A FEW DAYS BEFORE Shavuot some years back, I got an intriguing invitation from Rabbi Zalman at Chabad, who was putting together a Tikkun Leil (special evening service) for the night before the holiday.
These services typically consist of study sessions that go on late into the evening, and I had wanted to attend one for quite some time. Rabbi Zalman asked me to discuss one of the Ten Commandments with the group he was gathering.
To be honest, I hadn’t looked at the Commandments in a long while and had completely forgotten about the one that commands us not to covet. Looking at the choices, I thought, Coveting is something I do, and it’s also one of the more subtle commandments. That made it very dear to my playwright’s heart — so that is the one I chose.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.
The first thing I thought when reading this text is that this is a commandment I do not understand. I understand not praying to false Gods or even calling on God “in vain,” though I’m still not exactly sure why anyone would do that.
Maybe to pretend to someone else they were religious when they’re not?
Honoring parents, observing Shabbat, not lying or cheating on your spouse, or killing — all these make much more sense to me than not coveting. Yet, it made the Big Ten. There must be some reason it’s way up there, above so many other things we are commanded to do and not to do.
Isn’t coveting something you can accomplish in the privacy of your own home without it bothering anyone or anything else? Is anyone really going to know I’m coveting my neighbor’s house, or how she can sleep in when I’m driving to work in the morning? I try not to be, but I’m covetous of friends’ luck sometimes. There are days I want that luck because some of them don’t have to work and can devote their lives to art. Sometimes I want their successes.
I guess this makes me a very bad person, or very great sinner — maybe both. How do you stop coveting, and most of all, why?
I won’t say coveting can be motivating, because usually it leaves you stuck in envy and that leads to self-pity more than action on your own behalf. If you’re enmeshed in envying someone else, you don’t have time to work on your own artistic endeavors, or garden, for that matter. And it’s all too easy to find excuses for just about anything if you think, I’ll never have it as good or be as good as this or that person.
So, coveting often sends you into a spiral that’s hard to break. It’s obviously bad for you, like smoking, and makes you mentally and emotionally ill. But smoking isn’t a fire-alarm-quality sin according to the Ten Commandments. Coveting is, and I still don’t get it.
It’s destructive and even stupid — but why a sin, as in violation of God’s law and Torah?
Is it because it can lead to a sin? If you covet someone’s wife, would you try and hurt them? I suppose some people have, though I believe it’s rare that most of us would do that. Is it because it could lead to stealing your neighbor’s stuff? Is covetousness the root of many of the sins in the Commandments?
I’m not prepared to say yes, but maybe that’s because I am not desperate enough to be extremely covetous, and when I’m feeling that way, I tend to do self-destructive things such as overdrinking or eating, which makes me feel horrible the next day, of course.
The little things get us started, and what happens then? I suppose Othello could tell us, and to me that play has always centered around Iago’s famous line. “Beware, my Lord, of jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”
Is that what the Commandment is saying? Because if it is, I have to say I like the fact that it’s there. It tells me that someone (One?) was really thinking. Some One was saying, “Envy is going to lead to a lot of self-destructive behavior. In one way or another, it could be the root of this list because it can lead to so many branches of it.”
So, it gives you another reason not to covet. It lets you know that being happy with what you have isn’t just a good idea, it’s a requirement to leading a good life. Being grateful for the sun, your marriage, your friends, the abilities, and the talents you have or that were gifted to you are all keys to being happier and more satisfied.
Being commanded not to covet is interesting because it takes the action out of the realm of options and puts it squarely into the realm of requirements. It says, your own life is important and essential and beautiful, no matter what you have or don’t have, no matter what you want that you aren’t getting. You are important. You are not an afterthought. You are part of a community and who you are matters more than what you have or what you do.
When you forget that, you’re sinning against the one God as well as yourself. You are reducing yourself and others to what they have. I get that you want uninterrupted writing time, and you want your work to be done all over the world and that there are days when you (I) want a completely different life. Whether we get that in this life isn’t really up to us. It’s up to luck and the ways of the world, and some of it is up to how much we work at it and how much time we have for that work.
It doesn’t mean we should stop trying if we don’t have enough time to try. It means we should stop comparing ourselves to others because doing that is the root of all unhappiness, and that unhappiness lasts. And unhappy people can do ugly things — or can easily be led to do them.
Thank you, Rabbi Zalman, for asking me to take this Commandment on. Despite myself, I just may have learned something.
Excerpted from Crooked Lines: A Single Mom’s Jewish Journey by Jenna Zark. Crooked Lines received first prize from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the Overcoming Adversity Category and the Silver Award in Religious/Spiritual Memoirs from Nautilus Book Awards. Copyright © 2022 by Jenna Zark and reprinted courtesy of Koehler Books.
Beautifully done! I never thought about the commandment in this way. However, I have long thought of greed as the biggest problem of all, as it leads to wars, destruction of the earth and many other ills. Maybe this commandment is meant to stave off the greed that leads to so much death and destruction. That would explain why it made the top ten. Pretty darn wise.
Thank you, Leslie, I couldn’t have said it better! It’s like that one cookie you eat at bedtime that keeps you up for hours until you finish the package. Or maybe it takes just a few minutes to knock off all the junk food in your house.
I think coveting is like junk food. So telling is not to covet IS wise, as you say. It’s my favorite commandment.