James R. Rogers investigates the different meanings of biblical law for Jews and Christians, and the mistake both make when they try to isolate the Torah’s moral teachings from their context. The result of this “reductionist inclination” can be found in American discourse about “Judeo-Christian morality,” a phrase that Rogers takes to refer primarily to the Ten Commandments:

[W]resting the Ten Commandments out of the book of Exodus (and Deuteronomy) and treating them as stand-alone moral requirements . . . misses the point of Exodus. . . . The popular view of Exodus [is neatly summed up] in the classic film, The Ten Commandments. . . . The film skips thirteen chapters in Exodus relating to the design and construction of the tabernacle, as well as all of Leviticus and Numbers, [much of which] relates to the sacramental environment around Israel given the presence of the tabernacle in Israel’s midst, all the way to the end of Deuteronomy.

And [then there’s] all the rigmarole about food, and sacrifices, and cleansing oneself from this and that. The problem is that all that stuff isn’t just so much rigmarole. . . . As reported in Exodus, the purpose of the exodus is that God would dwell in the midst of Israel in the tabernacle. . . . The exodus [thus] represents a signal turn toward the restoration of the fellowship that humanity had with God in Eden.

[T]his is not to dismiss the Ten Commandments as somehow unimportant. Indeed, the tablets go in the inner house of the tabernacle, in the ark of the covenant in the holiest of holies. The point rather is that, in the narrative of Exodus, the giving of the Ten Commandments is necessarily interwoven with the tapestry of God’s presence. As with the sacrificial laws, the food laws, the cleanliness laws, and other laws in Leviticus and Numbers, they’re not [just] rigmarole. . . .

But popular American culture pulls out and isolates the Ten Commandments, then skips over the last half of the book of Exodus [along with] Leviticus and Numbers, all of which connect the Ten Commandments with the grand pivot in God’s relationship with humanity. [Both] Moses and Jesus, and religion in general, are thus identified [in the popular view] with deracinated moral law. This civil religion—Christian ethics without the person of Christ; Judaic ethics without the person of God—has distorted the religions it purports to express. In doing so, it has hindered, rather than helped, both religion and religious engagement with the public square.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.