We have just been celebrating the festival of Shavuot—initially linked to Israel’s harvest cycle but which now commemorates Matan Torah, the giving of our divine law. One of the big moments in our celebration of Shavuot comes in our Torah reading, with the recitation of the Aseret HaDibrot—the Ten Commandments. Among these is the command לֹא תִּגְנֹב (lo tignov, “Do not steal”). As with almost every other word in the Torah, the precise parameters and nuances of meaning of לֹא תִּגְנֹב are extensively analysed, but the basic principle underlying this command is plain: it’s wrong to take something that belongs to someone else.
The tractate of Avot makes a number of allusions to taking
something that belongs to another but never says so outright. This is not
strange. The prohibition of taking things from others, whether by force or by
stealth, is already expressly covered by the Torah. What Avot does is not to
prohibit actions but to shape our attitudes towards them. Thus, for example, it
stigmatizes antisocial activity such as borrowing an item and failing to return
it (2:14) and helping oneself to gifts set aside for the poor, where there is
no identifiable victim (5:12). Other people’s property should be as dear to a
person as one’s pwn (2:17). And claiming ownership over another’s property is
condemned even if the person doing so has no objection to others doing the same
to him (5:13). All of this reflects a drive towards establishing principles of
best practice when living in a world that is full not only of other people but
of things that belong to them.
There is some anecdotal evidence that, in contemporary
Islamic thought, theft of another’s property is the foundation of all sin. I
came across it a few years ago in The Kite Runner, Khaled Hossaini’s
moving and at times provocative account of Afghanistan and the twin threats of the
Soviet Union and the Taliban. In this tale, accessible both in printed format
and as a movie, the protagonist’s father tells him:
“There is only one sin, only one.
And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a
man, you steal a life... you steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his
children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the
truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness... there is no act more
wretched than stealing.”
The point is made powerfully and, like the examples referenced
in Pirkei Avot, focuses on human interpersonal relationships. But what about
God? Judaism is not merely about how we should deal with one another: it’s far
more nuanced. As the Maharal explains in Derech Chaim, at his commentary
on Avot 1:1, we relate in three ways—not just to other people but also to God
and to ourselves. Little mileage can be got by focusing on whether each of us
can steal from ourselves, but what about stealing from God?
Perusing the commentary of Rabbi Gedaliyahu Schorr, the Or
Gedalyahu, on Parashat Naso, I found something that addressed this point. That
commentary references a citation by the Sefat Emet of a teaching by the
Chiddushei HaRim that addresses the fundamental importance of prohibiting theft.
According to the Chiddushei HaRim, theft is indeed the basis of all wrongdoing.
We should recognize that our capabilities are not inherent within us but are
only lent to us by God for the purposes for which He created us. If we put
these assets to wrongful use, we are misappropriating them, and this is effectively
theft.
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