“Hear, O Israel! The first of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord thy God” is the theme chosen this year for the Day of Judaism which will be celebrated on the vigil of the Week of Christian Unity in all Italian dioceses on Tuesday 17 January. Introduced in 1990, the Day has the aim of fostering Jewish-Christian dialogue through greater mutual understanding, helping to overcome prejudices and discovering shared biblical values. The “Decalogue” is therefore the basic text of the Day this year. In a joint message written for the Day, Catholic Bishop Vincenzo Paglia and Rabbi Giuseppe Laras explain the choice of the theme as follows: “At the centre is placed the Decalogue, the real polar star of the faith and morality of the people of God. These “ten commandments”, however, are also the “great code” of the ethical civilization of humanity as a whole, given that they identify good and evil, right and wrong, true and false according to the criteria of the upright conscience of every created human being. Starting from this year, we would like therefore to begin a journey that will have other stages in successive Days, so as to propose a constant and continuous reflection on the progressive sequence of the Ten Commandments”.
