In many synagogues across the world, two tablets hang above the ark, featuring shortened, stylized versions of the Ten Commandments. Often only the opening word or two of each commandment is visible. They are not there for close study—they are there to be noticed.
That raises a simple question. What exactly are we meant to notice when we look at a handful of Hebrew words? The answer lies not in the words that are written but in what the Ten Commandments are meant to inculcate.
One way to understand the Ten Commandments is not as a list of beliefs, but as the basis of a relationship. A wedding offers a helpful comparison.
Under a Jewish marriage canopy, a legal document called the ketubah is read aloud. It is prosaic and binding, spelling out the spouses’ respective marital responsibilities: cooking, cleaning, earning a living. Some have recommended against decorating or displaying the ketubah, reminding us that it is “just” a contract—a functional instrument meant to regulate obligations, not to inspire or adorn.
Yet many couples choose to display it anyway. They do so not because the document is beautiful, but because it represents commitment—a commitment kept in view as a reminder, not tucked away and forgotten.
Something similar is happening with the Ten Commandments. Some 2,000 years ago, they were recited daily in synagogue and were even included in what later became the twice-daily recitation of the Shema. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained, this practice was stopped roughly 500 years later because of concern that people would come to believe that only these ten laws were truly divine, while the rest of the Torah was secondary.
Yet the effort to limit their prominence never fully succeeded. The Ten Commandments remained central. People continued to stand when they were read. The tablets remained on synagogue walls. The community, unwilling to treat them as just another text to be tucked away and forgotten, demanded they serve as a constant reminder of the basis of their faith.
This persistence tells us something important. Judaism is not a religion of formal dogmas that one must affirm to belong. Creeds draw boundaries based on belief, and traditions centered on belief alone endure only so long as those ideas are actively affirmed.
Judaism works differently. It is built on a covenant. A covenant binds a people to a way of life shaped by ritual and law. Because covenant is lived rather than merely professed, it embeds identity in daily practices and communal rhythms. Even when belief is strained or not articulated, the covenant continues to be enacted. It is this structure that gives Judaism its remarkable persistence across time.
From this perspective, the Ten Commandments are not the whole Torah, but they do point to the kind of relationship the Torah creates. Obligation comes before comfort. We remain committed even through tension and disagreement. Like a marriage, the covenant with God can endure through struggle and failure. What it cannot survive is indifference.
This helps explain something else: the power of Rembrandt’s painting of Moses just before he smashes the tablets. In the image, Moses fills the frame, with the tablets partly cut off. What we feel is not only the drama of the moment, but the weight of what is about to be lost. Not just laws or the Hebrew words that spell them out, but the relationship with God—the covenant itself.
That covenant was meant to shape a just society. Honor your parents. Do not murder. Do not steal. These are not abstract ideals. They are basic rules for daily life, and they need constant reinforcement because we are human.
Seen against this background, the Ten Commandments are urgently relevant. Today, we are encouraged to treat ourselves as the final authority, with commitments easily set aside. Displaying the Ten Commandments is not about nostalgia. It is about acknowledging that we are bound.
The challenge of Parshat Yitro is simple but demanding. It is not whether we admire the Ten Commandments, but whether we are willing to live with the obligations they entail—to accept limits and responsibility even when they are uncomfortable.
Standing is easy. Living the covenant is harder. That is the work the Ten Commandments still ask of us today.
Ilana Epstein is Rebbetzin of Mizrachi Melbourne, serving alongside her husband, Rabbi Daniel Epstein, Rabbi of the community. Prior to moving to Australia, they served at Western Marble Arch Synagogue in London, previously the Cockfosters and North Southgate community, following seventeen years living and working in Israel.
Ilana is a writer and programme developer with experience in Jewish leadership and Holocaust education. She has led educational delegations to Poland with the Holocaust Educational Trust and March of the Living UK since 2015. In 2024, she was commissioned to write historical material for the adaptation of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
Ilana has served as Director of Educational Projects at Jewish Futures and previously as an educator for the United Synagogue. She devised and leads a development programme for the wives of European rabbis on behalf of the Conference of European Rabbis, and was selected as an inaugural Sacks Scholar in 2023.
This essay was written as part of our collaboration with The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Sacks Scholars.
