The Rabbis tried to abolish this custom in every generation, but never actually succeeded. Why?

The Concern that Cancelled an Enactment

Has anyone ever heard of the Nash Papyrus?

“The Nash Papyrus” is the name given to four papyrus fragments discovered in Egypt in 1898, and later pieced together by the archaeologist Walter Nash. Written in square Hebrew script in the late Second Temple style, the papyrus contains a text of the Ten Commandments, followed immediately by the beginning of the Shema Yisrael paragraph. Researchers date it to around the second century BCE.

This discovery supports an ancient practice recorded in the Mishnah (Tractate Tamid): that in the Beit HaMikdash, every day as part of the prayers before the Shema, they would recite the Ten Commandments—then Shema and additional passages and blessings (Mishnah Tamid 5:1).

There are numerous sources which point to the fact that Jews regularly recited the Ten Commandments, and engaged with them in other ways.

Among the scrolls discovered in the Qumran caves in the Judean Desert in the early 1950s, researchers found tefillin shel rosh that included the Ten Commandments inside. To this day, it isn’t clear who the scribes of those scrolls and tefillin were. Some believe they belonged to the Essene sect, and not to the Jews who preserved and continued the traditional mesorah. 

Historians write that the community of Fustat near Cairo had a special scroll in the ark called “Sefer El Shir,” which they would take out every morning after prayers and read from it the Ten Commandments.

From the Gemara it seems that there were communities in Eretz Yisrael and in Babylonia that wanted to officially add the Ten Commandments into the daily prayers. But the Gemara says it was already abolished because of “the claim of the heretics” (Berachot 12a). The Gemara even records attempts to establish this practice outside Israel: Rabba bar bar Chanah wanted to set it as a fixed practice in Sura, and Amimar wanted to establish it in Nehardea—but they did not proceed “because of the claim of the heretics” (Berachot 12a).

What was the concern? There were people among the Jews who took daily recitation of the Ten Commandments as “proof” that only the Ten Commandments came directly from G-d. Rashi explains that people would start telling simple Jews that the rest of the Torah isn’t true, and that we only keep repeating what G-d Himself said at Sinai, heard directly from His mouth (Rashi on Berachot 12a).

Who were these “minim” trying to plant doubt in the Jewish people—suggesting, G-d forbid, that the Torah isn’t true? Rashi identifies them as non-Jews, but another version has “students of Jesus.” Meaning: early Christians who challenged the tradition of Torah from Heaven argued that only the Ten Commandments came from G-d, and that “the rest of the Torah is not true” (Rashi on Berachot 12a; alternate girsa).

Because of that, the Sages decided it was better to uproot the daily recitation of the Ten Commandments—so that the belief would not take root that only these are from Heaven, and everything else was, G-d forbid, “made up by Moshe on his own” (Berachot 12a; Rashi ad loc.).

Stand or Sit?

But the story doesn’t end there.

The Ten Commandments were so precious to the Jewish people that they found their way back into Jewish prayerbooks. For example, the Baal HaTurim (Rabbeinu Yaakov ben Asher) writes that each person should say the Ten Commandments every day privately.

Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulchan Aruch, also writes that the Sages only prohibited saying them publicly—but that it is proper to say them privately each day after davening. And in fact, in many siddurim, the Ten Commandments appear after the prayers.

The debate continued. Even though the Jewish people stopped saying the Ten Commandments as part of the formal daily prayer, they still wanted to honor them and give them special emphasis when they are read from the Torah in synagogue three times a year—on Shavuos, in Parshas Va’eschanan, and in our parshah.

In the year 5694 (1934), a collection of responsa of the Rambam was published. In one responsum, the questioners tell the Rambam that in their synagogue the custom had been to stand during the reading of the Ten Commandments. A few generations earlier, a great Torah scholar came to their city and cancelled the custom because of “the complaint of the minim” (the sectarians/heretics). Since then, they had become accustomed to sitting during the Ten Commandments.

Recently, a new rabbi was appointed in their community. He came from a city where people do stand for the Ten Commandments, and he wanted to introduce that custom in their synagogue as well. His argument was that when reading the Ten Commandments one should fulfill the verse, “They stood at the bottom of the mountain” (Shemos/Exodus 19:17). Naturally, a dispute broke out in the synagogue: some stood and some sat, and they asked the Rambam what they should do.

The Rambam sided with the earlier rabbi, for the same reason stated in the Gemara. He writes (paraphrased): in any place where they have the practice to stand, they should be stopped—because it causes damage to faith, by implying that the Torah has “levels,” and that one part is greater than another. The claim that in Baghdad and some other cities they do stand is not proof of anything, the Rambam continues to explain, because if you find sick people, you don’t make the healthy people sick so everyone will be equal; you try to heal every sick person you can (Responsa of the Rambam, siman 46).

There’s a famous Jewish joke about this exact issue:

There was a Jewish community where there was always a fight in shul: some people said that everyone must stand during the Ten Commandments, and others maintained that it was correct to sit. To put an end to the argument, they sent a delegation to the old age home, where the oldest living member of the congregation lived. He would surely remember the original tradition.

“Tell us,” they asked him, “is the custom to stand for the Ten Commandments?”

“Hmm,” he answered. He was having a hard time remembering.

“Perhaps the custom is to sit?” the people with the opposing opinion said. 

Again the man answered, “I don’t remember exactly.”

As they stood there, the two groups began to quarrel: “Stand!” “Sit!”

“Yes!” said the old man, “that is the custom…”

They Never Win

What’s incredible is that despite the Rambam’s fight, even his own community in Egypt had the custom to stand during the reading of the Ten Commandments.

It’s a remarkable phenomenon: despite the efforts of the Tannaim in the period of the Mishnah, the Amoraim in the period of the Gemara, and the Rishonim like the Rambam—who tried to prohibit any practice that would appear to give special honor to the Ten Commandments, whether in prayer or in Torah reading—the Jewish people still found ways to bring it back, both into the siddur and into the Torah reading.

Hillel says: “Leave the Jewish people alone—if they are not prophets, they are the children of prophets” (Pesachim 66a). Meaning: when Jews are drawn to a certain custom, it’s a sign that there is a spark of prophecy in it.

What makes the Ten Commandments so unique? Why were Jews so insistent on emphasizing it?

The Ten Commandments are the foundation of Jewish faith. The Rambam himself writes that as long as faith in G-d was based on the Ten Plagues and the splitting of the sea—on signs and miracles—it was a kind of faith with a flaw, because it still leaves room for doubt. Any charlatan can claim he performs miracles and that he speaks in the name of G-d.

But the Ten Commandments are different. There, “our own eyes saw, and not a stranger; our own ears heard, and not someone else”—the fire, the voices, and the lightning. We all heard and witnessed the revelation. That’s not something you could invent. 

In fact, the Torah says this explicitly: “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, so that the people will hear when I speak with you, and they will also believe in you forever.” In other words, before that moment, they had not yet believed in him with “a faith that would last forever”—it was the Ten Commandments that cemented the connection (Rambam, Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 8:1; Shemos/Exodus 19:9).

The entire foundation of Judaism—why we are certain that only it is true, and that all other religions are false—is that at Mount Sinai the entire people, six hundred thousand Jewish men, together with women, children, and even babies, all heard the Ten Commandments. A revelation of G-d to an entire nation happened only once in human history—and only to the Jewish people. (see Likkutei Sichos, vol. 19, p. 481).

Indeed, although the Chabad siddur does not include the Ten Commandments for daily prayer, the custom is nonetheless to stand when they are read from the Torah (Hayom Yom, 24 Shevat).