Whole and Honest

Rabbi Melanie Aron

November 16, 2002

Who does our tradition view as the greatest enemy of the Jewish people?

Haman who conspired to engineer the death of our entire people and whose name we continue to use today as a symbol of evil?

Or perhaps Pharoah who saw himself as a rival to God and enslaved the Israelites for 400 years?

Actually, our tradition identifies Laban, Rebekah's brother as the most dangerous enemy of the Jewish people. At the beginning of the Passover seder, when we start our retelling of the story of our deliverance, we begin "Arami oved avi, Laban, the Aramean tried to destroy our people".

There are dangers that are evident, like war and slavery, but there are also dangers that are less evident and can still undermine a society.

Laban is an example of that sort of stealth danger. Laban's name is considered a hint. It means white, which would seem a symbol of goodness and purity. But read in reverse Laban's name is Naval, scoundrel, and that is who he really is.

The Torah never criticizes Laban explicitly, never actually uses a single adjective to describe him to us. Instead the Torah is able to show us his character through his words and actions. Always polite, always kindly, Laban explains that everything he does is motivated only out of concern for his family and for your welfare. Yet if we examine the consequences of his action, we find that he insults Eliezer, Abraham's second in command, takes advantage of Jacob as a laborer and son-in-law, and in general manages to watch out very carefully for number one.

What the rabbis want us to learn from Laban seems to me related to Michael's Dvar Torah this morning. The greatest danger in a society may not be what is most apparent. It might seem to us today that the greatest danger facing us as a society is terrorism or the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But perhaps what we should also be paying attention to the white collar trickery that has undermined our economy. Earlier this year I saw an interesting article that tried to compare the economic impact of the attack on the World Trade center with the economic impact of some of the recent scandals. This particular business analyst's calculation was that it was the deceit that hurt the American economy more in terms of diminishing individual net worth and reducing confidence in the American economic system.

In our tradition there is a special category of sins which people commit at the edge of the law, which can still be particularly damaging. One example the rabbis give they attribute to the people of Sodom. According to the law, when passing through a field, a person is allowed to take just a little of the crop, without it being considered ground for prosecution as theft. So this is what they would do in Sodom. Each person would come and take just a drop less than the measure that which would constitute stealing. Let's say theft was taking more than a half a bushel, they would take 3/8ths of a bushel. No one would have committed a punishable crime, but in the end, after everyone came and took just a little, the owner of the field was left with nothing.

As Michael pointed out in his talk, there are no good outcomes from deceit. One Midrash explains that Jacob gained his blessing and birthright by deceit, because he wanted to avoid slander, sexual transgression, bloodshed, and idolatry, all the bad qualities traditionally associated with his brother Esau. Yet ultimately, and according to this midrash, because of this deceit, all four found their way into his household- slander, with regard to Joseph and his brothers, sexual transgression, in the case of Judah and Tamar, his daughter in law, bloodshed in Simon and Levi's revenge against the people of Shechem, and even idolatry-as Jacob's beloved Rachel stole her father's idols and hid them within Jacob's encampment. By using deceitful means, Jacob was unable to achieve noble ends.

Sometimes we act as if there were an impenetrable wall between what we call our work lives, and what we call our religious life. Over and over Judaism comes to teach us that we must be whole people, shalem, whole and honest, in all the aspects of our lives.