Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea
Why were the "Ten Commandments" singled out from the rest of the Torah?
muman613:
--- Quote from: edu on January 21, 2011, 02:32:59 AM ---Yaakov Mendel wrote:Yaakov, there are Torah commandments such as Love Your Neighbor as Yourself that seem to sum up the Torah in a broad and simple manner, yet this is left out of the Aseret Hadibrot {Ten Commandments} Any theory why?
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The commandment 'Love thy Neighbor' is actually contained in the 10th Dibrot.... "Do not covet thy neighbors house..."...
As I said in my post above, the Ten Commandments can be considered meta-categories for the 613...
http://vbm-torah.org/archive/intparsha68/30-68kedoshim.htm
--- Quote ---http://www.ou.org/index.php/shabbat_shalom/article/39634/
The great midrash mystery however is the search for lo tachmod (do not covet). Whereas belief in Hashem (Ani Hashem Elokeichem), respecting parents, Shabbos, bearing false oaths, etc. are explicated and murder (3), adultery are intimated, the coveting prohibition appears elusive.
Ibn Ezra and Ramban cite different midrashic traditions (4). The former quotes “lo taashok es reiacha” (5) (do not cheat your friend). Apparently, the notion is that cheating a fellow Jew is often the ultimate consequence of coveting. Indeed even when one pays for a coveted object (6), he still violates the prohibition – so long as he caused an unwilling separation between owner and object (salesmen and realtors beware!)
Ramban however finds lo tachmod residing in a completely different neighborhood:
לא תחמוד וכתיב הכא ואהבת לרעך כמוך
There is it is written “do not covet” and here it is written Love your neighbor like yourself-
Remarkable! “Do not covet” equals “Love your neighbor like yourself”. Their formulations appear so different and yet in midrashic analysis their fates converge. How so?
Ostensibly, the link is as follows: Jealousy is an impediment to love. The master of lo tachmod will naturally gravitate towards loving his neighbor in a deep and abiding way. If I can figure out how to fargen - how to not begrudge one his success, a natural state of love will reside. In this formulation, v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha is the result of one who internalizes the message of lo tachmod. A simple formulation however begets a lifetime’s work of implementation. At the end of the midrash, we are still left groping for tools of tachmod transcendence.
Perhaps there is a bit more going one here. We may speculate that the “Do not covet/ Love your neighbor stream” flows in the opposite direction as well. Maybe consideration of v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha will give us the tools to overcome our natural jealous desires.
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