A follower of Rabbi Meir of Premishlan once complained to him about a man who had started a competing business. “He is depriving me of my livelihood!” cried the chassid. “You must tell him to close his shop!”
Said Rabbi Meir: “Have you ever noticed how a horse behaves when he is led to a water hole? He begins to paw angrily at the water with his hooves; only when the water is well-muddied does he begin to drink. Why does the horse act this way?”
“I don’t know,” said the chassid. “Why?”
“Because the horse sees his reflection in the water and thinks that another horse has come to drink his water. So he kicks and paws until he has ‘chased away’ the other horse.”
“What the horse doesn’t understand,” concluded Rabbi Meir, “are three truths. What he sees as his opposition is only a mirror of himself. By kicking at the other horse, all he is accomplishing is making his own water dirty and murky. And he also fails to realize that G-d has created enough water for all the horses.”
This week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, teaches one of the Torah’s most powerful principles of business ethics: “You shall not move the boundary of your neighbor.” Literally, the Torah is warning us not to move the markers that separate one person’s property from another’s. But the Torah is teaching us something much deeper: respect other people’s boundaries.
The Torah believes in competition. We are encouraged to build, create, innovate, and succeed. But there is a line: I am allowed to compete with you; I am not allowed to destroy you. Competition is part of life, but deliberately putting another person out of business is a different matter.
And perhaps there is an even bigger lesson. Sometimes we think, “If I can do it, I have the right to do it.” But Judaism asks a higher question: “What will my success do to someone else?” Not every opportunity has to be taken. Not every competitor has to be crushed.
But there is another kind of crossing the line, one that has nothing to do with property or money. It is about moral and spiritual boundaries. For more than 3,000 years, the Jewish people have maintained certain markers—boundaries that define who we are. Because boundaries rarely disappear all at once. You move the marker an inch, then another inch, and eventually you don’t even remember where the original line was.
A Chassid once asked Rabbi DovBer, the Maggid, how he could be held responsible for thoughts that entered his mind by themselves. The Maggid sent him to Rabbi Zev. When the Chassid arrived late at night, Rabbi Zev left him outside in the cold for hours before finally opening the door and welcoming him warmly.
Several days later, Rabbi Zev explained: “I already answered you the night you arrived. You saw that I was home. You knocked on my door. But I didn’t let you in. A person is the master of his own home. He decides whom he allows inside and whom he keeps outside. The same is true of your mind. You cannot always control which thoughts knock on the door. But you control which thoughts you invite inside.”
We cannot always control what enters our minds. But we don’t have to give every thought a chair, a meal, and a permanent address. You are the master of your mind. Protect the boundaries that protect you.
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Graham wrote...