Oral Law-Twiggy sobel

Commandment 11 of Leviticus 19 stood out the most to me, “‘do not steal, do not lie, do not deceive one another." The first two lines seem self-explanatory, but the last line left me a bit puzzled. Is deceit not the same as a lie? I came to the conclusion that lying is what you do to protect others, and deceit is what you do to protect yourself. Deceiving others means that you can't come to terms with something about yourself, and you feel like you need to protect your own self and well-being. With social media nowadays, deceit is almost always what's being shown. I've had my struggles with social media in the past, as I felt like I was deceiving people about how my life is. Social media only wants to see the happy moments of your life, if you post and you're sad or angry or scared, you seem desperate. Every Instagram profile is a balanced facade of contentness, every person scared to do anything but cover up their own insecurities. These are some photos that I posted during the hardest time of my life, they all show me smiling and being an active person, when in reality I was rarely smiling and often found it hard to even get out of bed:

There are many many more like these, on both my social media and the social media that I see around me. Is this deceit worse than lies? I don't know the answer, but I do understand now the inclusion of deceit in Leviticus 19, as it plays an important role in everyday life, in old times to new.