The Ten Commandments

By David Bidussa*

I learned many things by listening to a 13-year-old teenager giving a speech for his Bar mitzvah in my synagogue. I summarize some of the things he said. In the scene of the ten commandments, three things count. The first is the expectation or the belief that without a fundamental principle there is no community of destiny; the second is the importance taking responsibility of a protocol of things to believe and things to do; the third is that we need to know how to manage feelings. The feelings that populate that scene are essentially two: the first is in the ten commandments and is the envy. The second is the fear, which can generate hatred, but also give rise to respect: it depends on whether you have a sense of your own limits.

*David Bidussa is a historian of social ideas.