Self-control: Fix ourselves, make world better

It was her eyes that really captured me. There was an intense sadness there mixed with pain, and yet every now and then a flash of fire that seemed to suggest … defiance?

As the woman was being interviewed on the television news, the screen was focused in close, showing only her face. She was speaking about her son who had just been killed in a terrorist bus bombing. A tear rolled down her cheek as she described the dreams and aspirations her son, Yosef, would never realize.

The camera panned around what must have been his room, and I noticed a soccer ball in the corner. The cameraman must have noticed it too, because he immediately panned in on the mud-speckled ball, conveying the tragedy of lost dreams, and reflecting the price of war.

Then the camera panned back to the mother, a close up of her face, just the eyes, brimming with tears as she broke down and sobbed.

There is nothing more powerful than the love of a mother for her child, nor as painful as the tragedy of that love torn apart by the child’s untimely death, especially by violence.

Indeed, it is for this reason that we learn the sounds of the shofar blast from the sobs and cries of the mother of Sisera, one of the Jewish people’s arch-enemies, whose mother, waiting for his return from battle, begins to cry upon realizing that he isn’t coming home.

On television, I heard, “If I only I could have taken his place. … I would be proud to have taken his place and I am proud of him for all that he has done.”

At this point I realized, as the camera panned out, that I was listening to the mother of a suicide bomber, who not only was proud of her son for the death and destruction he had rained upon so many innocent families the day before, but actually desired to do the same thing.

How much was the action of this young suicide bomber influenced by this same mother’s pride in his path, and even by her desire to emulate it.

Should this woman (and anyone like her) be held accountable, not just for evil actions but for evil desires as well? Can we be held responsible for our desires, and not just our actions?

• • •

This is precisely the question one has to struggle with when confronting the tenth commandment in this week’s portion, Yisro: “You shall not covet your fellow’s house; you shall not covet your friend’s wife, his manservant, his maidservant, his ox, his donkey, and anything that belongs to your friend.” (Shemot 20:14)

What is the nature of this mitzvah?

The Ibn Ezra, along with many other commentaries, asks: How can we be expected not only to limit what we do, but also to control what we think? What is the problem with wanting something that we can’t have?

The Torah is telling us that there are certain things we should not want at all.

In truth, there are many things we expect ourselves not to want, whether as parents, as Doctors, or even as a society. It is not enough sometimes for a person not to do the wrong thing, it is equally important for them not to want those things at all.

Rav Avigdor Nevensahlm in his Sichot Le Sefer Shemot, suggests that the Torah wants us to not desire anything that belongs to someone else. Desiring your friend’s laptop, or wife, should be like wanting to eat your sports coat.

How does one accomplish this?

Instead of approaching this from the perspective of the desires we struggle with, we might consider the initial relationships we have prior to coveting something.

The problem begins not with the covetous thought, but with the unhealthy relationship that allows for the process to even get started.

Pirkei Avot (4:1) teaches: “Who is truly wealthy? He who is happy with his lot.”

• • •

The fact that a person desires another’s home or another’s wife must mean there is something missing with his own life and relationship. And that is what the Torah wants us to work on.

Indeed, there is even something wrong with the fact that a person only woke up to the challenges in his own relationship by seeing and desiring someone else. The true challenge of all relationships is the constant work and effort that goes into nurturing such relationships and seeing them grow, day-by-day, and year-by-year.

And if this is true of our relationships with each other, it is certainly true of our relationship with Hashem.

The essence of our time here on earth is all about the desire to simply fulfill the ratzon (desire) of G-d. Ultimately, this is the great question we have the opportunity to ask ourselves every day: What is it, really, that G-d wants of me? And can I fulfill a little bit more of what that ratzon of G-d’s really is.

This means focusing on the gifts and opportunities G-d gives me, and not what He has bestowed on the fellow next to me.

And that is the true challenge of Lo’ Tachmod: The opportunity not to covet.

It is a mitzvah less about the things we want than about who we really are.

• • •

Sometimes the things we want are just symptoms, reflections of the relationships we have in our lives. And perhaps it is less about getting there than about embracing the process. It begins with what I decide I want to want, and then it proceeds to a deep introspection into how I develop the relationships that allow me to truly want those things.

As to how we get there, it is worth noting that we are given these mitzvoth at Sinai where, in the midst of thunder and lightning and the still, small voice of G-d, we achieved an exalted state, deeply connected to G-d and our purpose on earth. And it may well be that in that briefest of moments we actually truly desired only to fulfill the will of G-d.

Every now and then we are blessed to experience such moments; perhaps it is the moment of standing with your beloved underneath the chuppah, or maybe it is when you intuit the pain of a friend and are filled with a desire only to be there for him.

We need to catch those moments and tap into them and learn from them, because they are the fuel which powers our lives.

We really do have the ability to change the nature of what we want in this world, and that is a crucial piece in our ability to make the world the better place we all dream it could be.

Maybe we’ll get a little bit closer this Shabbat.

Rabbi Freedman is rosh yeshiva at Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com