By Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber

My wife’s about to start a new job, moving from one secondary school to another. And aside from the difficulties of a new commute, new colleagues, new timetable, there’s also the terrifyingly large yellow folder she’s been handed entitled Policies and Guidelines.

Of course, the general thrust of every school’s Policies and Guidelines is pretty similar: look after the children, teach them stuff, don’t let them set fire to the building (no, really, there’s genuinely a policy called ‘Prevention of arson during school hours’). None of the broad themes are remotely surprising.

But at the same time, every school has a different approach to the subtleties. What sort of behaviour justifies a ticking off versus a detention? If a child is having difficulties, at what stage should their parents be involved?

The nuances somehow remind me of the complexity of the covid regulations: do you have to wear a mask in a sandwich shop, etc etc etc.

Halfway through the Book of Exodus, our ancestors received the Ten Commandments. Then, three books later, they received them again… slightly differently. There were some changes. The Reform movement’s lectionary summarises this portion as “Review of the Revelation at Sinai”. (I’m not sure ‘review’ is an apt description… how many stars would they receive? ‘People who bought the law against murder also bought the law against adultery’?)

Something must be behind the differences between the two editions. Was this a case of God taking a leaf from my wife’s employers’ book and reissuing similar guidance with minor tweaks? Or was something else going on?

An essay by the 19th-century rabbi Samuel Luzzatto, known as the Shadal, gives a very comprehensive answer. He identifies twelve differences between the two passages – some quite significant, some of only one or two letters – and carefully explains each one.

For instance, in the first version we are told that Shabbat is about commemorating God’s rest at the end of the Creation story. In the second version, though, Shabbat is a commemoration of how we were rescued from slavery.

Nu? So what is Shabbat about?

Well, the Shadal explains that this tweak recognised that the second version was being delivered to an entirely new generation. These were the Israelites who were about to enter the Promised Land, and none of them had experienced slavery in Egypt. There was, therefore, every risk that, without an extra reminder, they would forget that chapter of their history. So the meaning of Shabbat was amended to make it more suitable to its new audience.

Another amendment between the two versions of the Shabbat commandment is more famous – the first says to remember Shabbat, the second to keep it. שמור וזכור. Why the difference? Well, the generation of the wilderness would stop receiving manna after every six days, so all they would need to do is remember that sequence and then they would be able to realise when it was Shabbat. But in Israel, there would be no more manna, so the new generation would have to pay really close attention and keep their own calendar in order not to miss it.

Does this mean God changed God’s mind and updated the central Ten Commandments between Exodus and Deuteronomy? That would be quite a radical reading of the text. But the Shadal takes us somewhere even more radical: he says that Moses took it upon himself to update them.

Now, the argument that the later version of the Ten Commandments – which we read this morning – is in the voice of Moses rather than that of God… that isn’t controversial. It’s not always easy to follow who’s speaking in these long narrative passages, but it probably is indeed all one long speech by Moses: “God said…” and then a long quotation of the revelation sequence from Exodus.

But, says the Shadal, it wasn’t quite a quotation. Moses, after 40 years of wearying experience in leading the Israelites, realised that some clarifications were necessary. So he added some tweaks of his own. He decided לתקן דבריו, to correct the commandments. To correct the commandments! That’s definitely what it means. לתקן comes from the same root as תקון עולם, repairing the world. Moses decided that the commandments were broken, or not fit for purpose, and he repaired them before repeating them to the Israelites.

This is huge. It tells us that Jewish teachings – especially biblical teachings, which are particularly likely to seem alien or even immoral or hideous to a modern audience – do not work on a ‘one size fits all’ basis. At least, one size does not fit all generations. During the 40 years in the wilderness, Moses learned more about the people he was leading, and came to realise that they needed different rules to support them through a rough patch than the ones God had intended for a previous generation.

And isn’t that just what Progressive Judaism has been doing ever since its inception? Our founders recognised that different times called for slightly different rules, and each successive generation of Progressive Jewish leaders have tweaked and changed things to reflect the fluid context in which we live.

Underneath all of the changes, though, remain some unchanging fixed points. Monotheism. Joy and pride in Jewish identity. Human dignity. And, above all, no arson during school hours.

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