Lo Sa’aneh: The Stories We Swear By

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 move on to our ninth Dibbur tonight:
Lo Sa’aneh b’rei’acha eid sheker: Do not bear false witness against your fellow.

It sounds like a legal warning- courtroom stuff.
But what if it’s much more intimate than that?

What if it’s about the stories we tell- to others, to ourselves, to Hashem- and how easily we twist them into something untrue?

Because at the heart of this Dibbur is one question:

What kind of witness are you?

Are you the kind who reports what you see, or the kind who colors it with your fears, projections, and comfort zones?

They say, “What you see is what you get.”
But maybe it’s closer to:
What you see is what you are.

Because vision is never neutral,
it’s colored by everything you’ve lived, loved, feared, and hoped for.

We don’t just observe reality; we project onto it.
What we see is what our hearts already believe.
And what we get is the story we’ve been quietly telling ourselves all along.

So yes- what you see is what you get.
Because what you see comes from you.
And when that seeing is off, even a little, you start living inside false testimony.

With Hashem

The danger of false testimony isn’t only in speech; it’s in how we interpret reality.

Hashem gave us 613 mitzvos, the clearest, most objective expression of His will.
That’s The Truth: steady, eternal, non-negotiable.

But surrounding that Truth are the shiv’im panim laTorah, seventy faces, a kaleidoscope of human perception.
Each face is a way to approach the light, not to reinvent it.

When my truth becomes a doorway into The Truth, it’s sacred.
But when “my truth” starts pulling me away from Torah truth- when it licenses me to rewrite what’s already clear- that’s when I need to stop and check myself.

When we take what is clear and eternal and twist it to match what feels comfortable, we bear false witness against the Truth itself.
Torah invites perspective, not revision.
It welcomes light through many windows, but the structure of the house doesn’t change.

Our sages always debated- sometimes fiercely- but in the end, they chose a path.
Multiplicity invites richness; conformity grants coherence.
You can honor the seventy faces while walking faithfully with one.

That’s why the Torah tells us: Aseh lecha rav, knei lecha chaver- make for yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend.
Without guidance, you can drown in perspectives.
A rav anchors you; a chaver helps you harmonize with Truth.

At the end of the day, we can’t live seventy versions of Torah.
We have to choose one,
not to deny the others, but to live this one fully, with integrity and direction.

With Self

We don’t just bear witness to facts.
We bear witness to what’s possible.

Somewhere between childhood wonder and adult responsibility, a quiet verdict gets passed:
“This is how the world works.”
“You can’t expect too much.”
“Magic isn’t real.”

Those voices become our eidim sheker, false witnesses testifying against life itself.

When I was little, I believed in portals and miracles.
That if you ran fast enough through the right brick wall at King’s Cross, you could find another world.
And while I never got my Hogwarts admission letter (still mildly offended), I’ve learned that life is full of hidden doors.
The problem is, most of us stop trying to walk through them.

We take on the tone of the false witness- reasonable, cautious, world-weary-
and call it maturity.

But Torah doesn’t ask us to grow cynical.
It asks us to grow conscious.
To live with wonder that’s disciplined by wisdom.
To stay open enough to be surprised by good.

That’s the kind of witness I want to be; one who testifies that hope isn’t naïve, that faith isn’t foolish, that the world is still alive with possibilities waiting to be named.

Because “being realistic” doesn’t mean shrinking what’s real; it means recognizing how vast it actually is.
(As evidenced by the Hogwarts diploma now hanging on my wall. IYKYK.)

Practice:
Catch one moment this week when you hear yourself say, “That’s not possible.”
Pause and ask: Says who?
Maybe you’ve just caught a false witness on the stand.

With Marriage

In marriage, Lo Sa’aneh takes on a quieter, subtler form.
We don’t usually lie about our spouse; we just stop seeing them clearly.

We bear false witness every time we tell the same tired story:
“He’s so stubborn.”
“She’s always late.”
“He never helps.”
“She doesn’t care.”

They might even be half-true, but partial truths told often enough become full distortions.
Because the moment I decide this is who you are, I stop noticing who you’re becoming.

A false witness freezes the frame.
A true witness stays curious.

And here’s what’s fascinating: every testimony has more bandwidth than we admit.
“She’s always late”? Maybe, but that same trait often means she’s spontaneous, easy-going, the one who laughs when plans fall apart.
“He’s too focused on details”? Maybe, but that’s also what keeps your home and life running smoothly.

Every weakness has a strength whispering behind it.
When we only listen to one witness- the one that irritates us- we miss the other side of the story.

Aseh lecha rav, knei lecha chaver circles back here, too.
A rav anchors us to Torah truth.
A chaver reminds us of the goodness we’ve stopped noticing.

True witnessing in marriage means holding both:
the truth of what’s now,
and the faith in what’s still possible.

It’s the discipline of seeing through Hashem’s lens,
where contradiction isn’t chaos, it’s creation.

Practice:
Think of one “fact” you’ve decided about your spouse.
Ask: Is this the whole truth- or just today’s truth?
Then try saying something new out loud:
“I’m open to seeing you differently.”

That sentence alone can reopen the testimony.

Becoming a Faithful Witness

Seventy faces to Torah.
Seventy ways to see the same light refracted through different lenses.
Each one true- yet none the whole truth.

That’s the mystery of being human:
we don’t live with The Truth in capital letters.
We live with fragments of it; truths refracted through our particular hearts, stories, and souls.

Our task isn’t to collapse them all into one version or to pretend they’re equal.
It’s to live faithfully inside the one we’re meant to walk,
while remembering that others exist.

Because Lo Sa’aneh isn’t a call to silence difference.
It’s a call to bear witness with integrity-
to tell the truth that is ours without twisting what is His.

Truth doesn’t bend to comfort.
it calls us to stretch toward it.

And in that balance lies sanity.
Because yes, there are seventy witnesses in your head at any given time.
(Just try not to let them all start talking at once, please.) 

So, what do we do with all these voices, all these truths?
We learn to listen, sift, and choose.
To hold the paradox without drowning in it.
To let emotion and motion meet in devotion.

That’s what it means to be a faithful witness:
to see clearly,
to speak gently,
and to keep returning to the Source of all truth,
the One whose light refracts through every face and every story.

When you breathe with that awareness,
the noise quiets.
The picture sharpens.
And life itself starts to testify-
not to confusion,
but to connection.