Grand Larceny: The 8th Commandment
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If you want to climb Mt. Everest, you have about a 1.6% chance of dying. Along with the physical risks of falling into a crevasse or being buried in an avalanche, there are physiological risks –fatal conditions that you can get just from exercising hard at such high altitudes. Our bodies weren’t really designed to do that. You need so much gear that you can’t carry it all at once, and so you have to do laps, going back down and coming back up with more stuff. With each lap, you incur more risk. And so Western climbers who want to stand “on top of the world” talk a lot about “risk mitigation” strategies. Chief among these strategies is hiring a Sherpa.
The Sherpa basically carries your stuff. The Sherpa does the laps up and down and back up again carrying heavy backpacks full of gear. You, meanwhile, do a single trip, carrying a backpack that looks big and full for the photos, but that is packed with virtually nothing. And so at the end, the greatest share of the physical wear and tear and risk belong to the Sherpa and the glory belongs to you. Working as a Sherpa in Nepal is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. It’s more dangerous than working on a crab boat in Alaska and more dangerous than it was to serve in the infantry in the first four years of the Iraq war. No other service industry in the world so regularly kills and maims workers with so little safety net for the benefit of paying clients. And when a Sherpa dies, his family usually winds up impoverished with very little compensation from the guide company.
The commandment in question today is “Lo tignov,” usually translated as “Thou shalt not steal.” Now, I hate to start in right off the bat with kvetching, but I don’t like this “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” stuff. Why do we still use this Old English speak when we’re quoting “the Bible?” I mean, it’s a translation anyway. Why wouldn’t you translate it into the way that we actually speak? Like, “Don’t steal?” It seems like it’s a way of keeping the material at arms length – preserving its foreignness. “Thou” is someone else from another place and time. It’s not me, here and now. But I digress.
Marquetta is exactly right that the Hebrew verb ganav does not mean to steal generally, but to steal a person; to kidnap. She rightly points out that kidnapping still happens today in the form of human trafficking and that working to end trafficking is a powerful way to observe both this commandment and our Unitarian Universalist Seven Principles.
I would guess that none of us in this room would ever dream of participating in human trafficking, kidnapping, or stealing a person. So in the case of this commandment, maybe a “thou” is appropriate. Maybe this commandment truly is addressed to other people in other places and not to us. But I don’t think so. I think it is addressed to us if we look deeper at what it means to steal a person.
Rabbi Naftali Silberberg of the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute here in Brooklyn says about this commandment, “The essence of kidnapping is utilizing another for personal gain. Focus on being a real friend; don’t be in the relationship only for your own benefit. Be there for your friend even when it is uncomfortable or inconvenient for you.”
The essence of kidnapping is utilizing another for personal gain. He’s right. It’s about objectifying and monetizing a person, literally commodifying him or her for your personal gain. So an interpretive translation of the commandment “Lo tignov” could be Immanuel Kant’s famous formula: “Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means to your end.” So we may not directly participate in human trafficking, but fail to recognize people as ends in themselves and instead use them as means to our ends – that we do a lot. Like the Western climbers who hire Nepali Sherpas, we use other people to carry our stuff.
We see it a lot in romantic relationships. Someone is in the relationship for the status the other person can convey upon him or her through looks, power, or prestige. Someone might be in it for the other person’s money or class. Someone might be in it for sex in a way or to an extent that the other person is not quite aware. In such relationships, there’s always a sense that you’re ready to “trade up” at a moment’s notice if you can get a better deal elsewhere.
In the professional world we sometimes use others for personal gain – we cultivate friendships insofar as they are financially pragmatic and good for business, getting what we can out of the other person – the connections, the assistance, the free work, the sweet deal. Sometimes we see a teacher or a therapist or a parent as a means to get something we want and not as a person him or herself.
In the world of parenting, we sometimes use our children for our personal gain. We want them to act in a particular way or excel in particular areas because of how that will reflect on us. Or we use them as ammunition in some war with our partner. Or we use their need for us to feed our ego and give us a sense of self-worth. We do use our children.
We all do this kind of thing and to some extent, it’s just part of life. We use each other to get our needs met. The Starbucks barista uses me to get his paycheck and I use him to get my latte. We all use each other as “means” to various goals and that’s okay as long as it’s mutual and consensual and everyone’s being honest about what’s going on. And as long as that’s not all that’s going on. Kant’s formula says we should not use people as “mere” means, but also treat them as ends in themselves. In other words, we shouldn’t only think of others in terms of what they can do for us, but see them in the fullness of their inherent worth and dignity as human beings. In religious terms, to do otherwise is to negate their holiness.
The distinction is very personal and it’s a very fine line. It’s subtle. It’s something that we can really only determine for ourselves. To know if I’m sealing a person, I have to be really honest with myself and ask, “What am I really doing in this relationship? Am I making someone else carry my stuff? Am I making someone my Sherpa, using them to pay a cost that really should be mine to pay? Am I appropriating them, carrying them off for some purpose that’s not theirs but that’s really all about me? Am I failing to see the face of God in them and, in this sense, stealing them, and violating this commandment?
This Eight Commandment, lo tignov, is all about preserving the holiness of the other and the sanctity of our relationships. Now you might be sitting there thinking, “Okay, Ana. This is all good stuff, but come on – this is just your own invention. ‘Appropriating the other for your own use, negating their holiness.’ This has nothing to do with the actual Ten Commandments.” If you thought that, I can understand why, but you’d be wrong. Check this out:
Rabbinic tradition teaches that the Ten Commandments were not intended to be read vertically, one through ten, but rather horizontally across the two stone tablets, five on each one. Each commandment about our relationship with God has a corresponding commandment about our relationship with people. So for example, “You shall have no other gods besides me” is side-by-side with “Do not commit adultery.” Easy to see the connection, right?
“Do not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain” is side-by-side with “Do not steal.” The connection might not be immediately obvious. But in my sermon on the taking God’s name in vain commandment, I mentioned that the verb nasa, which is translated as “take,” actually means more like “pick up and carry off,” as in a commercial transaction. The word is lashav, translated “in vain,” means outside of its proper meaning or without the holiness that should be there. So in that sermon, I suggested that we could rewrite the commandment: Do not appropriate or steal God’s name in a way that nullifies the holiness that should be there. Don’t use God opportunistically for your own personal gain.
So these two commandments are flip sides of the same coin. We are taught to see both God and humans as ends in themselves, holy and complete. We should not use them as mere means to an end, stealing them for our own purposes, making them carry our stuff. We should honor the sacred in all our relationships and strive to really see one another. This is how we build a world of trust. This is how we can teach our children faith in all the goodness that life has to offer.
The Nepali Sherpa Chhewang Nima was reported missing after being struck by an avalanche on his 19th ascent of Mt. Everest. A day later the search was called off and his widow was informed of his death. He had been working for the veteran climber Melissa Argot and after the accident she immediately came back down the mountain to go to the widow’s house. She says that the wailing could be heard from down the street. Melissa Argot was devastated by what had happened. After thinking about it and talking with Chhewang Nima’s family, she decided to put herself in the role of breadwinner for that family. Every year, she decided, she would give them the amount of money that Nima would have made working as a Sherpa. And she doesn’t just send a check to a foreign “thou” in Nepal. She goes in person each year to visit the family, pay her respects, and deliver the money. She is trying to treat him and them as ends in themselves and not just as means.
You could say that Melissa Argot is only using Nima’s family as a means to assuage her guilt, but I’d like to believe that it’s more than that. That she was changed by what happened and she has grown and she is trying to make amends in a deep way. Maybe through this family, she is learning recognize the holiness in everyone.
And what more can you really ask of any of us… than to recognize our mistakes when we make them and try to learn and grow from them? Luckily, in our world, when we use someone to carry our stuff, they generally don’t die or become maimed from it. We have time to look again at what we’re doing and make amends. We have time to look again at them and see their holiness. We have time to return what we have stolen.
When we use someone merely as a means, we diminish them. We leave love and respect on the table when it should be the true currency of our relationships. More than that, we diminish the world. We forsake the holiness that is the essence of everything – that gives life and all the relationships within it meaning and value. That’s why this commandment, “Don’t steal,” lives in the top ten. That’s why it resides side-by-side with forsaking the source of all life.
As we climb our personal mountains, be they Mt. Everest or Mt. Sinai, as we journey onward in our lives, let’s make sure our travelling companions are truly our partners and not our Sherpas. Let’s make sure we see them in the fullness of their inherent worth and dignity. And at the end of the day, if we can’t carry our own stuff, let’s leave the top of the world to the gods.
