Tunnel Vision
Probing beneath the surface of our personalities can yield surprising and painful results. One can either stop digging or dig even deeper to find the treasures of goodness in the deepest recesses of our personalities.
Legitimate Self-Defense
Mishpatim, this week’s parsha, is filled with the Torah’s civil and criminal laws. One of the most dramatic expressions of the law of self-defense is recorded in this parsha.
“If a thief is discovered in a tunnel and is stricken and killed it is not considered bloodshed…”
The rationale for this law is that when a person illegally enters another’s property he anticipates armed resistance. He thus prepares himself to fight and even kill the owner of the house who will likely put up resistance and kill him. Hence, notwithstanding the fact that the thief is only interested in burglarizing the home, he poses a mortal threat to its owner.
In other words, when there is even the slightest and most remote possibility that someone threatens a person’s life, the Torah allows the person to use lethal force to protect himself. The only exception to this rule, the Talmud states, is when we are absolutely certain that the thief harbors no desire to harm the occupant of the house even if he were to put up resistance. The classic example given of this exceptional case is where the burglar is the father of the victim. In all other situations the law is that we may kill the burglar.
It has been pointed out on many occasions that the laws of the Torah were meant to be implemented as stated, except where the oral tradition modified its plain meaning. But, in addition to its plain meaning and application, every law in the Torah carries a message to us in our own personal quest for spiritual refinement and perfection.
The Torah’s example of a burglar is one who burrows a tunnel into someone else’s house. There are many ways a thief can get into a house, what message is there in the Torah’s example of a thief burrowing a tunnel?
Digging It!
One approach to this matter is based on an alternate translation of the Hebrew words concerning the finding of the thief in the tunnel. Instead of “If a thief is discovered in a tunnel…” this revised translation reads:
“If one tunnels deeply into oneself he may discover a thief.”
This means that if we dig into our personalities we may discover that we are not as honest and sincere as we might have thought.
We may discover that we have ulterior motives in the good things that we do, or worse.
As one searching Chasid cried to his Rebbe about his lack of sincerity, whereupon he exclaimed, “even my recognition of my insincerity and desire to change is not totally sincere. And even my recognition of that recognition is insincere, etc. etc.,”
He kept on digging deeper into his motives and the lack of sincerity until he fainted.
When we question our own integrity and pureness of heart and discover that there may be a “thief” lurking there it makes it easier to not judge other people’s motives. There is a tendency among some to judge others more harshly than the way we judge ourselves. The Torah therefore teaches us that when we see a thief it is time to introspect about our own honesty and sincerity.
And conversely, when on the surface it seems that we are far from being ideal, after tunneling deeply into the hidden recesses of our soul, we will discover that there is a part of us that is deceptively good and holy.
The Mining Analogy
The above analysis raises the obvious question: How can it be both ways? How is it possible that deep down we are insincere and deceptive and, simultaneously, deep down we are also deceptively good?
An analogy from the mining industry can be helpful in understanding human nature.
An incident that captivated the entire world occurred in the year 2010, when a copper mine in Chile exploded and 27 miners were caught for many months until their extraordinary extrication that turned them into celebrities.
We must view our own existence as miners who were sent into the bowels of the earth to mine treasures. But these same bowels that contain treasures also contain some of the most lethal elements The metaphor can be taken a step further: Each one of us is a diamond mine. We are full of inner treasures. As the Ba’al Shem Tov interpreted the verse: “For you shall be unto me a land of desire” that each Jew is like the earth that contains treasures beneath the surface that we might not see. But if we dig we will discover the greatest treasures.
However, in the process of digging there is a possibility that we may discover lethal amounts of gasses or/and explosions that will prevent us from safely emerging from the mine.
Why are there these contradictory features of a mine in the spiritual domain?
The answer is that our souls consist of many layers. The deeper we dig, the more our true nature is exposed. So while digging beneath the surface will yield some painful aspects of our personalities, if we just dug a little deeper we will discover that at our core we are indeed sincere.
Before the coming of Moshiach, we are told that the hidden aspects of our nature are more easily accessed. Sometimes they might even surface without any effort. This explains the paradoxical phenomenon of our times. On the one hand, we see so much more negativity and hostility in people’s attitudes and behavior, and, on the other hand, we are witness to so much more sincerity, selflessness and altruism.
This emergence of the hidden negativity and goodness gives us an opportunity to once and for all “strike and kill” the negative thief within us, and bask in the glow of the radiant goodness that has been revealed. By doing so we are ready to greet Moshiach and usher in the future Redemption.
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Mishpatim by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
