Lo Signov: When Words Get Stolen

Lo Signov: Don’t Kidnap the Narrative

This post is part of a series exploring the Aseres Hadibros (Ten Commandments) through the lens of our relationships- with G-d, with ourselves, and with each other.

We usually translate Lo Signov as “don’t steal.”
(Though my husband’s Yiddish version is far better: Lo Signov - men tur nisht trefen - “don’t find things.” Usually said to little sticky fingers rifling through the pantry.)

But Chazal are very specific: it’s not just about shoplifting or petty theft. It’s about kidnapping.

And kidnapping is different.

When you steal an object, you still use it as it was meant to be used.
Steal a mixer - you bake with it.
Steal a wallet - you spend the money.
Steal a sweater - you wear it.

True, you’ve still tried to take control into your own hands, claiming what isn’t yours, stepping out of alignment with what Hashem gave you. But that’s where it ends.

When you kidnap a person, you don’t just take what isn’t yours; you stop it from being what it’s meant to be.
You cut off its purpose, its movement, its future.

That, I think, is the heart of Lo Signov.
It’s about what happens when we take something living - a person, a word, a truth - and lock it inside our own limited story. We twist its essence until it suits us better, completely disregarding the Source that created it.

It’s not stealing stuff.
It’s stealing meaning.

And I can’t help thinking we’re living through an age of a kidnapping craze.

Kidnapped Words

Words that once held mystery and depth now sound like hashtag merch - available at a discount if you just sign up fast enough.

Journey. Healing. Self-growth. Authenticity. Alignment.

Once, they were doorways. Now, they’re slogans.

We turned the slow unfolding of a soul into a 3-step morning routine.
We kidnapped healing and made it mean “feeling good.”
We kidnapped self-growth and made it about optimization.
We kidnapped journey and turned it into content.

Even אור / light and אהבה / love - once words of staggering holiness, words that used to encapsulate G-dliness,  got flattened into pastel affirmations.
We robbed them of their wildness.

And now, I hear these words and can’t help quietly rolling my eyes. Because they usually arrive with that tone (you know the one) and the breathy, effusive “my life is so much better now,” followed by “I’ve seen the light,” and a chorus of kumbaya.

I’ll never forget a shiur I once heard from Rabbi Tatz about silence; how the truest essence of a thought, a feeling, an idea, can’t ever really be translated into words. The longer you hold it, the more deeply you know it. But the moment you define it, you limit it.

And yet, we throw these words around like party confetti.

It makes me ache. Because when I first met those words, I didn’t post them-  I bled them. I wrestled with them. I wept over them. There were no words then. There still aren’t.

Maybe that’s mercy. Maybe that's truth.

I wasn’t trying to be, as they say,  “#Authentic” when I started teaching Becoming One and decided to share some of my own struggles.
I wasn’t trying to brand vulnerability or make it into content.
I just wanted to let women into my world and taste authenticity with me.

I don’t offer “transformational” anything, because real work on yourself is rarely glamorous. It’s painstaking, boring, and unphotogenic. It doesn’t happen in a day - or a session - or, as I’m learning, even in years.

It happens in the accumulation of the quietest, most invisible moments of your life - when you stop a thought, feel an emotion, make a small decision, or choose to breathe.

How nice it would be to tell you about my “Self-Growth Journey” that’s been unfolding through marriage, motherhood, and everything in between, but when that phrase has been so cheapened, I’d rather hold onto my blood, sweat, and eighteen years, thank you very much.

And What Have We Kidnapped These Ideas For?

A feel-good, marketable version.

And maybe the saddest part is that it didn’t stop there.
We’ve done it with our most sacred words, too.

With G-d

We’ve done it with Hashem, too.
I’ve watched friends, and myself, feel a little robbed as we relearn basic ideas and concepts that once felt alive and untamed.

We’ve taken the Infinite and started treating Him like an accessory.
We hijacked emunah - which means believing in the mystery - and made it about manifesting outcomes.
We hijacked avodah - relationship and service - and made it productivity.
We even hijacked kedushah - holiness - and made it only about separation, instead of sacred intimacy.
And tznius… who doesn’t sigh at that kidnapped word these days?

We’ve packaged living pieces of Torah into neat little curricula and brands.
And in doing so, we’ve kidnapped the relationship itself.

But maybe Hashem never needed us to brand Him- just to be with Him.

With the Self

And then there’s us.

We kidnap ourselves all the time.

Every time we lock ourselves into an identity:
“I’m the strong one.”
“I’m the anxious one.”
“I’m the fixer.”
“I’m the problem.”

We take the living, breathing process of becoming and stuff it into a label.
We hijack our own story.
We stop our own flow.

But the self was never meant to sit still.
It never needed to be any one thing.

Lo Signov whispers:
Don’t steal your own essence.
Don’t hold yourself hostage to who you were yesterday.

In Marriage

And of course - the one closest to home.

In marriage, Lo Signov might sound like this:
Don’t kidnap your spouse’s story.
Don’t steal their evolving story and force it into your narrative of who they should be.

Don’t hijack love and make it mean comfort.
Don’t hijack oneness and make it mean sameness.
Don’t hijack commitment and make it mean control.

To love someone is to let them move.
To let them grow.
To let them surprise you.

That’s what it means to be in covenant, not captivity.

The Return

Maybe that’s what Hashem was telling us all along.

Lo Signov.

Don’t kidnap what was meant to be free.
Not the words.
Not the stories.
Not each other.

When you let life flow the way it’s meant to, when you stop hijacking meaning to fit your chosen narrative and return to the truest one, Anochi Hashem - that’s when something real begins to move again.
You taste authenticity - not the shiny kind, but the kind that trembles.
You feel integrity tighten low in your belly, like a truth your body suddenly remembers.
You sense the holy weight of responsibility settle in your chest - the way breath does when it’s finally allowed to be full.
And maybe - if you’re lucky - you catch the sweet ache of healing, that strange mix of salt and light that tells you you’re alive.

And then you realize: the story was never the point.
It was only ever about where it was taking you -

back to the Source that no name can hold,
only the breath can touch -
the One who never stops giving life its true direction.