The Ten Commandments — Aseret HaDibrot
The Ten Commandments received at Sinai are the foundation of Jewish law and Western ethics — establishing obligations to God, to family, and to community as the structure of a covenant society.
The Aseret HaDibrot (Ten Commandments or Ten Utterances — 'dibrot' means utterances, not merely commandments) were given at Sinai amid thunder and lightning, representing the direct revelation of God's will to the entire Jewish people. Jewish tradition notes that the Ten Commandments are divided into two tablets of five each: the first five govern obligations between humans and God (no other gods, no idols, God's name sacred, Shabbat, honor parents), the second five govern obligations between humans (no murder, no adultery, no theft, no false witness, no coveting). Remarkably, 'Honor your father and mother' appears on the tablet of duties to God — suggesting that honoring parents is a form of honoring God, and that the family is the first school of moral life. The Kabbalists find in the Ten Commandments the complete structure of the ten Sefirot — the divine attributes through which creation is sustained.
I am the Lord your God... You shall have no other gods before Me.
Legal philosopher Lon Fuller's 'morality of law' — arguing that law must have certain inherent moral qualities to function as law at all — echoes the Torah's vision that the Ten Commandments are not arbitrary divine decrees but the articulation of the necessary conditions for a just and sustainable community.
Torah