03 Feb PARSHA IN PRACTICE: SKILLS FOR BETTER LIVING YISRO – I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN

Would anyone
describe Kabbalas
HaTorah as “groovy”?
Long before the 1960s,
the Torah used the phrase “seeing sounds”
(ro’im es ha’kolos) to describe the Jewish
people’s experience at Har Sinai (Shemos
20:15). Far out.
The first Gerrer Rebbe, the Chiddushei
HaRim (d. 1866), explained that this
miraculous perception was not a flourish of
poetry, but a practical necessity. Many of the
Commandments contain the Hebrew word
“Lo,” a homophone whose meaning depends
entirely on how it is spelled. When written
with lamed-alef, it means “no.” When written
with lamed-vav, it means “for Him.”
When Hashem declared “Lo Signov,” the
prohibition against stealing, it was essential
that the Jewish people knew which Lo they
were hearing. Hashem intended lamed-alef:
no stealing. But a rationalizing listener might
have heard lamed-vav: for Him you may
steal. For the sake of Heaven, for Torah, for a
mitzvah – deceptive means might just be okay.
To eliminate any ambiguity, the people had to

see the sound. They had to read the spelling
with their own eyes. Not only hear the words,
but perceive them accurately: Thou shalt not
steal – not even for a worthy cause.
At first glance, this seems unnecessary. Who
would seriously imagine that theft could
become permissible simply by labeling it
religious?
But here the Torah reveals a remarkably
sophisticated understanding of the human
mind. We do not usually violate our values
by denying them. We violate them by
reinterpreting them.
Psychologists call this process motivated
reasoning: when desire quietly reshapes
perception. We rarely say, “I am doing
something wrong.” Instead, we say, “This is
different.” “This doesn’t really count.” “This is
justified.” The behavior stays the same; only
the spelling changes.
The Torah is teaching that the greatest
danger is not mishearing the command, but
misreading ourselves.
Sometimes it can be enticing to cut corners in
financial matters. Given the real pressures of
Jewish life – large families, tuition, simchos,

Pesach – it may feel easy to take advantage
of deep-pocketed, faceless entities: online
retailers, insurance companies, government
systems. There is no visible victim, no angry
face, no confrontation. And soon the story
begins to write itself: It’s really just balancing
the system. Everyone does it. And in the end,
it’s for Torah. It’s for Him.
From a psychological perspective, this is a
textbook moral maneuver. We preserve our
self-image by changing the meaning of our
actions. We keep seeing ourselves as honest
people – we simply redefine honesty.
That is why the Torah did not rely on
hearing alone. Sound is subjective. Hearing
is vulnerable to distortion. What the
Jewish people needed at Sinai was clarity
of perception, to see the command in its
written form, immune to reinterpretation.
To recognize that when desire whispers “for
Him,” the letters still spell “N-O.”
Rav Chaim of Volozhin (d. 1821) once quipped
that the Aseres HaDibros were engraved
on both sides of the luchos (Shemos 32:15),
so that “whichever way you look at it,” the
command reads: Thou shalt not steal. There is

no angle that morally justifies illicit gains.
And this may be the quiet challenge of Har
Sinai. Not merely to hear what Hashem says,
but to learn how to see ourselves honestly. To
notice when we are not mishearing the Torah,
but misspelling it. And to have the courage,
even when it is inconvenient, to read the
letters exactly as they are.