Two Minute Torah Podcast

Shoftim 5771 by Rabbi Paul Drazen

This is Rabbi Paul Drazen with 2 minute Torah, a service of KOACH, United Synagogue's program for college age students.

Email is quick, efficient and outdated. I appreciate the immediacy of tweeting and the power of "liking" on Facebook, but I miss signatures on emails. Many sigs include a favorite quote: some cute, some suggestive, some troubling.

Consider one I saw which said, "It's not illegal if you don't get caught." My discomfort is not just being picky, it's based in a verse found in this week's parashah shoftim where a verse says: "You shall not move your countryman's landmarks, set up by previous generations…"

What's that have to do with "it's not illegal if you don't get caught?" Absolutely everything! The parashah prohibits moving the landmarks designating the border between fields. Moving landmarks is theft but a theft which if done incrementally at night could go unnoticed.

The prohibition in the Torah, allows us to deduce there were people who went out in the dark of a new moon evening and moved a marker rock a few inches. And over, again, a few inches. And over, again, a few feet - until one field was smaller, and the other larger. The Torah says it is wrong. It's wrong if you do it and get caught; if you do it and don't get caught, it is still wrong.

The signature implies that "if I can get away with it, it's okay," is acceptable. A society whose members who care only if they get caught, not about appropriate behavior, is a menacing place to live. Yet the attitude of that e-mail signature is very much alive and well today. Evidence is documented in the book: The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead by David Callahan. He writes that cheating on tests and taxes, assignments and resumes is becoming an American standard.

The Torah's message about not moving the landmark is quite simple. It's wrong. It's wrong if one person sees you. It's wrong if a hundred people see you. And it's wrong if no one sees you. Getting away with something doesn't make it less wrong - and certainly not right. Getting away with it just means getting away with it.

But, there's more. There are acts which even if legal, may not be right. Being legal should not be the ultimate measure for how we live our lives. The Torah is clear, we have an obligation to fulfill more than just the basics, we have to be ready to turn our back on what we might be able to do and get away with. We have to do what's right.

Even if it seems that we're losing out, we should do what's right. Because that's how the world should operate. Because unless we live our lives as upstanding principled people, nothing else makes much difference.