What are the Ten Commandments? In the United States, says David Hazony, that question is hardly asked. We spend most of our time arguing about where this seminal text may be displayed and almost none about what it means. The aim of his new book is to redress this imbalance.
Hazony's conclusions are startling. First, he claims, the Ten Commandments are not really a religious text: "we do not need faith to think about them, understand them, or accept their teachings as true." Although they do contain statements about God, these propositions serve mainly to highlight that the commandments are talking about us "” about "man's role or purpose in the world."
Second, the Ten Commandments are not best understood as laws, but rather as representing a "whole attitude to life." They are addressed to all "” not just Israel "” and they apply as much today as they did when they were first received. They are nothing less than "a blueprint for a good society." They reflect a "spirit of redemption" "” the conviction that human beings, acting individually and collectively, can make the world better.
As Hazony recognizes, these propositions rest "” and rely "” on a distinctive interpretive methodology. If the Ten Commandments are meant to be a social blueprint, then "each commandment should be read with this in mind." They are meant to be viewed "not simply as specific, technical prohibitions but also expansively and imaginatively, as signifying broader ideas." He looks at each commandment as "a kind of paradigm for something bigger, a more general statement about right and wrong."
Hazony's overall project is neither historical nor theological, then; it is philosophical. He treats the Ten Commandments as a highly compressed statement of moral and political philosophy. His task is to tease out and organize its implicit values into an organized vision of a good life in a good society.
Hazony's approach is rooted in the thought of Eliezer Berkovits, one of the most important 20th-century theologians and moral philosophers writing within the Orthodox Jewish tradition. In an important essay, "Eliezer Berkovits and the Revival of Jewish Moral Thought," Hazony argues that the destruction of Eastern European Jewry accelerated a shift within Orthodoxy from a "popular religion based on deeply rooted traditional values and norms, in which the scholar was generally limited in his ability to determine practice," to one "centered on rules made explicit in the codes of law and in the interpretations of these codes by the rabbis of the yeshivot."
Hazony presents Berkovits as reacting against this increasingly strict and rigid legalism. In his view, Jewish law is best understood as fluid, resting on a set of moral values "” such as human dignity and peace within and between communities "” whose applications to practice rightly reflect changing circumstances. These values create a "hierarchy" within Jewish law: practices are for the sake of core values, not vice versa. Jewish morality thus focuses on the consequences of laws rather than compliance with law as an end in itself. Each rule, no matter how important, may be relaxed or waived if Judaism's "larger goals" require its modification. While the underlying moral vision is invariant, the Torah creates what students of American jurisprudence call a "living constitution" whose application requires judgment and imagination. In deciding the law, the rabbis exercise what Hazony calls a "remarkable degree of exegetical freedom." As Berkovits himself put it, the rabbi's role is to internalize Judaism's fundamental values and translate them into law through the "creative boldness of application of the comprehensive ethos of the Torah to the [particular] case."
The advantages of this approach are obvious. So are its risks. A specific rule ("You shall not X") does not state its underlying rationale, and there are always multiple principles, at differing levels of generality, that are compatible with the rule. The text itself does not fully determine the choice among these principles. But once selected as the purpose or point of the law, the principle then becomes the basis of legal decisions in specific cases. To the extent that the selection is arbitrary, the law will be as well.
To be sure, there are ways of minimizing these risks. For example, Berkovits scrupulously limited the range of possible principles to those with deep roots in the biblical and rabbinic traditions. In addition, as Hazony observes, Berkovits constantly keeps in view, and balances, the three basic elements of the tradition "” a system of law, a set of moral values, and a prophetic vision of a better future.
Hazony's interpretation of the Ten Commandments shows what happens when this balance is disrupted "” specifically, when values and vision dominate and law virtually disappears. Consider his treatment of the final commandment, "You shall not covet . . ." Hazony claims that "the ban on coveting is a rejection of a single personality flaw so destructive as to be the source of many other sins "” the sin of insecurity." You don't have to be a psychologist, he insists, to recognize that coveting is the product of insecurity. You shall not covet actually means "You shall not allow the things you fear to become demons controlling the core of your psyche." The redemptive society Hazony seeks requires the overcoming of insecurity and replacing it with a "deep and abiding confidence in ourselves."
Well, maybe. No doubt insecurity about their manhood explains why some Lotharios try to seduce every woman in sight. But it is equally plausible to argue that some desires are intrinsically unbounded and that their pursuit can be evidence of an amoral self-confidence. Hubris can do as much damage as fear. From this perspective, the point of much moral (and civil law) is to place limits on desires whose pursuit can endanger the social order. And the point of much Jewish liturgy "” notably the Yom Kippur service "” is to undermine our self-confidence and force us to recognize not only our sins but also our vulnerability.
Equally unpersuasive is Hazony's interpretation of the first commandment: "I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt, from the house of slaves." Hazony turns the Exodus into a story of redemption more through human heroism than divine will, a transformation he attributes to the "rabbinic tradition." But what is more central to the rabbinic tradition than the Passover Haggada, which is so focused on God's role in the Exodus that Moses virtually disappears? At the very least, the evidence on this point is divided. If so, Hazony's implausible contention that the Ten Commandments are not essentially religious rests on the shakiest of foundations.
Hazony is hardly the first to regard the Ten Commandments as the basis of a good society. But it is implausible to suggest that its vision is equally acceptable to secularists and believers. Yes, secularists can invoke reason to justify some version of commandments five through then. But the first four, from God the Redeemer of Israel through God the Giver of the Sabbath, rest on an act of acceptance that is at its core religious.
Like the Constitution, the Ten Commandments begin by stating the authority on which they depend. "We the people" gave the United States its Constitution; God gave Israel its Torah. So when Americans argue about where the Ten Commandments may be displayed, they are not avoiding the meaning of this text. Rather, they are going to the heart of what it is.
The Ten Commandments: How Our Most Ancient Moral Text Can Renew Modern Life, by David Hazony, Simon & Schuster, 304 pp., $26.00
William Galston is a senior fellow and the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. His books include Public Matters: Politics, Policy, and Religion in the 21st Century and Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State
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