Give us two
It’s interesting that the Ten Commandments were engraved on two separate tablets. Was G-d short of granite that He had to use two tablets? Couldn’t He inscribe all the commandments on a single stone?

First, - a stereotypical joke. Before offering the Torah to the Jews, G-d also offered it to other nations, but they refused because certain commandments went against their grain. When G-d offered it to the Jews, they asked:

“How much do you want for it?”

The answer was: “It’s free.”

So the Jews replied: “Give us two.”

Yet the issue demands serious reflection. Why two tablets?

Two versions
The Midrash offers a novel answer. The Ten Commandments were engraved on two tablets so they would be read in two directions — from top to bottom, and from also across from side to side

The simplest way to read the Ten Commandments is, of course, top to bottom:

On the first stone:
1) I am the L-rd your G-d who has taken you out of Egypt...
2) You shall have no other gods...
3) You shall not swear in G-d's name in vain...
4) Remember the Sabbath...
5) Honor your father and mother...

And the five commandments on the second stone:
6) You shall not murder.
7) You shall not commit adultery.
8) You shall not steal.
9) You shall not bear false witness against your fellow.
10) You shall not covet your fellow’s … all that belongs to your fellow.

This is how to read the Ten Commandments vertically. But there’s also a horizontal way to read the commandments, from commandment No. 1 directly to No. 6; from No. 2 to No. 7; 3-8; 4-9; 5-10.

This version would read like this:
1) I am the L-rd your G-d/You shall not murder.
2) You shall have no other gods/You shall not commit adultery;
and so forth with the rest of the commandments.
But what insight do we gain from this horizontal reading?
We will discuss the juxtaposition of the first and sixth commandments: "I am your G-d/You shall not murder." The significance of this “horizontal” reading from a historical, political and religious standpoint cannot be overstated. It embodies a most stunning aspect of Judaism. What is at stake here is nothing less than the future of human civilization.

Two attempts
Two groups have tried to divorce commandment no. 1 from commandment no. 6 - to sever the idea of a Creator, who created the world for a moral purpose, from the imperative to honor the life of another human. The first group were the 18th - 19th centuries Enlightenment philosophers;, the second are religious leaders in many ages. The result for both was moral defeat.

The Enlightenment thinkers ushered in the Age of Reason and the modern secular era based on the ideal that “You shall not murder” does not require the prerequisite of “I am Your G-d.” Religion, they felt, was not necessary to ensure moral behavior; reason alone, without G-d, would guide humanity into an age of liberty and morality. The sixth commandment could be respected independent of the first.

While religion embodied the vision of man in a continuous relationship with G-d, the Enlightenment represented the vision of man without G-d. Actually this vision was first introduced by the serpent at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. “You shall be like G-d," it promised Eve. Man could replace G-d. Left to his own vices, the thinking went, man can achieve greatness.

But the Holocaust ended this grand faith in human progress based on human reason.

The gas chambers were not invented by primitive, barbaric and illiterate people. On the contrary, the Germans excelled in the sciences and the arts, yet they sent 1.5 million children, and 4.5 million adults, to their deaths solely because they were Jewish. SS guards spent their day in Auschwitz, gassing as many as 12,000 humans, and then returned home in the evening to pet their dogs and laugh with their wives. As the smoke of children rose from the crematoriums, these charming romantics enjoyed wine, women and the moving music of Bach, Mozart and Wagner. They murdered millions in the name of a developed ethic, and justified genocide on rational grounds.

"Schindler’s List" has a scene about the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto where a little girl hiding in a piano is shot by an SS guard. As her body lays in a puddle of blood, another guard sits down to play the piano.

First SS guard: Was ist das? Ist das Bach?

Second SS guard: Nein. Mozart.

First SS guard: Mozart?

Second SS guard: Ja.

And they both marvel at the exquisite music.

Nazi Germany at its best!

Elie Wiesel, who gripped the world with his book "Night," a personal testimony in Auschwitz, once asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who himself lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, how he could believe in G-d after Auschwitz. If G-d existed, Wiesel asked, how could He ignore 6 million of His children murdered so cruelly?

The Rebbe shed a tear and said, “In whom should we believe after Auschwitz? Man?”

If there is any faith left after the 6 million, it must gain vitality from something transcending human rationale. If morality is left to the human mind, it can justify the guillotine, gulag and gas chamber. As Dostoevsky put it in "The Brothers Karamazov," “Where there is no G-d, all is permitted.”

The atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote: “I cannot see how to refute the arguments for the subjectivity of ethical values [resulting from atheism], but I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don’t like it.” Without G-d, we cannot objectively define any behavior as good or evil.

As difficult as it is to entertain, no one can objectively claim that gassing a mother and her children is any more evil than killing a mouse. It is a matter of taste and opinion. The validity of “You shall not murder” is sustained only if it predicated on the foundation of faith in a universal creator who gave humanity an absolute and unwavering definition of good vs. evil.

Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel, who escaped Warsaw a few weeks before it was invaded, and lost most of his family in the Nazi Holocaust, captured this sentiment: “If man is not more than human, then he is less then human.” Either we rise beyond ourselves, or we fall to a place below ourselves. When the vision of the sacred dies in a person, he or she is capable of serving the devil.

Religious evil
While the Enlightenment abandoned commandment no. 1 in favor of no. 6, some religions abandoned no. 6 in favor of no. 1. Theirs is the atrocious belief that as long as you believe in their Lord, or in Allah, you can kill and maim whomever you brand an "infidel."

Whether it is a business executive in New York, a teen-ager eating a slice of pizza in Jerusalem, a child on the first day of school in Beslan, or a commuter in Madrid, or a tourist in Bali, if the person is not of your faith, God wants him to die. For the fundamentalist, "I am the Lord your God" has nothing to do with "You shall not murder."

This is a perversion of faith. Faith that does not inculcate its followers with the sanctity of any human life desecrates and erodes the very purpose of faith, which is to elevate the person to a state beyond personal instinct and prejudice.

If you delete “You shall not murder” from religion, you have detached yourself from “I am the Lord your G-d.” To believe in G-d means to honor the life of any person created in G-d’s image. The juxtaposition of the two commandments tells us that you can’t believe in G-d and in murder.

Conversely, if you truly believe that taking another human’s life is wrong — not just because you lack the means or motive to do so or are afraid of ending up in jail, but because you recognize the transcendent, inviolable value of life — that's another way of saying you believe in G-d. For what confers upon human life its transcendent sanctity and absolute value if not the presence of G-d imprinted on the face of the person?

Over 3,300 years ago, Judaism, in the most ennobling attempt to create a society based on justice and peace, established its principle code in the sequence of the two commandments – “I am the L-rd your G-d/You shall not murder.” A society without G-d can become monstrous; a society that abandons the eternal and absolute commandment “You shall not murder” is equally evil. Both are capable of burning children alive during the day and then going to sleep with a clear conscience.

The mountain
The Talmud captures this notion in a rather intriguing way.

The Talmud says that when Israel approached Sinai, G-d lifted up the mountain, held it over the people's heads and declared: “Either you accept the Torah, or be crushed beneath the mountain.” (The Talmud bases this tradition on the verse in Exodus, “They stood beneath the mountain.”)

This seems ludicrous. What worth is there to a relationship and a covenant accepted through coercion?

The answer is profoundly simple. G-d was telling the Jewish people that the creation of societies that honor life and shun cruelty depends on education and value system inculcated within children of the society. The system of Torah, G-d was saying, was the guarantor for life and liberty. If you reject the morality of Torah, if you will lack the courage and conviction to teach the world that “I am the L-rd your G-d” and that I have stated unequivocally “You shall not murder,” the result will be humanity crushed under a mountain of tyrants.

Sixty years since Auschwitz and after one decade of Islamic terrorism, the mountain hangs over our heads once again. Shall we embrace divine-based morality? Shall we ever forget that religion must be defined by “You shall not murder?”

Rabbi Y. Jacobson (Algemeiner.com) is editor of the Algemeiner Journal.