I’m going to start with a confession: I love jury duty.
I know, I know—it probably makes me a little weird (who is this guy? you’re probably saying). But I’ve got to speak my truth. And the truth is, I love jury duty.
Now, I admit, some of this might be because of the fact that while I have had to go down to the court house and do voir dire a few times in my life, I’ve never actually been put on a jury. I might feel differently if I had to give up days or weeks of my life to a trial.
But the Boy Scout in me loves that I’m doing my civic duty. Another part of me loves the totally cross-cutting diversity: people from every part of the county, every race and ethnicity, every socioeconomic background, all there as equal citizens. And maybe the clergyperson in me loves the ceremony of a courtroom: everyone stands when the judge walks in the room; people have to swear oaths; and most of all, they swear to tell the truth.
We live in a world where everyone is trying to sell us something, where it can feel so hard to trust people—and where it sometimes feels like we’ve just given up on the idea of truth-telling in general. In that context, a courtroom feels like this rare zone where Wonder Woman’s magic lasso is wrapped around everyone, where, hopefully, we’re all bound by a shared commitment to finding the truth and sharing it.
We’re up to the Ninth in our series on the Ten Commandments, and the Ninth Commandment is, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” In its most literal sense, this commandment is about courtrooms: Don’t lie when you’re on the stand. Why?
There’s an anonymous book from 13th-century Spain, the Sefer HaChinuch, that discusses each of the Torah’s 613 mitzvot. Here’s the beginning of the entry on this one: First of all, it says, it’s kind of obvious: Lying is gross—’disgraceful and vile in the eye of any intelligent person.’ But second, the book says something really powerful: “the world stands upon true testimony, since all [types] of disputes can be [settled by] the testimony of people. If so, false testimony is a cause for the destruction of the world.”
Well that’s heavy. But pause for a moment and think about it, or just remember watching Law and Order or reading To Kill a Mockingbird in high school: Lying in court can cause innocent people to go to jail and guilty people to go free; it can lead to people who are responsible getting off without taking responsibility; and, if that happens, people can lose confidence in the justice system, they can lose faith in humanity, they can lose their ability to trust in the world altogether.
So, we could just sum up this episode and just say, “Don’t lie in court.” But that’s not quite the end of it.
Rabbi Obadiah Sforno, an Italian commentator from the 16th century, tells us that this commandment is also the root for other mitzvot in the Torah, namely not slandering people and not spreading false rumors about them. And the Zohar, the central text of Jewish mysticism, connects the testimony in this mitzvah with the “testimony” (in quotation marks) that we make through our weekly observance of Shabbat—when we testify that the Creator created the world. (We talked about this in the kiddush episode in our miniseries on Shabbat in season 3.)
So put it all together and I think we get something even deeper: Yes, the world rests on whether we lie or tell the truth in court. But it also rests on our own capacity to recognize and speak the truth—to testify, even if it’s just to ourselves.
That of course is one of the things we try to support through mindfulness practice. And the Sefer HaChinuch actually says that “testimony requires “focus and concentration.” So for our practice today, I want to offer a short meditation that can help us to hopefully perceive and hold truth a little more clearly.
Begin by settling into a comfortable position. If you can, sit up straight with your feet flat on the floor, allowing your spine to embody Jacob’s ladder: grounded in the earth, your head reaching up towards heaven. If it’s comfortable, gently close your eyes, or simply lower your gaze.
Now, take a few deep breaths. Inhale slowly through your nose, and then exhale through the mouth. As you continue to breathe naturally, bring your awareness to the rise and fall of your chest or the sensation of the air entering and leaving your nostrils. Feel the rhythm of your breath as a connection to the present moment.
With each breath, let’s turn our attention inward. Let go of the need to fix or change anything. Just be here, in this moment.
Now, if it’s comfortable for you, I want you to bring to mind a situation or a person that you’ve been grappling with. Maybe there’s a recent moment when you felt a little bothered or frustrated—nothing huge, but something that caused a little upset.
Instead of getting lost in the story or the emotions, let’s try something different. Imagine you are holding this situation in the palm of your hand. Approach it not with judgment, but with curiosity. Notice the emotions that arise in your body—maybe some tightness in the shoulders, some clenching in the jaw. Just observe those sensations without attaching a story to them. Notice the truth of those sensations themselves.
Now, let’s invite a sense of objective clarity—a sense of Emet, truth—to shine on this image. Imagine a soft, neutral light illuminating the situation you’re holding in your hand. Let the light clarify the lines and details. See if it reveals something you hadn’t noticed before—perhaps a different perspective, a forgotten detail, or simply the reality of what is, without the layers of your own projections and biases.
As you breathe, imagine the sensation of stepping back, creating a little space between yourself and the situation. Often times, in order to get a handle on the truth, we need some of this space and distance in order to sense it more clearly. This isn’t about being cold or detached, but creating room for a more honest and grounded perspective. From this space, you can observe—you can notice more of the truth, and that can help you to live in it.
Take one more deep breath, and as you exhale, gently release the image.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.