The other day I was at the supermarket making small talk with the cashier. I did the perfectly Canadian thing and talked about the weather, but Sharon had something else on her mind. She was complaining about shoplifting.

She heard on the news that shoplifting was becoming a way of life in larger cities. People enter stores in broad daylight with large boxes and fill their containers with merchandise to resell for profit. Just the other day, she told me, someone came into the store, took four large bags from the rack, filled them with meat, and walked out the door.

She was telling shoppers because she hoped we would intervene when we saw it. After all, our grocery bills increase because of shoplifting.

I understood why she was turning to customers. Store management generally does not allow employees to confront shoplifters. These encounters can become violent, and if employees are injured, the store can be liable. The store protects its employees by telling them not to get involved, so the cashier was recruiting customers instead.

But that raises a deeper question: Why does theft so often lead to confrontation? Why does someone who has taken something that does not belong to them feel justified fighting to protect it?

The Torah addresses this phenomenon.

Moving the Markers In addition to the Torah’s general prohibition against stealing, it specifies: “Do not move your neighbor’s landmark established by previous generations that you will inherit in the land that G-d, your G-d, will give you” (Deuteronomy 19:14).

This prohibits secretly moving a property boundary so that your neighbor doesn’t know they have been plundered. You gaslight them, making them think they are wrong for accusing you of theft.

At first glance, this seems unnecessary. If moving a boundary marker is theft, why does the Torah need a separate prohibition? Why is it not........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)