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A prescription of two tablets By Eytan Kobre
Good news in the High Court's Ten Commandments ruling?
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
An irreverent saw of the "good news, bad news" genre has it that, upon his descent from Mount Sinai, Moses is met by a throng of Israelites waiting expectantly to hear what he has brought down from On High. "The good news," Moses begins, "is that I got Him down to ten. The bad news: adultery's still one of 'em."
There is, indeed, both good and bad news in the Supreme Court ruling prohibiting religiously oriented displays of the Ten Commandments in courthouses. On the one hand, de-emphasizing the Big Ten just might help remind Jews that there's a great deal more to Torah than Cecille B. DeMille would have us believe. Indeed, it was a fear of focusing too much on the Ten Commandments — that some Jews could, if you will, potentially believe they had "gotten Him down to ten" — that caused the Sages to annul the ancient custom of reciting the Decalogue in the daily prayer service.
The uniqueness of Judaism's program for moral and spiritual excellence is its insistence that generalized prescriptions don't suffice to produce the desired results. Not only the devil, but G-d, too, is in the details.
Trying to achieve a just society and a spiritual relationship with G-d by distilling the complexities of human life down to "Don't steal" and "Don't murder" is not much different from trying to run a major corporation with only "Buy low, sell high" as one's guiding motto. What enemies of Judaism have attacked throughout the ages as hyperlegalism and emphasis on mindless detail is, in fact, our tradition's greatest contribution to the development of ethical individuals and societies: the idea that in religion, as in every life endeavor that we take seriously, details matter.
Moreover, by characterizing the whole of the Ten Commandments as religious in nature, the Court has done a signal service of acknowledging that, at least from the perspective of the Giver of the tablets, the generic moral directives engraved on the second tablet were rooted in the religious belief in monotheism appearing on the first. This notion, that, ultimately, religion and morality are inseparable, lies just beneath the surface of some of the large moral debates of the day.
By the same token, the victory of those opposed to public displays of the Decalogue is certainly no cause for untempered celebration. As surveys have dismayingly shown, most American Jewish teenagers are unable to name a majority of the Ten Commandments. (Then again, a poll some years back found that only four American teenagers in ten could name the three branches of federal government, as compared with six in ten being able to name all Three Stooges. Thankfully, the former survey didn't include a follow-up Three Stooges question.)
Expressing her acquiescence in the Court's recent decision on eminent domain in Kelo v. New London, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi noted that when the Justices hand down a ruling it's "almost as if G-d has spoken." If only we could get those esteemed jurists to accord as much deference to the public display of His words as Pelosi grants theirs, perhaps those survey numbers would look quite different.
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JWR contributor Eytan Kobre is a Brooklyn attorney active in Jewish communal affairs. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Eytan Kobre
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