10 Commandments or 10 Speakings? Speech as the Center of Our Worship

The 2nd Commandment says not to make a chiseled thing part of our worship, yet the 10 Commandments actually are a chiseled thing! In this podcast, I show how the Jewish tradition the notion that it's okay in this instance because we make divine speech --words chiseled on these chiseled stones!-- the center of our worship practice. This changes everything: holiness comes through the holiness of speech, both divine in creating worlds and in creating instructions for how to live, and through our own speech. Instead of an image or an idol, we have speech. I also cover how the 10 Statements (Torah) became the 10 Commandments (Christianity) and so the Rabbis renamed them the 10 Speakings.

You can listen to 10 Commandments or 10 Speakings? Speech as the Center of Our Worship online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

10 Commandments or 10 Speakings? Speech as the Center of Our Worship is an episode from Authentic, Compassionate Judaism for the Thinking Person by Rabbi Nadav Caine.

This episode is 13:26 long.

This episode was published on Feb 23, 2026.

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