Let My People Know

"I do not need the Torah to tell me not to murder"

 

If you look at the Ten Commandments, you will see that there is nothing really original in them.

Overall, they are laws that cultures the world over have accepted.

I do not need the Torah to tell me not to murder or not to commit adultery.

What happens is that honoring your mother and father, which in itself is purely a social convention, becomes here the locus of revelation of the Infinite.
 
What characterizes the events on Sinai is the breakthrough of the Infinite in the finite.

Material reality acquires a new dimension.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Seven Lights, p. 241, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz