Parshat Yitro

This week’s Parsha contains in it the receiving of the Torah by the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai.  It is one of two times in the Torah that the Ten Commandments are listed.  Today I’d like to focus on the last of the Ten Commandments, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

Very simply, this commandment is instructing us not to desire things that don’t belong to us.  This commandment seems to instruct us regarding having a high quality of life as it relates to the statement in  Pirkei Avot (4:1), “Who is rich?  The one who is happy with his or her lot.”  The idea being, that the jealousy which comes from coveting what other people have is a result of not being content with what we have.  When our personal happiness is judged not by what we have alone and our own feelings of contentedness, but on what we have in comparison to others, we will never find true happiness.  There will always be someone with more me, therefore it will be impossible for me to achieve the true satisfaction of a happy life.  Therefore the Torah commands us not to covet the belongings of other people. 

If my focus is on what are the things that I need to make myself happy, then I will be able to set reasonable and meaningful goals for myself, resulting in a true sense of satisfaction and achievement with my accomplishments.    It is difficult in our consumer driven society to see other people’s nice stuff, (be it clothing, gadgets, cars, homes, schools our children attend, etc.) and want these things for ourselves.  It is human nature to desire nice things, so how do we fulfill this commandment?  The Talmud Yerushalmi (Berachot 4:2) describes a blessing that some of our great sages would say at the end of the day which relates to this idea.  The prayer is, “May it be your will (God) that others not be envious of us, and that we be envious of others.  By asking God for help and directing our minds to not want to covet we can train ourselves to want to overcome our jealous feelings.  It is difficult to overcome this strong emotion, but with God’s help and some practice and dedication on our part, we can train ourselves to minimize our jealous feelings.