Bookends—the First and Last Commandments: Yitro

Bookends—the First and Last Commandments

D’var Torah for Parashat Yitro

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Dr. Jonas Salk, the discoverer of the polio vaccine, observed that you need to give children roots and wings:  “Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them.”  

This wisdom can be found as bookends for the central portion of this week’s parasha—the Ten Commandments.  This section opens with a declaration:  Anochi Adonai Eloheychem—“I am Adonai your God!” (20:14).  It closes with a prohibition:  lo tachamod—“you shall not covet.”  Yet these two pronouncements do more than open and close the section we know as The Ten Commandments.   The first gives you freedom to let your imagination soar; the last gives you boundaries and limitations. The one frees you; the other says, “not so fast there!”  Between them lies the full expanse of the rest of human behavior, all the way from holy to evil. 

The idea that God’s will is made known through words is not new.  What makes the Ten Commandments so different, however, is that this vision of God is not limited to one individual or prophet.  No, this revelation is given to the entire Jewish people and to all humanity.  God’s identity and essence is not to be kept as a sacred mystery; everyone—both those physically present at Mount Sinai and all others since that fateful day—is there as God's message is revealed to all human beings.

In fact, in the very Commandment that God is not to be given any form or shape, we are all given the freedom to imagine God as we will.  Driving in Houston once, when our daughter, Hannah, was about two or three years old, we happened to drive by a building that must have seemed very big to her.  “Is God as big as that?” she asked us.  From the moment we can imagine a God, we wonder and we ask:  “Is God here?”  “Where is God?” and, of course, ultimate and unanswerable, “Where was God?”

Our ability to imagine and reason, to put together separate ideas and create new worlds—that’s the essence and image of God within us.  It is infinite and joyful, as anyone who has ever created anything knows well.

But we are not God.  Our powers, both to create and to destroy, are powerful.  These must be grounded and limited if they are to be useful.  Look at Icarus, the mythic youth of ancient Greece, whose father, Daedalus, had constructed him wings held together with wax.  Icarus flew too close to the sun; the wax melted and Icarus fell to the sea and drowned.  There must be limits to our imagination, so that it doesn’t overtake us.  We can drown in a sea of our own fantasies; we can surround ourselves with the splendor and arrogance of kings.  We might even think of ourselves as being above the law, or even as gods impervious to the consequence of our own actions.

We can reach too far, and that’s why we need roots, to keep us connected to the ground, to reality.

The tenth Commandment reminds us of the truth of this lesson:  “You shall not covet” (Ex. 20:14 in the Hebrew Bible, 20:17 in the English Bibles). 

Unlike the previous commandments, this tenth one does not encourage or prohibit a specific action.  It alone restricts your very thinking.  Even before you do something wrong, stop even before you think it, it says.  After all, coveting is behind almost anything wrong we can do.  From a person to an object, when we covet it we want it so badly that we might be willing to do almost anything to get it.  “You shall not covet” limits our power to imagine what it must be like to drive that car, to live that kind of life, to have anything you could ever want anytime you wanted it.

Like bookends, “I am Adonai” and “You shall not covet” open our eyes and close them again.  Wings and roots:  wings to think, to imagine, to go places you’ve never been, to love someone you’ve never known; roots to learn with, through which to draw nourishment.  Our roots do not bind us, but rather serve as lifelines or guidelines.  They don’t ground us, only provide foundation, structure and safety as we strive and reach beyond the tried and proven.  Roots are the foundation upon which we build our “castle in the sky.”

With our lives, we fill the vast space between that which can be imagined and that which already exists.  The many talents we are gifted with—including opposable thumbs! —are the tools that make invention possible.  Our imagination is unbounded; what we actually do, however, must be careful and deliberate.  For while we do have an amazing ability to create, so are we able to destroy and inflict pain.

The Ten Commandments remind us of this irony in our existence.  In a way, they define our humanity.  Able to imagine the Holy, we can just as easily also be swayed to do evil.  It’s the difference between “I am your God” and “You shall not covet.” 

© 2013 by Boaz D. Heilman