daily prayers should be applied to the reading of the Torah. It should be given no special prominence. The community should stay sitting. Thus ruled Maimonides, the greatest rabbi of the Middle Ages. However, sometimes even great rabbis have difficulty persuading communities to change. Then as now most communities—even those in Maimonides’ Egypt—stood while the Ten Commandments were being read.
So despite strong attempts by the sages, in the time of the Mishnah, Gemara 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 Torah despite Maimonides’ ruling that they should not.
"Leave Israel alone," said
Hi•leilꞋ , "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 [bᵊrit] they made with G-d at Mount Sinai, calling on them to become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Twice in the Torah they are described as the [bᵊrit] itself:Then the L-rd said to Moses, "Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a [bᵊrit] 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 [bᵊrit]—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 [bᵊrit], the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets. 3
That is why they were originally said immediately prior to the
Shᵊm•aꞋ , and why despite their removal from the prayers Jews continued to say them—because their recital constituted a daily renewal of the [bᵊrit] with G-d. That too is why Jews insisted on standing when they were being read from the Torah, because when they were being given the Israelites "stood at the foot of the mountain." 4 TheMi•dᵊrâshꞋ says about the reading of the Ten Commandments on Khag ha-Shâvu•otꞋ : "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 Torah."Jews kept searching for ways of recreating that scene, by standing when they listened to it from the Torah 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 Torah. The honor given to the Ten Commandments was the custom that refused to die.
One is reminded here that one of the primary functions of the Mâ•shiꞋ akh is to restore the breaches that have been apostatized into Tor•âhꞋ . Pursuant to that Messianic objective, the Nәtzâr•imꞋ shall remain faithful to the most pristine standards of Tor•âhꞋ handed down to Mosh•ëhꞋ at Har Sin•aiꞋ ; including the priority of No•sakhꞋ Teimân•iꞋ over other traditions and restoring the A•sërꞋ ët ha-Di•bәr•otꞋ in tәphil•inꞋ as proven in the oldest extant set of tәphil•inꞋ discovered by archeologists (exhibited in the Shrine of the Book in Yәru•shâ•laꞋ yim).
The QōꞋrakh incident occurred during the time of Mosh•ëhꞋ . If such an incident justified removing the Ten Commandments from the liturgy, then Mosh•ëhꞋ would have done it and we wouldn't find it in later Judaic literature. This proves, from Mosh•ëhꞋ himself, that the rabbis who removed the Ten Commandments from the liturgy contradicted Mosh•ëhꞋ – those rabbis, even Jesus and pope to be.
Tor•âhꞋ must not be corrupted indirectly, by anti-anything, any more than it may be corrupted directly by min•imꞋ . Tor•âhꞋ must be practiced according to the most pristine history (namely
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