Parashat Yitro, 5766, Josh Gressel
Parashat Yitro
February 18, 2006 / 20 Shevat 5766
Josh Gressel
The focus of my talk today is going to be on the 10th Commandment: Lo tachmod. It is one of the longest of all the commandments, and the full text reads: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house: you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
This commandment has troubled commentators on a few fronts. First is its primacy in closing out the 10 commandments. Why is this put in a position paralleling the first commandment – I am the Lord your God, ani adonai elohecha -- especially when we consider the gravity of others that came before it, like murder and adultery and bearing false witness? Second, it seems very un-Jewish to legislate against a feeling. The other commandments are concerned with behavior – why is this commandment forbidding a feeling, especially such a universal one? I will come back to these questions at the end of this drash.
In looking at the 10th Commandment, I will draw on the work of a French anthropologist, Rene Girard, who taught at Stanford for many years. His theories, with which I was not previously familiar, are both original and profound. For me his work is so deep that I found myself connecting everything to everything else, and I had a hard time corralling the information into a coherent whole.
Girard describes a universal human proclivity he names mimetic desire. Mimetic comes from the same root as mimic, and mimetic desire means to want what someone else wants. You can see this very clearly in children. One child is playing with his toys. A truck lies abandoned on the side. Another child comes and picks up the truck, and suddenly the first child wants to play with nothing so much as that truck. There follows a rapid escalation, where each child’s desire for the truck triggers the other child to want it more, and so on. Such a scene invariably ends in tears and even violence unless there is an adult to intervene.
While writing this drash during a plane ride, the woman next to me picked up a magazine I had left on her seat. She didn’t realize it was mine and started to read it. I marveled at the rush of feelings that engendered. Her picking up my magazine provided me a wonderful opportunity to experience first hand the theories I was writing about. I catalogued some of my reactions as she sat next to me, engrossed in my magazine: I suddenly wanted to keep it, even though I had previously considered leaving it behind on the plane. Perhaps there were some interesting articles I had skipped. She was definitely engrossed in one I had tried but hadn’t finished. Maybe I was too hasty? And most powerfully of all: “It’s mine! She took it!”
I want to make Girard’s point a second time, because it is the cornerstone of his original contribution to understanding human society in general and the 10th commandment in particular: we don’t so much desire what our neighbor has as we desire what our neighbor desires. When you go to your friends’ house and see their newly remodeled kitchen, the temptation is to think that what you’re envious of are the beautiful granite counters. According to Girard, what is actually happening is that it is your friends’ desire for granite kitchen counters that has triggered your desire for granite kitchen counters. Of course your friend’s desire wasn’t original – it too was triggered by someone else or something they saw in a magazine.
That this really isn’t about material envy can be seen when we look in the reverse direction. When Noga and I lived on a kibbutz and would entertain visitors from the U.S. in our two-room, 300 square foot apartment, they would often comment: “What do we need with such big houses in America? This is so much nicer.” They weren’t envious of our small flat, but they were desiring what we desired: a simpler lifestyle. The same thing happens when moving from one neighborhood to another within the U.S.: our desires rise and fall in accordance with our neighbor’s desires.
Girard says that mimetic desire – wanting what someone else wants – is actually important for the development of the human race. Without this imitative desire we would not learn and innovate. Your friend goes skiing so you try skiing. Your brother gets a graduate degree so you want one too. You may find out you’re a natural born skier, or the graduate degree you pursue may eventually give your life and your work deeper meaning. Mimetic desire is also how human culture is formed. We naturally want what those closest to us want, and thus our families, our communities and our nations are formed around shared values, shared desires if you will.
Therefore, mimetic desire has two sides to it. On the one hand, the imitative component works to develop innate skills and potential through imitation of others close to us. It establishes like-minded communities and cements relationships through shared values. On the other hand, as in the example of the children with the truck or the woman on the plane next to me reading my magazine, mimetic desire can spread rapidly and unconsciously, quickly escalating out of control, causing envy, rancor and even violence.
Now let’s take a look at the use of the word “neighbor” in this commandment. We’re familiar with this same word in the Biblical commandment “Veahavta et re-echa kamocha”, usually translated as “love your neighbor as yourself.” Uri Alter translates “reecha” as “your fellow man.” In modern Hebrew “raya” describes an intimate connection of closeness and friendship. “Rayati” and “ray-ee” are modern egalitarian ways to say “My wife” and “my husband.” Rayut, a common Hebrew name for a man, means “friend.” So I would say that this command “Lo tachmod” could be best paraphrased as “Do not desire anything that those with whom you are intimate desire.”
Girard says it is one of the contributions of the 10th commandment to point out that it is those who are closest to us who most often fuel our desires and consequently our envy. If you think about it, who is more likely to make you jealous: a fellow member of this congregation who has a bigger house or the job you want, or a Chinese American in the same position? The closer we feel to each other, the more likely it is that that person will be the one who will trigger our desire and possibly our envy. Remember that the 10th commandment does not forbid desire itself. It forbids us desiring what those who are close to us desire.
Girard is an anthropologist and his focus is on society. He believes the 10th commandment’s primary purpose is to avoid the rivalries, jealousies and feuds that threaten to fragment societies. He has another very important piece to his theory, which is that societies typically resolve these internal tensions through collective violence against a perceived other, a scapegoat. There is quite a bit of human history to support his thesis, and he develops a far-reaching theory on the significance of how the Biblical and Gospel narratives take the part of this scapegoat, whether it be Joseph or Jesus, versus the pagan religions which took the part of the collective in their violence against their scapegoats.
But that will take me way outside the scope of this drash. For now, I want to focus on what this 10th commandment means to each of us in this room, and to re-ask the opening questions of why this commandment is in such a primary position and why it legislates against such a universal feeling.
There is a way in which both these questions are one and the same. Try to hear what I say now through the filter of the opening commandment: Anochi Adonai Elohecha asher hotzeticha mieretz Mitzraim: – I am the One who freed you from bondage; do not put any gods before Me.
I was in a four-day seminar last weekend in a beautiful rural setting outside Princeton, NJ. The woman’s home in which we met had 180-degree windows which overlooked a pond and woods. For part of the weekend we were treated to a magical vision of beautiful, powdery snow, which fell in record amounts.
The openness that was created and the closeness we were feeling for each other also triggered our mimetic desires, bringing forth feelings of competitiveness, inadequacy and the potential for squabbling amongst ourselves for our share of the limelight. Many were honest enough to describe their mimetic desires – though they didn’t use those words. Instead it sounded like: “I want to be special too,” or “I want the teacher to like me best,” or “I want to be seen.”
I felt some of that and in addition I sure wished I had a house like that in a place like that and was as good a therapist and a teacher as this woman is. She’s such a good teacher, and so gifted at creating a safe setting, that we were also able to show up in our uniqueness and magnificence. It was possible to see the gift of God manifesting through each of us, as distinctly and beautifully as the separate snowflakes that were falling.
We are separate snowflakes. When we want to be like someone else, when we envy someone else, when we desire what someone else desires, we are worshiping a false god. If you think about it, the first commandment and the last commandment both legislate feelings, legislate our proper stance in the world. If we disallow ourselves worshiping other people or possessions, if we really believe there is only one true God in whose image we are created, then we will not be envious of what other people have or who other people are. When our desire is triggered by them it will be only to awaken what is divinely ordained within us, not to want to take something from someone else.
Shabbat shalom.