332: The Ten Commandments

Ira Glass

So in 1853, during the California Gold Rush, a leafleteer out west published the "Ten Commandments for Gold Miners" who'd come out to prospect. Commandment number four-- commandment four in the traditional Ten Commandments tells you to observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Commandment number four reads like this, "Thou shalt not remember what thy friends do at home on the Sabbath day, lest the remembrance may not compare favorably with what thou doest here."

For commandment number eight-- the commandment about stealing in the traditional commandments. Commandment eight, "Thou shalt not steal a pick or a shovel or a pan from thy fellow miner or take away his tools without his leave, nor return them broken, nor remove his stake to enlarge thy claim, nor pan out gold from his riffle box."

There is the "Ten Commandments of Umpiring," written in 1949 by the commissioner of Major League Baseball. Commandment number one, "Keep your eye on the ball." Four different commandments on this list are, basically, about not getting mad at the players.

There are the "Ten Commandments of Tractor Safety." Number one, "Know your tractor, its implements, and how they work." The "Ten Commandments of Paris Dining," assembled by Fodor's Travel Guides, which include number two, "Thou shalt not be too familiar with the waiter. Don't expect to hear, 'My name is Gaston, and I will be your server tonight." Also, number eight, "Thou shall not assume that the customer is always right." And number 10, "Thou shall never use the term 'doggy bag.'"

Let's see what else. The "Ten Commandments of Cell Phone Etiquette." Number four, "Thou shall not wear more than two wireless devices on thy belt." The Ten Commandments of Sports Betting, the "Ten Commandments of Protecting Your Million Dollar Idea," the "Ten Commandments of Good Historical Writing." My favorite-- number 10, "Thou shalt write consistently in the past tense." Interesting to think that you would need that.

The "Ten Commandments of Bilingual Blogs," the "Ten Commandments of Pastors Leaving the Congregation," the "Ten Commandments of Working in a Hostile Environment," the "Ten Commandments for Communication with People with Disabilities"-- this includes a very helpful number six, "Don't lean on a person's wheelchair." Or number 10, "Don't be embarrassed or freak out if you accidentally use a common phrase like, 'See you later,' with somebody who can't see, or 'Did you hear about that?' with somebody who can't hear."

The "Ten Commandments of Being a Math Teacher"-- this will actually reveal a lot about the internal life of being a math teacher. Number one, "Thou shalt recognize that some students fear and dislike math and be compassionate." And then there's a long list that's basically different ways to encourage the math teacher to keep patiently explaining over and over in different ways things until your students understand them. And then, at the end of that list, there's the rather mournful number 10, "Though they may at times seem few, thou shall count thy blessings." Then, of course, as Peaches & Herb remind us, there are The Ten Commandments of Love.

[MUSIC - "THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF LOVE" BY PEACHES & HERB]

I think there's so many different versions of the Ten Commandments because 10 commandments are such a perfect way to get across an idea. There's 10 of them, you know, so it's enough that you feel like you're getting a comprehensive view. And yet at the same time, it's just 10, right? 10-- manageable. Not too overwhelming. Sure, I could do 10. 10? Sure.

And you know, the Biblical commandments have one important thing that all these imitator commandments don't. And that is they're about much more basic stuff-- you know, primal stuff that's in our lives-- honoring parents, and murder, and lying, and wanting things we don't have. It doesn't get bigger than that.

And we thought, we just had Easter and Passover. Let's find stories where people are grappling with these old, primal rules for life. With that in mind, we're devoting today's program to the Ten Commandments, the real ones. From WBEZ Chicago, it's "This American Life." I'm Ira Glass. Today's show-- The Ten Commandments. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Now different denominations attach different numbering schemes to the commandments, to which commandment goes with which number, though the commandments are always the same. But however you count them, the first two or three commandments, they cover the same ground. They're all about acknowledging God. "I'm the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not carve idols and bow down to them and worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous god. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain."

These commandments in particular are ones that Shalom Auslander tried to understand and obey as a boy going to religious school, a yeshiva-- a school where they were drilled in all of the Bible's commandments by teachers who could be pretty intimidating. Some more than others. Here's Shalom.

Shalom Auslander

Eli said that his big brother said that Rabbi Breyer once broke a student's nose by slapping the student's face. Dov said that his big brother said that Rabbi Breyer had once broken a student's arm when he was dragging a student from the room for talking during prayers. Rabbi Breyer was the scariest rabbi in the whole yeshiva.

He was a stocky man, wide as the doorway, with a long rough beard and thick, angry. Hands. And everyone trembled that first day of third grade when he stomped heavily into the classroom, wrote his name on the blackboard, and shouted at Akiva for slouching in his seat. Nobody spoke during class. Nobody doodled in the margins of their prayer books. And when, at the end of the first test at the end of the first week Rabbi Breyer shouted, "Pencils down!" it was as if the commandment had come from God himself.

At recess, we stood huddled together on the concrete slab beside the door, afraid to play, worried that Breyer was somewhere watching. Avi and Eli started flipping baseball cards. Flipping cards is considered gambling, which is forbidden. So we were supposed to return the cards to each other at the end of recess. Nobody ever did.

Eli won a large stack of cards from Avi, and I flipped Eli next. I lost an old Willie Randolph and frayed Lou Piniella, but I won a mint Carl Yastrzemski, whom I was pretty sure was Jewish. I'd been trying to win him for months.

The bell rang, and everyone headed glumly back to class where we sat quietly at our desks, waiting for Rabbi Breyer to return. I took out my Carl Yastrzemski, turned it over, and carefully wrote my name across the back. I didn't want to lose him and didn't plan on flipping him.

"Name of the Creator!" Rabbi Breyer shouted. I jumped and turned to find him standing beside me, his face red, his furious finger pointing at the baseball card on my desk. "Name of the Creator!" he shouted again. He grabbed the card from my desk.

Name of the Creator? I was confused. Yaz?

Rabbi Breyer slapped my hand, grabbed me by the ear, and led me to the head of the classroom. He held Yastrzemski over his head and shook him. "This," he declared loudly, "must never be thrown away. It must never touch the ground. It must never be covered." Then Rabbi Breyer waved the card in my face and told me that my name was the same name as God's. And I must never write it again.

The Jewish God has 72 names. And even though I was only eight years old, I already knew a lot of them. There was Adonai. There was Yahweh. There was Elohim. There was He Who is Full of Mercy, He Who is Quick to Anger, the Holy Spirit, the Divine Presence, the Rock, the Savior. And now, somewhere near the bottom of the list, there was Shalom-- peace-- my name.

Rabbi Breyer handed me the baseball card, and told me to take it to the prayer hall upstairs and immediately put it in the Shaimos Box. Shaimos means "names," and it was the place where any old or unusable names of God are left to be discarded-- pages from prayer books, crumbling Talmuds, old Torah scrolls, and-- from now on-- anything I wrote my name on. When the box was filled, the rabbis would take it outside, dig a hole, and bury the pages in the ground.

From now on, Rabbi Breyer said, when writing my name, I was to replace the last Hebrew letter, the M sound, with a simple apostrophe. I was no longer Shalom. I was Shalo'. I headed upstairs with a sigh.

Life with God's name was more difficult than I imagined. I was annoyed with God for being so selfish with them all. He had 71 other names. I couldn't see why he'd mind so much if I used just one.

I didn't want to tell God how to do his job, but I wondered if maybe there weren't bigger things for him to be worrying about than who was using one of his six dozen names without permission. Isn't this, I wondered, what led to holocausts?

The Shaimos Box in the prayer hall filled quickly-- my homework, my test papers, my "what I did this summer," even my Highlights for Children-- and buried at the bottom of the box, a pair of underpants my mother had written my name on with permanent marker. It seemed I couldn't go an hour without making something holy.

And I wasn't the only one. Every morning, my mother wrote my name on my lunch bag-- the name of God in bright red magic marker, with a quickly drawn smiley face just below it. And every afternoon, Rabbi Breyer would grab my lunch bag, shout, "Name of the Creator!" dump the food out onto my desk, and send me upstairs to the Shaimos Box with my suddenly sacred lunch bag.

It didn't end with writing. I was standing at the urinal one day when Avi came in. "Hey, Shalom," he said.

"Name of the Creator!" Rabbi Breyer shouted from inside the nearby stall. "Name of the Creator!" We heard him fumbling with his pants and ran back to class. Later, as we sat with our heads down as punishment, Rabbi Breyer explained that speaking God's name in the bathroom was also forbidden.

And then, a few weeks later, it suddenly all clicked. I began spelling my name with an apostrophe without even thinking. My mother stopped writing my name on my lunch bag. And my friends stopped saying hello to me in the bathroom.

It had been a hassle at the beginning, but now the whole God thing was growing on me. My classmates were named after rabbis and forefathers. Abraham? Isaac? Jacob? Please. I was named after God.

So I was surprised a few days later when I heard Rabbi Breyer in the middle of an exam on the first chapter of Genesis shout, "Name of the Creator!" I turned around, expecting to see him standing beside me. But he was on the far side of the classroom, standing behind Shlomo's desk, pointing a furious finger at Shlomo's test paper. "Name of the Creator!" he shouted again. And he slapped Shlomo's hand, grabbed him by the ear, and dragged him to the front of the class.

Shlomo isn't technically a name of God, but it means His shalom, His peace. And for some reason, that day, Rabbi Breyer decided that was close enough. But instead of feeling relieved that someone else in our classroom would share the burden of a holy name, I was disappointed. It was a pain in the ass being named God. But it was my pain. And it was my ass.

Rabbi Breyer handed Shlomo his test paper and told me to take him upstairs to show him where the Shaimos Box was. I still didn't quite understand God's reasoning behind the third commandment of, "Thou shall not use my name in vain," but I suddenly had a pretty good idea of the reason behind the first, "Thou shall have no other gods besides me." It's one thing to be the only God. It's quite another, lesser thing to be one of two.

I headed upstairs with Shlomo two steps behind me. I wanted to push him down the stairs. I wanted to shove him out the window. As we walked toward the prayer hall, I remembered that Rabbi Breyer told us that Moses had killed an Egyptian by uttering the name of God.

Shlomo pushed his way in front of me and hurried to the Shaimos Box. "Adonai," I whispered. Nothing. "Yahweh," I said. Nothing. I couldn't bear to watch him violating my Shaimos Box, so I turned and headed back to class, Shlomo running behind me, trying to keep up, using my name in vain, and calling, "Shalom, Shalom, wait up," as I squeezed my eyes shut and whispered, one last time, "Elohim." Nothing.

Ira Glass

Shalom Auslander. He has a book of short stories called Beware of God and the memoir, Foreskins Lament.

Ira Glass

This brings us to the fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days will you labor, but the seventh is a day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God."

Ira Glass

Here are six congregations in six different cities, remembering the Sabbath and trying to keep it holy.

Ira Glass

This is the Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton, Texas. And before that, the Northwest Venice United Methodist Church in Corunna, Michigan, Faith Tabernacle Baptist Church in Chicago, the Muslim Community Association mosque in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia, and Our Lady of Angels Monastery in Hanceville, Alabama. We recorded them in 2007, when we first broadcast today's show.

Ira Glass

If you're just tuning in, we are devoting our show today to the Ten Commandments, and we are at commandment number five right now, "Honor your father and your mother." When he was 11, in Charleston, South Carolina, Jack Hitt and his friends back then formed a little club where they would hang out at this one backyard that was all overgrown and which they thought of at the time as a jungle. It had a big brick wall along one side. And they started doing things that did not honor their fathers and their mothers.

Ira Glass

Jack Hitt is the co-host of the podcast "Uncivil."

Ira Glass

Well, the sixth commandment seems like it could not be more straightforward. "Thou shalt not kill." But of course, even this is one that is not always so simple to know how to obey. Army Reserve Chaplain Lieutenant Colonel Lyn Brown is back in this country from Iraq, where he has served two tours.

When he was in Iraq, he would run services for his unit once a week. But most of his ministry was just talking to guys one on one. The main issue they have, he says, is about missing their families. But often they talk to him about killing. He spoke with Alex Blumberg.

Ira Glass

Army Reserve Chaplain Lieutenant Colonel Lyn Brown talking with Alex Blumberg. Coming up-- adultery, thievery, lying, envy. No, it is not an afternoon of daytime TV. It is the last four commandments. We have one story for each of them. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's "This American Life". I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme, bringing you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show-- the Ten Commandments.

We're doing one story for each of the commandments. The first few commandments, of course, about how to relate to God. Then there's one on relating to your parents. And the rest are all direct injunctions about how to act-- basically, a list of things that you are not supposed to do. We are at commandment number seven, "You shall not commit adultery."

And yes, we are at the commandment that is about sex. And while there is going to be nothing explicit in this next story, it does acknowledge the existence of sex. A little warning there.

In 1976, in an interview with Playboy magazine, then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter admitted, kind of famously, that he had committed adultery in his heart many times, meaning, of course, that he had had lustful thoughts. There's this thing that Jesus says in the book of Matthew-- "Whoever looks at a woman lustfully has committed adultery in his heart." Dave Dickerson grew up going to an evangelical church in Tucson, Arizona. And he remembers hearing about what Carter said about committing adultery in his heart.

Dave Dickerson

I was eight years old, and I knew just what he was talking about. He was just saying the same thing I had read in my Bible dozens of times.

As an evangelical Christian, I wanted desperately to please God. So for my entire adolescence and up into my 20s, I literally tried to avoid having lustful thoughts. I was taught this was possible. Paul says in Second Corinthians that we take every thought captive in the name of Jesus, which means that any spiritually healthy person ought to be able to control every thought in his head.

Of course, in practice this is even harder than it sounds. So for young evangelicals like me there's a whole sub-industry of sex advice columns and books with titles like, Every Man's Struggle or Taking Thoughts Captive. You find them in the "for men" section of any Christian bookstore.

The first thing they always tell you is that sex is a beautiful gift from God, even though it's a gift they don't want you to touch or even think about because you're just going to ruin it with your filthy paws. Any physical pleasure, even pleasure you'd give yourself while alone, is completely forbidden. Then they tell you how to survive until marriage. They all run some variation on, you can't help the first glance, but you can prevent the second.

Dave Dickerson

This is Josh Harris in the audio version of his book, Not Even a Hint, Guarding Your Heart Against Lust. It's full of practical tips.

Dave Dickerson

Other tips-- these books tell you to watch TV with the remote in your hand so if a sexy beer commercial comes on or when the sports camera cuts to the cheerleaders, you can immediately jump to another channel. And be honest with yourself, when you watch ESPN2, aren't you hoping to see gymnastics? And guys need daily quiet time to read the Bible and pray for strength in the fight against temptation.

I don't know why, but in my case, none of this ever worked. I wanted it to work, longed for it desperately. But every week or so, late at night, I'd give in. "M happened again," I would write in my journal, as if it weren't an action but an event, something that could just engulf you, like a flash flood or a car accident, something so terrible it could only be referred to in code.

I was an adulterer. That's what the Bible told me. And I struggled with the guilt of that every day.

After high school, I went to a huge state college in Tucson. And on warm days, I would walk across campus feeling like a monster because I believed that noticing a girl's body was the spiritual equivalent of something like sexual assault. I assumed all this was the same for all of us fundamentalist kids. At every all-guys prayer meeting I ever went to, someone was always asking for help with their thought life.

But I'd never actually asked if anyone had quite the same problems I did. So I called my friend, Derek, a missionaries' kid who was my best friend from church back then.

Dave Dickerson

He's right. They do crack. And for me, they cracked worse than for Derek.

I couldn't buy porn. That was obviously forbidden. I didn't have a girlfriend. I couldn't even watch MTV. So the only sexual experiences I'd had were the ones that happened by accident-- a woman bending over in a low-cut shirt, for instance.

And then at 22, I started finding myself walking slowly along campus, or in supermarkets, or the library, hoping to see another accidental glimpse of something. It took more and more of my time. My grades started to suffer. I was like a stalker, but a shy one, with incredibly low standards. Then after a couple unbearable months of this, I begged my pastor for help. He suggested Sex Addicts Anonymous.

At my first meeting, we all told our stories. There was a guy who'd spent thousands of dollars on prostitutes in a single long weekend. There was a woman who'd slept with a different guy almost every night for years. There was a huge tattooed biker who was so ashamed to be there that a friend led him in blindfolded. And then there was me, a 22-year-old virgin. When I told my story, there was an awkward silence. Even here, nobody understood my problem.

A few days later, I went to a Christian counselor, expecting he'd just tell me to pray harder, look for answers in the scripture. I explained my problem, and he looked at me and frowned. And then he asked if I ever did the act, the one that I found so horrible I only referred to it in code. Trust me, he said. Let yourself do it. Give yourself permission, and see what happens.

This was shocking, that a Christian would give me this kind of advice. That it's possible to obey too much, that you could lead yourself astray by following the Bible's rules. That very day I took home my first Playboy magazine. And that was that.

After five minutes, I was no longer desperate to glimpse random women bending over the freezer cases at the grocery store. It felt like a miracle. It was so fast, so life changing, that it was like converting all over again.

Ira Glass

Dave Dickerson.

Ira Glass

Commandment number eight--

Ira Glass

"You shall not steal."

Ira Glass

Hassan works the afternoon shift at a neighborhood restaurant.

Ira Glass

He says it doesn't happen often, the stealing. But there is a pattern he's noticed. When a woman walked over to a display and took some food and then sat down and ate the food, and he tried to charge her, she argued with him. When a man tried to take a huge stack of napkins, like this huge stack, and Hassan caught him, he didn't even seem embarrassed.

Ira Glass

Which brings us to the ninth commandment. This hour is going so fast. Ninth commandment, "Do not bear false witness." Don't lie. To understand this next story, you have to understand this idea of a mitzvah. For religious Jews, a mitzvah is a good deed. They're supposed to fill their days doing these good deeds.

But mitzvah is also the Hebrew word for commandment. And remember, religious Jews count the commandments in the Bible-- they don't just have the big 10. They count, specifically, 613 commandments they're supposed to follow.

Well, the woman in this next story wanted to do one of the biggest mitzvot ever. She was going to save somebody's life-- a stranger's life. But to do this, she was going to have to break another one of the commandments, the one about lying. In this case, she was going to be lying to her own mother. Sarah Koenig tells more.

Sarah Koenig

Chaya Lipschutz does all her mother's shopping. She prepares all her meals for her, does all her cooking, and they're extremely close. Best friends, Chaya says. And she means it.

And they also live in this tiny space together, a two-room basement apartment in Borough Park in Brooklyn, where they share a tiny bedroom and sleep in two tiny beds-- really cots-- that are about a foot apart from each other. In this kind of setup, it's unimaginable that you could keep anything from your mother.

But Chaya had this whopper of a secret. She wanted to donate a kidney to someone, to a stranger, after seeing an ad in a Jewish newspaper taken out by somebody who needed one.

Sarah Koenig

It would be an uber-mitzvah. And she was going to do it, unless her mother found out first. Her mother has a kind of phobia about surgery. And also, like any parent, she would worry about all the things that could go wrong.

So Chaya didn't tell her mother about her plan, which took many, many months to put together. And she got away with it until her mother found some ads about kidney donation that Chaya accidentally left on the kitchen table. She lectured Chaya about it.

Sarah Koenig

Chaya tried to follow the commandment about not lying. For her, lying is a sin, never mind lying to your own mother. She could argue that not saying anything about the kidney transplant wasn't strictly lying, but as the surgery date got closer, Chaya couldn't cling to that technicality. She was getting a lot of phone calls. She had to go for medical tests all the time.

Sarah Koenig

Chaya feels so guilty that she lied to her mother she can barely talk about it. And the lies just became more overt as the day of the surgery arrived.

Sarah Koenig

It's one thing to plan to donate your kidney and not tell your mother. It's another thing to actually have your organ removed and not tell your mother. So Chaya had to figure out some way to break it to her once it was a done deal. And her scheme for doing this is so complicated, it makes all the earlier lies look really junior varsity. What happened is that, by chance, the same week of her surgery, somebody told Chaya about this 23-year-old Hasidic woman who had also donated a kidney to a stranger.

Sarah Koenig

To everyone's relief, Chaya's mother did not have a heart attack.

Sarah Koenig

Chaya's mother never said anything to her about the white lies. And Chaya's still not sure she even knows about them. And she never chastised Chaya for keeping the surgery from her. She's just proud of Chaya, which is what Chaya wanted all along. Last month, Chaya's brother, inspired by her, donated his kidney to a stranger. He said his mother had no problem with it at all.

Ira Glass

Sarah Koenig. She's the host of "Serial." In the year since we first broadcast this story, Chaya's mom has died. She continued to be proud of Chaya's decision and said she'd have probably donated a kidney herself if she were younger.

Ira Glass

And so we arrive at the end of our list, the end of God's to-do list for humanity, commandment number 10.

Ira Glass

"That shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass.

Ira Glass

You shouldn't covet anything that is thy neighbor's.

Ira Glass

Amy and her friends, Selena and Kayla, are in seventh grade. During their lunch break, they explained that the latest thing that they all covet is a Sidekick 3. Which, if you haven't seen it is a kind of souped-up cell phone. They want Sidekick 3s so bad that they cannot help but notice every single person who has one.

This girl, Christine, pulls out her Sidekick and shows it around. The photo on the Sidekick's little display is herself, which definitely is one of those things that is normal when a kid does it but would be so weird if an adult tried it. She hasn't had the Sidekick for very long.

Ira Glass

These girls actually had a very grown-up attitude about all this stuff they covet. This stuff matters to them, but it doesn't totally matter. Kayla was wearing Nikes or Cons, and nobody cared. Selena and Amy recently got iPods, and they're the first to admit it didn't change how anybody saw them. I remind them that it's in the Bible that we're not supposed to want stuff or be jealous of people who have stuff we don't have.

Ira Glass

If we needed any proof of this, that we're always going to want stuff and sometimes we're going to want stuff that we probably shouldn't, it was just a few feet away. A girl named Nadie had written on her arm, down the length of arm, "Nadie N David." That's N-- the letter N-- with a heart underneath it.

Ira Glass

That's her girlfriend, egging her on.

Sarah Koenig

Right there. That's it, right there. See, that's what make us be mad.

Ira Glass

Catechism of the Catholic church says, the Tenth Commandment concerns the intentions of the heart. The catechism talks about desires that are often good, wholesome desires but go on to exceed the limits of reason and make us want things too much, especially things that really belong to somebody else. Wanting things too much, it says, is a form of sadness. And the Tenth Commandment, that's what it's trying to eradicate.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Jane Marie and myself with Alex Blumberg, Sarah Koenig, Lisa Pollak, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Senior producer for today's show, Julie Snyder. Production help from Seth Lind, Tommy Andres, and Emily Youssef. Additional production by Aviva DeKornfeld, Ray Mondo, Stone Nelson, and Matt Tierney.

Music help today from Jessica Hopper. Mary Robertson produced our story about the Ninth Commandment. Thanks today to Liebman's Deli in the Bronx, where we taped the story for the Eighth Commandment about stealing. Thanks to Middle School 51 in Brooklyn, where we taped our Tenth Commandment story, especially to one of the seventh grade teachers who worked there back when we did this show, Andrew Raven.

"This American Life" is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he says that when he goes home, he sees the mailings from our own public radio station that arrive at his house pile up in his front hallway, asking for money, and he cannot help himself. He just has to pledge.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of "This American Life."