She Stole the Idols? Jacob flees...

31:19-20, same verb “ganav” for “steal.” It’s also an idiom, stealing someone’s mind and soul – dishonesty and deception. This term was a springboard for discussion of business ethics [an oxymoron?]

- Meir Tamari, Bar Ilan University, on Jewish business ethics and fraudulent practices

*False advertising claims; inflated prices and deep discounts; lack of proper disclosure of defects

*Insider trading

*Accounting fraud

Summary of Tamari’s book Al Chet: Sins in the Marketplace, Jason Aronson, 1996 (from http://books.google.com/books/about/Al_Chet.html?id=OAxXxRZZKLIC)

- Reform Responsum – transferring assets to children to fake poverty and qualify for (say) financial aid to be admitted to a nursing home (NRR 92-96?).

- Plagiarism – attributing sources properly. Mishnah and Talmud always give references to the source teacher. If not, your project image is of being smart when in fact you’re not.

- Inviting someone over for a meal when you know that they won’t attend (Talmud Chullin 94a, which has other example of deceit)

- In general, the sin is manipulating someone else’s mind, disrupting the godliness of someone’s soul.

- Another verse from which this concept is derived: II Samuel, Absalom stole heart of people.

- Alter on ganav, a word that will reappear throughout this story (page 169): “the verb ganav, which suggests appropriating someone else’s property by deception or stealth, will echo throughout the denouement of the story.”

- Hirsch on Jacob’s need to be deceptive when leaving Lavan (page 641): “ לֵב גְנֵיבַת [literally, sealing the heart] is to win the good opinion of another without deserving it; to obtain the good will of another by false friendliness, by doing favors without good intentions. Our Sages call this form of deceit ‘ דַעַת גְנֵיבַת’ (see Chullin 94a, which details examples of fraudulent behavior) and they prohibit even the slightest semblance of it.

· 31:20 - “Lavan the Aramean,”

- Alter (page 169) and Sarna (page 216) comment that this reference to ethnicity foreshadows conflict between two nations; Jacob and Lavan are now alienated from another.

- Richard Elliot Friedman (Commentary on the Torah, pages 105-106) comments on the multiple puns and sound patterns of this verse.

*Repeating consonants in “Lavan”: ל, ב, נ.

* Arami, is close to word for trickster [swindler, deceiver, cheater] (רַמַּאי).

21. So he and all that were his fled, and he arose and crossed the river, and he directed his face toward Mount Gilead.

· 31:21 - “crossed the river”

- Probably the Euphrates [Me’am Lo’ez].

- basis for ee-vree, Hebrew, related to עבר, crossing over (pass over, traveled, emigrated)

22. On the third day, Laban was informed that Jacob had fled.

23. So he took his kinsmen with him, and he pursued him seven days' journey, and he overtook him at Mount Gilead.

· 31:22-23, “three days” and “seven days”

- Sarna (page 217) on the problem of Lavan’s progress - it was too fast for travel in ancient times: over 600 km from Haran to Gilead (which was east of the Jordan River between the Yarmuk River and the Dead Sea) in ten days suggests over 60 km/day. With flocks and kinsmen, the best pace would be 10 km/day. In other words, the numbers in these verses are probably symbolic, signifying a long journey over a long time period.

ü Probably like a tall tale to mean that Lavan is hotly pursuing Jacob. Perhaps a literary device, i.e., words not to be taken literally as, e.g., “three 24-hr periods.”

- Perhaps the time refers to distance traveled.