"If you look at the Ten Commandments, you will see that there is nothing really original in them.
Overall, they are laws that cultures the world over have accepted.
I do not need the Torah to tell me not to murder or not to commit adultery.
What happens is that honoring your mother and father, which in itself is purely a social convention, becomes here the locus of revelation of the Infinite.
What characterizes the events on Sinai is the breakthrough of the Infinite in the finite.
Material reality acquires a new dimension."
--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From The Seven Lights, p. 241, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
