after one of the agent emes videos, the creator/director gave some short comments about the filming and fixing mistakes. during the shooting of the beginning of a scene agent emes was wearing white socks and when they shot the final part of the scene he was wearing black socks. He explained the procedure to color the socks white to keep the continuity going.
this is the way “hollywood” works. All is built on illusion.
Our Yeshivas are based on emes.
Did anyone ask the Rosh Yeshiva what they should do re: the shirt color and the empty chair(s)?
Did the person(s) in charge of the shoot make the decision opting to go for the “hollywood” illusion and pushing aside the Yeshivas path of Emes?
Having no knowledge of the Yeshiva in question (nor wanting to know which one it is) but knowing the straightness of our Rosh Yeshivas and also knowing that the good intentions of those trying to do really good deeds may sometimes lead a person to have a lapse in judgement – my guess would be that if the Rosh Yeshiva did not send the boy (or boys) out for wearing non-white shirts and the Rosh Yeshiva never refused to give the shiur if there was an empty chair (or chairs) then he would not have objected to the photograph. If he would not have allowed boys in without white-shirts, he probably would have forbidden the use of the picture as it does not portray his Yeshiva accurately.
My suspicion is that the organizer(s) of the photo shoot and the photographer made this decision on their own with the best of intentions. Living in a society that places high value on marketing and packaging may have been the biggest factor in their analysis and they may have made the assumption that the “hollywood” illusion approach has more benefit – portrayal of image, than cost – redoing the shoot, and forgetting of the intangible benefit of emes and cost of lack of emes.