The Rabbi's Library
by Rabbi Joshua
Hammerman |
"Invasions of
Privacy"
(The Jewish Week
07/27/2007)
I recently saw the new film about
the horrible kidnapping and death of Daniel Pearl, "A Mighty
Heart." It reminded me of an essay written at the time of the
tragedy by Judea Pearl, Daniel's father. Shaken by the broadcast
of the grizzly video of the mutilation of Danny's body, he called
out for a show of dignity in the midst of the barbarity we see
around us. He wrote:
"To preserve the dignity of our
champions, we should remove all terrorist-produced murder scenes
from our Web sites and agree to suppress such scenes in the
future."
A more inspiring summation of the
Jewish values of dignity and privacy could not have been written.
But now, half a decade later, such a wish seems hopelessly naïve.
The erosion of privacy has become an Information Age pandemic,
spreading far beyond the tentacles of the terrorists.
New York Magazine recently ran a
story on how, as younger people freely reveal their private lives
on the Internet, the older generation is responding with a sense
of incredulity not seen since the early days of rock and roll. As
journalist Emily Nussbaum noted, "Even 9-year-olds have their own
site, Club Penguin, to play games and plan parties. The change has
rippled through pretty much every act of growing up. Go through
your first big breakup and you may need to change your status on
Facebook from 'In a relationship' to "Single." Everyone will see
it on your "feed," including your ex, and that's part of the
point."
Just recently, my wife and I
finally allowed Dan, our 14-year-old, to go onto Facebook. A few
days later, I checked out the site and found out entirely too much
information about some kids I thought I had known very well. Then,
returning to my son's homepage, I noticed that my little bubelah
was listed as "married." After peeling myself off the floor, I
asked him if perhaps there was some misunderstanding here, noting
that matrimony is illegal for someone just entering high school.
That's when I discovered that Facebook marriages are somewhat less
complicated than real ones.
Facebook profiles will let you
know right away what your high schooler is "looking for" and
"interested in." Rarely are the answers "good grades" and "chess
club." I was less than amused to discover, for example, that one
recent bar mitzvah student of mine is looking for "whatever I can
get."
We have become a society of
exhibitionists. It's hard to blame terrorist Web sites for this
when a promo for an upcoming "Oprah" exclaims, "He had sex with
her best friend ... while she was in the house. Can their marriage
be saved?"
Entirely too much information!
Celebrities have seen that their
every movement will likely be chronicled on YouTube within a day.
But it's not just celebrities. We now know everything about
everyone, and whatever you do will stay with you forever.
To be, it appears, is to be
Googled.
That's why privacy's significance
in Jewish law is so pertinent and timely.
Jews have a hard time with open
caskets. We just do. We never have them at our funerals. Even in
Jerusalem, where they don't use caskets, the body is wrapped from
head to toe in a shroud. No one is given the opportunity to gawk
at the face of death. We don't dress up our dead in finery like
some Barbie doll. We don't broadcast grotesque images of carnage,
even when it could help us score propaganda points. It's all about
preserving the privacy and dignity of the deceased.
The ancient rabbis wondered what
was it that moved the Moabite prophet Balaam to bless Israel when
his intent all along had been to curse them. They concluded that
when he saw all the tents of Israel laid out, he was amazed that
they were set up in such a way that no one could look into another
person's dwelling place. Now, if you've ever lived in close
quarters (i.e. Manhattan) you know that is very hard to do.
Based largely on this midrash,
the Talmud came up with some important guidelines: prohibiting the
installation of a window if it looks in on someone else's house,
for example, and ruling that a person should knock before opening
a closed door. By extension, a creditor is not allowed to enter
the home of a debtor but must remain outside to receive the
pledge.
Much later, in the 10th century,
a sage named Rabbenu Gershom decreed opening someone else's mail
to be punishable by excommunication, from which is derived the
general principle that we can't pick through our neighbor's
garbage to search out secrets. What's private must be respected.
How often are we forwarded e-mail notes that were sent by a third
party, without the permission of that third party? Gershom would
have had a problem with that.
Israeli law, by the way, follows
the Jewish value system along these lines, strictly regulating the
use of surveillance devices and eavesdropping - this despite the
many security dangers Israel faces. Judea Pearl was right. The
grizzly ways of the terrorists betray their own grotesque value
system. We can't allow them to corrupt ours. Judaism has an
enormous contribution to make in this era of encroachment.
The only thing that can stop Big
Brother, it seems, is a Jewish mother.
When Balaam saw the people of
Israel, he called them, "Am Levadad Yishkon," "a people that
dwells apart." What has set us apart from other peoples most of
all has been our willingness to give others the private space we
all need to grow, and the protective cover in which to nurture
that growth. Sometimes we need to be protected from others,
sometimes even from ourselves. Lessons learned so long ago must
now become part of our collective Facebook profile. To respect
privacy is to protect human dignity.
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