Which Command of the Ten is most important?

By Rabbi Ben Kamin

Rabbi Ben Kamin
Rabbi Ben Kamin

ENCINITAS, California — At this moment in the Hebrew cycle of Torah readings, the narrative of the Ten Commandments is front and center: in synagogues all over the world, “The Revelation” will be chanted from the Torah scroll and many people will actually stand up during the interlude when the Ten Laws are intoned.

Are all the Commandments equal in value? Is “You shall not kill,” for example, as pertinent as “You shall not make a graven image?” Is there a Commandment whose value supersedes any of the others?

In this world-environment of such searing religious divisiveness, even a question could invite a clash, an edict, or worse. But it’s an intellectual inquiry; when religion stops people from thinking and discussing, the result is, sectarian terrorism or any of the smaller-in-scope but still tragically skewed broods of violence that spew from religious fundamentalism and tyranny manifest everywhere, including here in the United States.

I’ve been asked this question many times over the years—almost always by people who truly love the Bible exactly because they value and enjoy the opportunity to apply and interpret its subtleties and mysteries into their daily lives. “Which is the most important of the Ten Commandments, Rabbi?”

Many people put forth the sixth law, “You shall not kill,” as having the highest priority—and there is an immediate logic to that. We are made in God’s image, according to scriptural text, and human life is sacred. Today we endure a global extremist war that beheads and burns that very notion.

I have also heard the first law being heralded as “number one,” with the caveat that it appears first.

Unlike most of the others, it is written in a positive configuration: “I am the Lord your God”—and then it unconditionally bans any and all forms of idolatry. A strong argument can be made for this one, exactly because idol-worship, from dollars to BMWs to radical clerics to rock icons, has caused more anguish than anything else in human life. Moreover, and too often, the subjects of this maddening idol worship, from John Lennon to Heath Ledger to Whitney Houston to Michael Jackson, wound up being ravaged by others’ psychoses—or their own tragic self-destruction.

All ten laws are imperative and hallowed, of course, but just for the sake of discourse, the rabbinic tradition does offer that one of them stands out as a kind of primer for all the others. It is number five, “Honor your father and mother.”

And it’s not because the Rabbis actually believed that everybody was going to be blessed with great parents. I myself was not and make no bones about it. The Rabbis took that bittersweet reality into consideration when they seized upon this middle commandment as the one most loaded with psychological and empirical potential.

First off, it doesn’t command you to love your parents—not everybody gets parents who are, frankly, lovable. But it does decree that you honor—meaning your household, your heritage, your family name. The biblical tradition is more concerned that you not get disconnected from your own sense of self than it is with your parents’ success at parenting. This is the brilliance of the Hebrew wording of Commandment Five.

And if you honor your parents, and thereby your own legacy, you will likely be a better adjusted human being (less prone to self-loathing, guilt, and destructive tendencies), than if you get stuck in generational bickering, anger, and even dysfunction. The result of all this, candidly, is that you are more likely than not to observe the other nine commandments because you are more or less a normal person who enjoys good mental health.

Ah, yes—religion joined with good mental health. Now there’s a commanding idea.

*
Rabbi Kamin is an author and freelance writer.  Your comment may be posted in the space provided below or sent to ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com