“I have sojourned with Lavan…” (Bereishis 32:5)

Rashi: The word גרתי has the numerical value of 613 – תרי״ג – it is as if to say, “Though I have sojourned with Lavan, the wicked, I have observed the תרי״ג מצות, the 613 Divine Commandments, and I have learned naught of his evil ways.

When people are faced with two choices, they very often think that they can be persuaded in either direction, each way equally. When I was a young boy I was taught by my mother that people naturally gravitate towards the lesser of the two choices. This would play out in the following scenario: if there are a group of good people who are together with people of lesser middos for a period of time, chances are that the people with the good middos will be pulled down rather than the people with the less desirable middos being raised.

I would like to offer a simple explanation for this: Doing good is always an uphill battle. Even people with good middos – though they may feel and understand that they are doing the right thing – often take much effort to do the right thing.

Chazal tell us about Yaakov after he left Lavan’s house. Yaakov said: “Im Lavan garti”. This has the same numerical value as the mitzvos, 613. Yaakov was telling Esav that though I was dwelling with the evil Lavan all these years, I did not learn from his acts. People read this and ponder how did Yaakov fortify himself so that he would not be affected by his evil father-in-law?

The Meshech Chochmo tells us that after Lavan encountered Yaakov regarding his missing idols, he returned to his original state, unaffected by the fact that Yaakov had lived with him for the past 22 years. Here it seems that the evil person should have been affected by the tzaddik, and he wasn’t.  So, indeed we must examine which one is more impressive: That Yaakov was not affected by Lavan, or that Lavan was not affected by Yaakov?

Recently I had the following conversation with someone who was pursuing entry into an educational institution where the caliber of the people was lower than they would have desired. In the course of our conversation I was told, “I am not concerned that I might be affected by those people in a negative way, for I come from an open family, and I am very familiar with the secular world and the people who comprise it.” I didn’t comment, but later on in our conversation I asked this person, “If you had an opportunity to work next to someone who always benched from a bencher, didn’t ever speak loshen hara and who always had a nice word to say, do you think you would be positively affected?” The person was surprised with my question and said, “Of course I would!” To that I responded, “If you feel you would be positively affected by someone expressing positive attributes, why do you think you would not be negatively affected by someone expressing negative attributes!?” It took a minute or two for this person to understand my reference, but that line more or less ended our discussion.

That being said, I would like to add something to be fair about this subject. For the people who are looking to grow, they will gain tremendously from the good people around them, because they are looking for it. Conversely, they will also be able to shield themselves to a certain degree from the bad influences, as they are on guard.

However, and as I believe was the case of this person to whom I was talking, like most people he was neither looking to grow nor looking to decline. In such a situation, the rule my mother taught me will be the outcome of the majority of these cases: People gravitate to the lowest common denominator. However, even the growth-oriented person will always be affected to a certain degree by being around bad people. Even without realizing it, he will be tainted by his environment, unless he fights it “tooth and nail”.

At the end of the day, it seems to me that growing is an uphill battle. Thus, Yaakov outshined Lavan by not decaying to his level, a greater feat than Lavan’s lack of growth in the company of Yaakov.

I believe if we all keep this thought in mind, we can have an easier time in our growth process. If our focus is to grow, then when we meet up with negative influences, we will automatically try to shield ourselves from them.