Okay, team: I need to begin today with a confession. I’m a shoplifter.
Well, I was a shoplifter.
It happened when I was three or four years old. My Mom and I were at the grocery store. I saw a greeting card I really liked (I remember it being blue) and I wanted to buy it. For whatever reason, my Mom said no. But when she wasn’t looking I took it anyway and hid it inside my shirt.
When we got home, my Mom discovered it. After a serious talking-to about trust, we got in the station wagon and returned to the store, where I gave it back and apologized. Lesson learned, and I’m glad to say that I haven’t shoplifted since.
Maybe you have a similar story. At some point in our childhoods, most of us learn a lesson (or two, or three, or more) about respecting other people’s things. We learn to take turns sharing toys in preschool. We learn not to borrow our siblings’ stuff without permission. We learn not to take other people’s homework and pass it off as our own.
In short, we learn not to steal, which is the eighth of the Ten Commandments and the subject of today’s episode.
Now it seems straightforward enough to just understand the mitzvah here: Don’t steal stuff. Right? Like, how hard is that? And yet, if we’re honest with ourselves, I think we know that this isn’t a simple thing (otherwise the Torah probably wouldn’t need to say it).
The Talmud says that this commandment, lo tignov – don’t steal–is technically about not stealing people, i.e. not kidnapping. (Because we have other commandments that prohibit stealing people’s property.)
But I think we can understand the commandment’s deeper roots through a story—a midrash—taught by Rabbi Yeshoshua ben Levi, one of the great rabbis of the Talmud. It takes place as Moses meets God to receive the Torah.
The angels are telling God not to give this treasure, the Torah, to human beings. So in one of those scenes that would be a dramatic highlight in a movie, God asks Moses to demonstrate to the angels why human beings should have the Torah. Moses launches into a series of questions: “God, what’s in this Torah of yours? ‘I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt.’ ‘Oho,’ says Moses to the angels, ‘Were you enslaved in Egypt?’ What else?”
Moses goes through a bunch of these kinds of questions. Then he gets to the sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments: Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, and don’t steal. “You guys are angels,” he says. “Are you jealous of each other?! Do you have a yetzer hara, the urge to do bad things?!” (This is a rhetorical question. The answer is: Of course not. They’re angels, so they’re perfect.)
In a single line, the Talmud ties this episode to our previous two: All of these commandments are ultimately rooted in the universal human challenge to live with our desires, to restrain the impulse to take what we want simply because we want it. Not stealing, not cheating, not killing—these are all grownup expressions of that lesson we learn as kids: Notice the desire arise, but don’t act on it. At bedrock, it’s no more and no less than that.
Here’s a short meditation exercise that can help.
Begin with a few good deep breaths. Settle your body. Settle your mind.
With each exhale, see if you can let go a little bit more.
As you reach the bottom of your exhalation, try to wait a beat or two before you take a breath in. See if you can notice the natural desire to inhale, a little bit of craving for air—and don’t just give into it right away. Decide to breathe.
See if you can do the same thing at the top of the inhale. Hold it for a beat or two, then, again, decide to breathe.
Now, do it slightly differently. When you get to the bottom of the exhale, notice that desire to breathe—and allow it to happen, almost like you’re riding the wave of the breath.
And do the same thing at the top of the inhalation—notice the desire to breathe out, and then let it happen.
Do that again a few times. Holding the bottom of the exhale, and the top of the inhale for just a beat or two.
This is one of the amazing things about the breath: It’s a bodily process that happens whether we want it to or not—but it’s also one we can control to a significant degree.
It’s a lot like our desires. In fact, there probably is a desire there: to breathe out, to breathe in. So this simple practice can help us notice that desire and work with it skillfully—not pushing it away, but also not just reflexively giving into it.
It’s one of the most basic lessons of all. And if we can learn it well, we can have a better relationship with ourselves, other people, and the world around us.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.