Imu Shalev: From Aleph Beta, this is A Book Like No Other, generously sponsored by Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum. We ended last time with commandment number seven, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” And today, we are gonna dive into commandment number eight, “thou shalt not steal.”   And we're going to see how it continues to line up with the Yakov and Lavan story. Let's jump in.

Rabbi David Fohrman: So, Imu, let's get to commandment number eight. Commandment number eight is “Do not steal.” Now, after Yaakov’s deception of his brother, after his mother tells him to find refuge in Lavan’s house, and after Lavan deceives him, leading him to marry both Rachel and Leah—can we identify any stealing in this story? What I’ll ask you specifically, Imu, is about the language of the Ten Commandments: “לֹא תִּגְנֹב” (Exodus 20:13). Does the word “לֹא תִּגְנֹב” appear in the Yaakov story? It does, and in exactly the place you’d expect it: after the story of Lavan deceitfully inserting Leah into Yaakov’s relationship with Rachel. Right after this tale of love and treachery, we encounter a story of Rachel’s own treachery toward her father. This is where “לֹא תִּגְנֹב” appears.

Imu: Va'tignov Rachel et ha'trafim asher l’aviyah (Genesis 31:19)—Rachel steals the trafim (idols) from her father.The word “tignov” appears directly in this chapter, and theft is all around us here, right? Va'tignov Rachel et ha'trafim asher l’aviyah—she steals these trafim, whatever they are—idols—from her father. And the very next phrase is lev avad, right? Yaakov steals the heart of Lavan.

Rabbi Fohrman: Vayignov Yaakov et lev Lavan ha'Arami (Genesis 31:19)—Yaakov steals the heart of Lavan by not telling him he was leaving, by simply running away in the middle of the night. Because theft isn’t just about possessions; deception itself is a kind of theft. And ironically, he ran away in the middle of the night because, as he later tells Lavan, pen tigzol et banotai mimemni—"I was afraid you would steal my wives, that you would never let them go. That you would think they’re your daughters and should stay home with you." So, in order to make sure you didn’t rob me of my wives, I robbed you in a certain way—I deceived you and never told you I was leaving. Instead of standing up, looking you in the eye, and saying, “Hey, I’m going. These wives are mine. It’s finally time for me to go.”

The text seems to hold him guilty for that as well. There’s a double act of stealing.

Rabbi Fohrman: Imu, I’m wondering—what are we supposed to make of that moment when Rachel steals? How does it sort of shed light on how stealing works? What’s wrong with stealing? And what might the justifications for stealing be?

And I’m wondering if I could, I want to ask you to put yourself in Rachel’s shoes for a moment. If you were Rachel, why in the world would you want those terafim? Maybe she thinks they’re fertility ornaments. Maybe she wants to keep her father away from avoda zara. There are all sorts of possibilities. But put yourself in her mindset—how is she feeling right before she steals them? What’s the last thing you said before stealing those teraphim?

Imu: Well, the last thing that happens in the text is Yaakov comes to Rachel and Leah and basically says, “Hey, I think it’s time to go. I think your dad is swindling me, and we need to get out of here.”

And when forced to choose between father and husband, they resoundingly choose their husband. They say, “Actually, we don’t feel taken care of by Dad. We feel like captives in his house. He sold us, essentially.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Just read the words for a second—Genesis 31:14–15. Go ahead.

Imu: Va’Taan Rachel ve’Leah va’tomarna lo—Rachel and Leah together answer Yaakov and say to him, Ha’od lanu chelek ve’nachala be’veit avinu?—“Do we even have any part or inheritance in our father’s house?”

Halo nochriyot nechshavnu lo?—“Aren’t we considered total strangers to him?”

Ki mecharanu—“Because he sold us.”

Rabbi Fohrman: And what do you think they mean when they say, “He treated us like strangers, not even like daughters, because he sold us”? What are they referring to?

Imu: I mean, they’re referring to the negotiations he made over their marriages.

Rabbi Fohrman: Lavan just used his daughters as a way of getting more money—“I got a slave out of this for seven years.”

Imu: He enriched himself over our price, and sold each of us, doubled the sale essentially by tricking you.

Rabbi Fohrman: And the fact that he sold us makes us feel like what? Strangers. Daughters are family, right? He should love us—we’re family. But there’s no family here.

Imu: Mm-hmm.

Rabbi Fohrman: He’s treating us like things—like objects he can sell and profit from. And isn’t it interesting that right after Rachel and Leah express their resentment—that their father essentially sold them—Rachel turns around and takes something of value from her father? What is she trying to do?

Imu: Even the score.

Rabbi Fohrman: Even the score. Exactly. You took from me? I’ll take from you. You stole from me. You took my marriage and literally put it into a transaction so you could get more stuff. I’ll take your stuff.

But if it were just about getting even, she could have taken anything—a silver goblet, money stashed under the mattress, some sheep. But she didn’t take any of that. Instead, she takes his idols—what Lavan calls his gods. Lama ganavta et elohai? Why did you steal my gods? Objects of worship, of Lavan why of all things, did she take that? What did Rachel really want? What was her real resentment?

Imu: That she didn’t have a father who loved her the way a father should love a daughter.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. What she really wants from him is a father's love. She’s desperate for a father’s love.

So, what am I going to take that will convince me that I am loved? If I can’t be loved, what’s the next best thing I can have?

Imu: Oh, that’s funny. The thing that you love.

Rabbi Fohrman:The thing that you love. I want you to love me, but if you don’t love me, the next best thing I can have is the thing that you do love.

What drives a family apart more than anything else when their parents die? The fight over the heirlooms. And why does it matter so much? I know a family that literally broke apart over a 1950s television set. Who cares? It was broken. But that’s what Mom loved—she loved to watch TV. And if I can’t have Mom’s love the way I wanted it, at least I can have something that she loved instead of me.

It was that darn TV—I’ll have that. Those darn teraphim—that’s the only thing he prized.

Imu: It’s like Rachel was thinking, “Yeah, my dad, he really loves those idols. And you know what? If I could take away those idols…”

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. Again, it gets to that notion of the Torah deeply understanding the temptations behind all of these sins. Of course, I understand why you’d want to steal. You don’t steal just because you want the thing. The thing is a stand-in for love.

And it’s true with anything. Let’s say you and I have a business relationship. It’s not like you’re my best buddy, but there’s a certain kind of friendship that naturally evolves when two people do business together. If you cheat me, then by golly, I’m going to cheat you back. But really, what’s my motivation for cheating you back? It’s not just that I want the money. It’s not even just about justice—like, “Well, you cheated me, so I’ll cheat you.” It’s deeper than that. It’s how could you betray me like that?

So I’m going to take something of yours that was valuable to you. And in a way, that’s a certain kind of solace. And I think it’s in spades in family relationships. It’s exactly what happens with Rachel and Yaakov. But really, every kind of stealing has a little bit of this: How could you do this to me? I’m going to take the thing that matters to you.

And along comes the Torah and says: You can’t do that. That’s stealing.

Imu :What's fascinating is we're seeing a story of people thinking they’re going to get what they want—and they won’t.

RDF: Right? You think you’re going to get your father’s love this way? By getting the object of his love? You know what you don’t realize? Lavan didn’t even love his terafim. They too were just ways for him to get what he wanted. He wanted them because he believed they were tools for divination, for control. He may have prized them, but he didn’t love them. So you get—

Imu: —pretend he loved them, right? Now Rachel’s walking around with Lavan’s love objects.

RDF: What does it do for her?

Imu: Yeah, at the end of the day, you don’t get what you want.

And it’s true with classic theft too. Let’s talk about white-collar crime—someone doing something in finance they shouldn’t be doing. Usually, the motivation for that is that you can walk around like a big shot, and everyone is very impressed with who you are and how rich you are, right? But that whole status—you’ll be insecure about it because you know you didn’t build that fortune.

You know, deep down, the only reason you have this is because you stole it. So what you’re really after is some kind of self-confidence or pride or respect from others—but you know it’s built on a lie. So you’re insecure the whole time, even though you have all the trappings. You never get what you really want.

RDF: Yeah, you can’t get what you want that way.

Imu: So, just to pause and reflect here for a second—what we were saying about Rachel and her motivations for stealing, while it certainly resonated with me, was a bit speculative. We obviously can’t say with 100% certainty that her motivation for stealing the terafim was because she felt that she never got Lavan’s love, and so she stole what he loved in an attempt to replace it.

But regardless of whether or not we’ve perfectly identified Rachel’s motivation for the theft, what did feel very solid to me was Rabbi Fohrman’s underlying point: we don’t often feel empathetic towards “bad guys.” But by casting Rachel as the exemplar thief, that’s exactly what we do feel. We’re inclined to be empathetic towards Rachel—and that surprisingly teaches us to have empathy for all thieves.

And that makes this command so much more relatable. It’s like God is saying, I understand why you would be motivated to steal. It’s coming from a deep place of pain inside you. And ultimately, yes, even in your very sympathetic case, you still can’t do it.

And here I’d emphasize the point I was making as well, which is that even if a thief steals from a place of hurt, that item is never really going to fill the desire or heal the pain. You won’t even get what you’re looking for anyway.

And what I love about this is that it takes the Ten Commandments—which can feel very obligation-focused, very oppressive—and turns the command into sage wisdom, into advice. Because when you see the command this way—when Thou shalt not steal expresses itself in someone trying to settle a score or take something they feel they always deserved—the Torah isn’t so much yelling at you as it is telling you: Look, if you try to settle scores this way, you’re actually never going to get what you want. So try to find a different way. 

Now, just before we move on to the next command, Rabbi Fohrman had one more point he wanted to make about Thou Shalt Not Steal and its connection to the deception story.

Rabbi Fohrman:There’s one more instance of theft in the Torah. And it’s in Lavan’s accusation when Yaakov leaves without telling him: Vatig’nov oti—"You stole my heart" (Genesis 31:27). So really, that language is used both for Yaakov stealing Lavan’s heart and for Rachel stealing the terafim. And what’s interesting is that the very next verse is Lavan saying:
"V'lo nitashtani l'nashek l'vanai v'livnotai"—"You didn’t allow me to kiss my daughters goodbye." Isn’t that ironic, Imu? The chasm between Lavan’s self-concept of his relationship with his daughters and the daughters’ own understanding of that relationship is enormous.

Lavan sees himself as the most wonderful father in the world—so protective, so caring. But from Rachel and Leah’s perspective? They don’t feel loved by him at all. They know the truth. And it’s not even like they could sit down and have a conversation with him about it. If Rachel and Leah had tried to tell Lavan, "You know, we don’t really feel loved by you," what would he say?

Imu: "What do you mean? I love you tremendously!"

Rabbi Fohrman: "How could you have the chutzpah to accuse me of not loving you? After all I’ve done for you?" That’s exactly how the conversation would go. There’s nothing they could say to him, because his self-concept is so completely deluded. So, in the absence of any real way to get her father’s love, Rachel consoles herself the only way she can because there’s no other way to get her father to love her. And in the end she makes this terrible decision—a kind of tit for tat:
"You never really loved me? Fine. I’ll take something you love. That’ll be my consolation prize for the love I never got from you."

Rabbi Fohrman: All right, Imu, that brings us to Commandment number nine: Lo ta'aneh eid shaker—You shall not bear false witness against your fellow. In the story, after the tit for tat, after Rachel gets back at Lavan and takes his terafim, is there a moment that relates to not bearing false witness against your fellow? What does the idea of a witness remind you of in the Yaakov story at this point?

Imu: Yeah, there's definitely a witness in this story. This is the story of Gal'ed—that pillar of rocks that serves as a witness between Lavan and Yaakov. There's totally a witness here.

Imu: Just to give some context—in the story of Gal’ed, here’s what happens: Yaakov runs away from Lavan’s house, and Lavan chases after him. When he catches up, they have a big fight. Before they part ways for the final time, Lavan suggests creating a covenant—to keep watch between them. They draw a proverbial line in the sand and vow never to cross into each other’s territory with malicious intent.

And then, Lavan demands that Yaakov—get this—swear never to oppress his daughters by taking additional wives in his absence. Yaakov agrees to the covenant. They set up a stone monument as a witness and swear in the name of God. So, again, we seem to have found our witness. But while we may have found a witness, I was kind of confused—because it didn’t seem like we had found a false witness. Lavan and Yaakov are making an agreement and—spoilers—they both keep their ends of the bargain. They never violate this covenant. And by the way, even if they had violated it—let’s say, hypothetically, Yaakov did take another wife five years down the line—that still wouldn’t make this testimony false. False testimony, the kind the Ninth Commandment is talking  about, is a very different kind of testimony than what’s happening here at Gal’ed.

At Gal’ed, the witness is acting like an external authority, compelling Yaakov and Lavan to stick to their deal in the future. But the Ninth Commandment is talking about a court case—where two people are arguing about something that already happened between them, and a witness is then being called to testify about it. The false witness is someone who lies about what did or didn’t happen in the past.

So, while that pile of stones being called a witness certainly felt like a strong indication that there was a connection to the Ninth Commandment, but what that connection was, still wasn’t very clear. To find any hint of false testimony, we had to dig deeper—past the explicit terms of Lavan and Yaakov’s covenant—to what this brit between them was really about. To do that, Rabbi Fohrman wanted to take a step back and look more closely at the argument leading up to the covenant at Gal’ed. And hey, along the way, maybe we’ll even find more textual connections to the Ninth Commandment as well. Spoiler alert: we do.

Rabbi Fohrman: Let's give the context so we understand what's happening here. Yaakov is running away from Lavan's house. He could just say, "Hey, it's time for me to leave," but instead, he absconds. And as he absconds, surreptitiously, Lavan is incensed—not just that Yaakov has run away without telling him, but also because his terafim are gone. So he catches up to Yaakov and conducts a search. Yaakov protests his innocence, and Lavan searches through everything, convinced that someone must have these terafim. And he's right—but he can't find them. Rachel is sitting on them, keeping them hidden from him. Now, at the moment Lavan comes up empty-handed, Yaakov turns to him: "Here you come, running after me, accusing me of theft. There was no theft." And he just lets Lavan have it.

But interestingly, he doesn’t just lash out at Lavan for what he sees as an illegitimate accusation of theft. Yaakov goes further, protesting his innocence about things he wasn’t even accused of. He says, "I am an innocent man, and I want to talk to you—not just about this moment when I left—I want to talk about these last couple of decades. I was impeccably honest. I didn’t take anything from you. I watched over all your sheep, even the ones that you should have been responsible for. When a sheep was taken by a wolf, I paid for it all. I’ve been a thousand percent honest. You know what, Lavan? Everything I have—I earned. All the sheep I have, I earned. All the wives I have, I earned."  This is Yaakov’s great defense of himself—a defense that, interestingly, he was not asked to give. Because Lavan never accused him of malfeacance over the last few decades. He was only accusing him about the terafim. But Yaakov suddenly expands the case.

Imu: I’m just keeping track. We had lo ta'aneh berei'acha ed shaker—"don’t answer someone to be a false witness"—but then, here in this story, it begins with Yaakov’s answer to Lavan.

Rabbi Fohrman: That’s a great point you make. That phrase for "bearing false witness"—in Hebrew, it’s not "bearing." If you wanted to say "bear" in Hebrew, how would you say it?

Imu:  Yisa.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. But the verse doesn’t say that. It says lo ta'aneh—"you shall not answer"—for your friend a falsehood. It’s a strange phrase. Why does the Ten Commandments use that phrase? I think the answer might have to do with this commentary that seems to pair with the Ten Commandments—the whole extended story of Yaakov. So, going back, every little point is another vaya’an—another "he answered"—and it begins with Lavan’s initial accusation: "Why did you steal my gods?"

Verse 31: Vaya’an Yaakov. And Yaakov answered and said, "I didn’t steal your gods. Go look through everything—I bet you won’t find your gods." Lavan searches but comes up empty.

At that point, Yaakov gets really mad. Verse 36: The beginning of Yaakov’s great defensive speech—vaayan Yaakov vayomer meh pishi—"And he answered Lavan and said, ‘What is my crime? What did I even do that you came running after me like this?’" Not only did you not find anything—not only were you unjustified in searching for the terafim—but I want to tell you something. You’ve been trying to cheat me for the last twenty years, and I would have had nothing if it weren’t for God coming out of the clouds  and giving me these sheep. You would have taken everything from me.

So Lavan says—look at verse 43. Go ahead.

Imu: Vaya’an Lavan—Lavan now uses that same "answering" word. Vayomer el Yaakov—and he says to Yaakov, habanot b’notai, v’habanim banai, v’hatzon tsoni, v’chol asher ata ro’eh li hu.

Wow. "The daughters you’re arguing about? They’re my daughters. The grandkids? They all come from me. The sheep? They’re all my sheep. Everything you see whether they be people or property—it’s really all mine."

So his response is to escalate. "Okay, we’re not just talking about the terafim anymore. You started talking about employment disputes and property ownership? Well, you know what, Yaakov? Everything is mine. It’s always been mine this entire time. This is all a game. What’s your wage? What’s your salary? At the end of the day, everything here belongs to me."

By using the word vaya’an, Lavan also widens the dispute even further.

Rabbi Fohrman:And if you put yourself in Yaakov's shoes at this point, what's he thinking? Yaakov gave a full-throated defense of the last 20 years—when he wasn't even accused—and then all of a sudden, Lavan comes and completely dismisses that defense. Yaakov has spent all this time explaining how every single thing he has is earned, from the wives to the sheep, to every last possession, only to hear Lavan, with a wave of the hand, dismiss it all.

Imu: Yeah.

Rabbi Fohrman:"The wives? They're my daughters. The grandkids? They came from my daughters. The sheep? It all started from my flock. Everything you have is illegitimate. It's all mine." At this point, if you're Yaakov, how are you feeling?

Imu: I mean, it's humiliating. He pulls the rug out from under him. But what he’s basically saying is, we're in two different worlds.

Rabbi Fohrman:Yeah. So if we ask, what's going to be the vaya'an now? What's Yaakov's answer to this? I mean, there's just nothing to say.

Rabbi Fohrman:And then Lavan comes up with an idea: I know! We're going to make a deal. We have an irreconcilable dispute—so let's call a witness to decide between us.

The witness will start with stones, but it'll end with God: Re'eh Elokim eid beini u'veinecha—God will be a witness between you and me (Genesis 31:50).

Imu, out of all this language comes lo ta'aneh b'rei'acha eid sheker. Let’s just take those three words: ta'aneh, rei'acha, eid sheker. Eid, sheker. That word eid—that's Re'eh Elokim. Let God be the witness between you and me. But Imu, there's ta'aneh—answering. It’s all about answering. That’s the leitmotif here—the word that repeats over and over, each one answering the other. And finally, Yaakov doesn't have an answer. His only response is to say: You know what? Fine. I'll agree to your idea. God will be the witness between us.

And who are they calling God as a witness against? Their rei'a, their friend. What did Lavan say? One man is going to leave his friend, and we won’t see each other in the future. We need a witness between a man and his friend.

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, Imu, if you add that up—the eid, the ta'aneh, the rei’a, the lo ta'aneh b’rei’acha eid sheker—Do not bear false witness against your fellow—it sure sounds a lot like Lavan's language here. What do we make of that?

Imu: That evidence is very solid, and it feels like this is definitely here.

Imu: Okay, so let’s take stock of what we’ve noticed so far. We just ended on noticing that the language of the Ninth Commandment—lo ta'aneh b’rei’acha eid sheker—is pretty clearly reflected in the story of Yaakov and Lavan. We have ta’aneh—the constant answering between the two of them. We have rei’a—the “friend,” in Yaakov and Lavan. And now we’re back to eid—that witnessing pile of stones.

But along the journey, we found something else that was really interesting. In this interaction, they weren’t just talking about the future. They weren’t just making a covenant about not crossing a boundary with ill intent or agreeing not to take more wives. They were, in fact, digging into their pasts. And as they did, they kept widening the scope of their dispute.

Lavan came and attacked Yaakov about the stolen terafim. Yaakov responded by claiming not only that he didn’t take them, but that Lavan had been taking advantage of him for years. Lavan then countered, arguing that everything Yaakov had belonged to him in the first place. The argument just kept expanding—bigger and bigger in scope—but always about the past.

And understanding the subtext of this dispute between Lavan and Yaakov is what leads us to the one missing keyword from the Ninth Commandment. We had identified our witness at the beginning—the pile of stones. But now, we were pretty sure we could identify how this witness’s testimony was false.

Imu: It's almost as if the Ten Commandments later on is telling you, "Hey, this deal between these guys was sheker—there's falseness here."

Rabbi Fohrman: There is. And let's talk about the falseness, right? The most obvious one guilty of that falseness is Lavan in his self-righteousness, calling God as a witness to make sure that Yaakov is not going to dare oppress his daughters. If anyone was guilty of oppressing Lavan’s daughters—specifically by adding a wife into a marriage—that was Lavan himself Literally, he is trying to whitewash his past by creating this future accusation against Yaakov. And so Lavan is, in effect, drafting God as a witness on his side in the court case, when really what Lavan is doing is trying to absolve himself of guilt for what he did—his own interference in the marriage of Yaakov and Rachel. And God is like, Don't do that. Don’t go calling a false witness.

I can understand the temptation to try to whitewash your past. If you think about disputes between people—how many times does it happen that the dispute isn’t really about the dispute? It’s not really about the future; it's about the past.

Imu: Like, almost always about the past.

Rabbi Fohrman: That’s right. And it’s about your own vulnerabilities in the past that you’re trying to hide through some kind of vindication of the future.

Imu: That’s actually a really great point, because if you think about it, imagine you’re Yaakov’s lawyer, and you’re like, Oh, I’m being taken to court. He wants to create an injunction against me to say that I can’t take any more wives. How dare he? Right. What would the lawyer say? The lawyer would say, Yaakov, are you planning on taking any more wives? No. So then, what’s your problem here? He wants to sue you and create this court case—great! No harm, no foul.

But for Yaakov, his blood is boiling. Because what does it really mean to have an injunction about this future? It really means that Lavan is trying to tell a story about the past.

And nothing bad is actually happening to Yaakov, but that’s what’s crazy about the legal system. The legal system seems to create realities. Like, with everything being official and public, and publicized, and a judge and a jury—like, all of that tells a story about what happened and what will be.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. And the irony of the story is that the surface-level argument of Lavan is not false, right? Lavan drafting God as a future witness that Yaakov will never do this—sure, be my guest, let God be the witness, no problem. There’s nothing false about that. Yaakov’s never going to do it anyway.

The false part is the implication of innocence that Lavan is getting at by drafting that witness. That’s what’s false about all this. And God is like, Don’t drag Me into your court case about the future, which is attempting to vindicate a guilty past. That is a kind of false witness, and I want to have no part of it. And that seems to be what’s behind this language of Lo ta’aneh b’rei’acha eid shaker—resonating so powerfully with Lavan’s call to bring God as a witness against the future crimes of Yaakov.

Rabbi Fohrman: Interestingly, though, Yaakov agrees to that witnessing, and in agreeing to that witnessing, in a certain way, Yaakov also trips himself up because in agreeing to this, like, what exactly has Yaakov agreed to in Gal Eid? Is it really just about the future? Or is God supposed to be there to adjudicate the whole unresolved argument between them? The unresolved argument that began with the terafim, the idols, that Yaakov never knew Rachel had taken, that Yaakov had self-righteously protested, you know, "Let whoever take that die." And of course, there's terrible consequences...

Imu: Sorry, just you're noticing something which is not what happens normally in a swearing in a court case, right? A witness testifies against you, but there is a bilateral witnessing here, right? It's not just Lavan testifying against Yaakov, it's in some ways Yaakov testifying against Lavan. And you're sort of hunting for, what exactly is Yaakov's testimony against Lavan?

Rabbi Fohrman: What's in it for Yaakov is, I think, Yaakov's vindication for everything that Yaakov's been trying to say he's been innocent about. "I took care of everything in your household, I was the most perfect watchman of everything." And of course, underneath all of that is this thing that he doesn't even know. Which is that Rachel stole the terafim, which is the essential reason why Lavan actually started this—there's a kernel of truth in it, the terafim were taken, unbeknownst to Yaakov. And when Yaakov agrees, it's like, "Yeah, let God be the witness between us." That is a part of the unresolved dispute. You can obscure it... you know, the case became so expanded. It's a case not just about the terafim, but the whole 20 years, about everything that I've done. Lavan is... yeah, it's a case about the future too, but at the core, there is this unresolved issue Yaakov doesn't even know that his position is false. And in bringing God in as a witness, unknowingly, Yaakov is asking, in essence, God to be a witness to testify that something is not true.

Again, understandable. He thinks it's true, right? It's like, come on, I've got this Lavan guy who's making all these crazy accusations against me. "God, do me a favor, just be my witness over here." He wants you to be a witness. That's fine. Just testify to the truth that  you know, everything I've said is true. But he doesn't know everything he said is true. And he's gotten himself tragically tripped up in a way which Chazal will tell us will redound catastrophically. Rachel's going to die because of this. Yaakov said, "Whoever has these terafim is going to die." It's all the long arm of Gal Eid. So lo taane beid shaker I think textually is pointing a damning finger at Lavan. But Yaakov participates to bring God in as a witness to something which also isn't true. And therefore, in a way, both of them have given in to this temptation to have God tell a story about them, which is not entirely true. And along comes Exodus, and it's like, "Look, be really careful when you adduce witnesses to a story. I understand that temptation. I understand that you think your position is completely unimpeachable. Just because you think your position is unimpeachable, you may be guilty of wild self-delusion, like Lavan is. Or you may just be guilty of not knowing all of the circumstances of a situation."

Lotaane bbreiacha 'ed Shachar, be really careful about drafting someone in to be this great witness in the legal system, that you're in the absolute right. There's very little absolute rights that you can draft a witness to. Be really careful about that.

Imu: You know, the energy that I'm getting from this paradigmatic case isn't so much like, "Make sure to tell the truth in court." It's talking about the people themselves who are choosing to bring the case. It's saying, be very careful when you use the justice system, because you think you are actually saving yourself from your own inui. You think you're such a victim. In your righteous indignation, you may end up victimizing someone else, and the consequences are, you know, the consequences are real affliction and hurting of other people.

Rabbi Fohrman: So just to make explicit what you're saying, you're reading the ta'anah there as a double entendre. In other words, ta'anah is a strange word. L'tanabre ha'echakar doesn't really mean "don't bear false witness." Ta'aneh can mean two things. It can mean to answer, or it can also, depending on the conjugation, mean to oppress. Both of those languages are showing up in the Genesis account, and that's what Exodus in the Ten Commandments seems to be picking up on.

Va is answering, and Yaakov is answering, as there's all this answering building upon each other. But what it ultimately leads to is im ta'anna, don't you dare oppress my daughters. And that language is being picked up with lo ta'anna and you're sort of reading the double entendre, right? Which is that language for bearing false witness kind of partakes of answering. Don't let those answerings get out of control to the point where you've got a false witness. But also, look at what those answerings out of control can end up doing with a false witness. Lavan was like, "You know, you dare oppress my daughters," without realizing that there is an oppression that Lavan is perpetrating by even leveling that accusation at Yaakov. It's an oppression that brings up a whole trauma of the past where Yaakov was completely victimized by Lavan that night that he ended up marrying the woman that he never wanted to marry. It was the ultimate inui, where he was the victim of that inui of oppression, and Lavan is now trying to cover it up.

"And so that double entendre of lo shakar—there's this divine hand pointing directly at Lavan, as if saying, ‘Don't self-righteously argue that Yaakov is the impious one who would oppress others. You are the oppressor, and you've done it to me, and you’ve done it to Re’ach.’ I was the eid sheker, the false witness brought in to testify to your falsehood. Don’t you dare invoke my name to justify that."

Imu: Yeah, I actually think it’s a very elegant double entendre because it's connecting two words: one is the word for ‘answer,’ and the other is the word for ‘afflict.’ If you pay attention to the relationship between them, it’s almost like an exponential answering, right? Answering, answering, answering without listening—it’s a form of victimization, a form of oppression, particularly for someone who’s been a true victim. Imagine being falsely accused by someone, when you were the one who was actually victimized. And on the books, the court decision is exactly the opposite of what actually happened. Yaakov is left reeling, he doesn’t answer, but can you imagine your father-in-law, after everything he’s done to you, creates an injunction that says, “Don’t take any more wives”? Yaakov has to live with that the rest of his life. And the people and the rumors—they’re not going to know what Lavan did to him. They’re just going to think, "That Yaakov guy just loves wives, he keeps adding more."

Rabbi Fohrman: And Imu, isn’t it interesting that in the Ten Commandments, God isn’t the witness, but in the Genesis story, which serves as the prototype for the Ten Commandments, God is? “Lo t’na’av, lo tignov, lo t’aneh b’rei’acha eid sheker”—don't bear false witness against someone. But in the prototype, the really frightening part is that guess who the witness is? It’s God. God has literally been called in as a false witness.

And yet, somehow, I think that in the Ten Commandments, maybe what it teaches you is that anytime you call anyone as a false witness before the justice system, in a sense, you’re calling God as a false witness. Disputes happen all the time. They’re private. The whole point of a legal system is that when people can’t resolve their dispute privately, when things are too painful to handle between them, they turn to society. They turn to the court system and say, "Can you just come and tell us who’s right here?" Society says, “Alright, fine. We really don’t want to do this, but if you really force our hand and that’s the only way to put this behind us, then fine, we’ll go ahead and do it.”

But in a certain way, maybe the Torah is saying that this court system doesn’t just have society behind it—it has God behind it. So when you corrupt a God-given institution like the court, you’re in a way dragging God into something that He doesn’t want to be part of. And if you manipulate the system by bringing in a false witness, you’re trying to manipulate God to come down on your side. Don’t think you’re just calling up Joe, your friend, as a false witness. At some level, you’re calling God to be a false witness. And the energy of that comes from Genesis.

Imu: We’re done with the Ninth Commandment, but we’re not done with this episode yet. As we were stepping back from our conversation, Rabbi Fohrman noticed something fascinating. All of these last few commandments—they had something in common.

Rabbi Fohrman: If I think about it, just jumping to 50,000 feet now, so to speak—language that Imu and I often use to signify looking at the largest picture…

Imu: That’s our phrase—jumping to 50,000 feet.

Rabbi Fohrman: Look at the last three commandments you moved through. Do you see the relationship between them? "Lo t’na’av," "Lo tignov," and "Lo t’aneh"? Isn’t it fascinating how they all relate to the same thing, but from three different perspectives? "Lavan lo t’na’av"—what are we talking about? Who’s the Torah speaking to when it says "Lo t’na’av"?

Imu: Lavan.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. Lavan—get out of Yaakov’s relationship with Rachel. What are you doing interfering with this whole thing? Lo tignov—who is guilty of tignov? Well, Rachel stole the terafim—the household idols. Why did she take them? What was she aiming for? They were the one object of Lavan’s love. And here, his daughters say, “We were like strangers to him.” He pitted one of us against the other in these games, defiling our most basic relationships. And in the end, Rachel, almost desperate for her father’s love, takes an object of his affection as she leaves him, as if to say, "At least I’ll have this token of the love I never had." And that’s a look back on the moment of deception that Lavan perpetrates, but from Rachel’s perspective.

And now, the third in the series of commandments—"Lo t’aneh b’rei’acha eid sheker." Again, the Torah is addressing Lavan. This is Lavan’s attempt years later to whitewash that very event, to exonerate himself and claim that he was guiltless. And God says, “Don’t bring me into an attempt to absolve yourself. There’s real guilt here, and I won’t be a party to whitewashing it.”

Imu: Very cool. It’s interesting to see the relationship between those.

Rabbi Fohrman: So in a way, Imu, what we have in these last three commandments is this terrible shadow a father casts upon his relationship with his children. The collateral damage it brings—like an affair, a theft, a poor attempt to make things right. And then this attempt to whitewash everything. It’s like trying to clean up the aftermath of a terrible explosion in a relationship that happened 20 years ago between father and child.

But of course, it’s not just the relationship between Lavan and his daughters—there’s also fallout in another relationship between father and child. That, of course, is the relationship between Yitzchak and his children—Yaakov and Esav.

And I think when we get to the 10th commandment, if the 7th, 8th, and 9th are about the shrapnel in the relationship between Lavan and his daughters, the 10th commandment takes us back to the haunting legacy of a father’s relationship with his children that went terribly wrong. A relationship that left both children feeling unloved—just as Rachel and Leah once felt unloved. And the question is, what will they do about it? And that brings us straight to the 10th commandment.

Credits
This season of A Book Like No Other was recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and me, Imu Shalev.
Produced by Robby Charnoff.
Audio engineer: Hillary Guttman.
Managing producer: Adina Blaustein.
Senior producer: Tikva Hecht.
A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta and made possible through the generous support of Sherry and Nathan Lindenbaum. Thank you, Sherry and Nathan, and thank you all for listening