G-d's revelation to Bnei Yisrael at Mount Sinai for the giving of the Ten Commandments is probably the most powerful event in history. These laws have become the unwritten charter of many societies and for the Jews, the Sinai revelation forged our eternal relationship with G-d and His Torah. The Ten Commandments contain within them the entire Torah. The 620 letters in the Ten Commandments allude to the 613 Mitzvos together with the 7 Noahide laws. This is Judaism's ‘top ten'. As with all nuances in the Torah, the fact that there are Ten Commandments is deliberate and significant.

The number ten reflects perfection and is thus the number associated with G-dliness. The Zohar teaches that the Ten Commandments correspond to the ten utterances with which the world was created, for example I am the Lord your G-d correlates to Let there be light, and so on. The world and Torah are intimately related. The Zohar tells us that Hashem looked into the Torah and created the world: The world was created for the acceptance and fulfilment of the Torah and its Mitzvos. The continued endurance of the world too is dependant upon the Jewish people's observance of Torah.

Taking this theme to a deeper level are the words of the Chiddushei HaRim: The ten plagues served to remove the Kelipah of the ten utterances to transform them into the Ten Commandments. The term Kelipah (literally a peel) is used by the Kabbalistic sources to describe the forces of nature which conceal G-dliness, just as a peel conceals the fruit within it. Like the peel, the Kelipah is not necessarily negative. Whilst it does serve a functional role in the design of Creation, it nonetheless obscures the true G-dly reality of our world.

The Torah according the Kabbalists is more than just the blueprint for creation. Its letters form the very building blocks of creation. The world was created from the Or Ein Sof - G-d's infinite light, which is contained within the Torah. This light was too lofty to be revealed within a finite world and needed to go through a process of Tzimtzum - contraction, so that physicality could be brought into existence. With ten utterances of the 6 days of creation, this Divine energy became contracted and concealed within the creation.

In our corporeal world, G-dliness lies in a state of exile akin to Bnei Yisrael's slavery in Egypt. The Ten Plagues freed the Jewish people from the bonds of Egypt. In a spiritual sense, the function of the ten plagues is to break the Kelipah thereby revealing the true essence of all existence - the G-dly light as found within the Torah. This is the mission of the Jewish people to transform the ten utterances into Ten Commandments, to take the body of the world and reveal its soul.

Man is referred to as a ‘small world' and the scenario described above applies equally in the microcosm. Our true identity is the G-dly Soul within us. This soul is subsumed within our body, whose selfish, physical and instinctive drives obscure our true spiritual identity. Before we can reveal the G-dliness within the world, we must access our personal G-dly dimension. Just as one must use a measure of force to extract the fruit from its shell, we have to break our restraints of ego and material desires to allow the light and message of our soul to surface. Once we have broken through all of the peels, we can enjoy the sweet and nourishing ‘fruits' of the G-dly reality.

 

~ Rabbi Yoni Johnson

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