Ten Days and Ten Commandments

Rabbi Yehonatan Eybschutz postulates that the Ten Days of Repentance correspond to the Ten Commandments. Thus, the first day of Rosh haShana stands opposite the first commandment “I am the Lord your God,” because the essence of each is belief in and acceptance of God’s kingdom over all creation. R. Yehonatan applies this correspondence between Rosh haShana and the first commandment to Sa’adya Gaon’s comment that the shofar is blown on Rosh haShana as a symbol of our coronation of God as king of the world. In this connection, it is enlightening to note that the shofar was sounded at Mount Sinai as Israel heard the Divine pronouncement of “I am the Lord your God.”

Further, Rabbi Yehonatan notes that just as the Decalogue proceeds from mitzvot bein adam laMakom (between man and God) to bein adam l’havero (interpersonal relations), so it is too with the Ten Days of Repentance, clearly implying that the greater aspect of repentance is between man and fellow man.  This is so, if for no other reason than the fact that every mitzva bein adam l’havero is also a mitzva bein adam laMakom, since the mandate for the mitzva is God’s decree.

My son commented that the converse is true as well: any sin bein adam laMakom is also a sin bein adam l’havero, based upon Rabbi Kook’s insight that since each person is not only an individual, but part of a collective, when one sins (whether between man and fellow man or between man and God), in addition to the impact on the individual, that sin has a negative impact on the collective.

Finally, Rabbi Yehonatan explains that the first and last (“Thou shall not covet”) commandments are related to each other, since following one’s desires is the source of all sins and can lead to forgetting Divine Providence. Thus, the end points of the Ten Days of Repentance, Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur represent the same concept.