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Rabbi Avi Shafran: Governing Ourselves


editorial32.jpgThe “steamroller,” we all know, was steamrolled.  Although those whom Eliot Spitzer focused on flattening were New York State wrongdoers, he ended up being mangled by misdeeds of his own.  And thereby became an object of derision and ridicule – the single greatest generator of schadenfreude since the Wicked Witch’s demise evoked the Munchkins’ delight.
 
From a Torah perspective, should we be jumping on the badmouth bandwagon?

One rabbi I know feels we should.  He called the former governor a rasha, noting the irony of how his fall from a high peak of honor and power to ignominy came about through activity of a sort he had himself prosecuted others for doing, and stopping just short (I think) of equating him with Haman.

Succumbing to desires can indeed yield evil things.  However, as Rabbi Meir’s wife Bruriah, taught us, it is important sometimes to distinguish between sinner and sin (Brachos, 10a).   Most of us succumb, at least on occasion, to illicit personal desires – if only the desire to tell or listen to loshon hora, to react with anger, to waste time.  As I told my wife and some family members, if I weren’t such a “baal taava” – a hedonist – I would be a good 20 pounds lighter.

My wife (whose cooking and baking are part of the problem) responded that, well, there are succumbed-to desires and there are succumbed-to desires; they are not all the same.  And, of course, she is right (as usual).  And moral violations, in particular, do indeed entail evil.

But there is some relativity here, as there is in all crimes of passion.  Who can really know just what it must be like to be a well-heeled, famous, ambitious man in a position of power, trotting the globe (or at least the coast) collecting kudos – enriched with currency but bereft of Jewish religious values and any awareness of the idea of “yir’as cheit”, “fear of sin”?
 
Those same rabbis, interestingly, in Berachos, 32a, use the parable of a man who pampered his son, “hung a coin purse on his neck, and stationed him at the entrance of a brothel.”

“What,” they asked, “can the son do so as not to sin?”  Or, as we might put it: “Well, what exactly do you expect?”

To be sure, Mr. Spitzer is no boy; he is a grown man and was a public official.  Much more was rightfully expected of him.  After all, we must all learn to control, not be controlled by, our desires – to, so to speak, govern ourselves.

Still and all, though, the Gemara elsewhere exhorts us not “to judge another until one has stood in his place.”  And so, if there is any lesson to be mined from the tawdry tale of Mr. Spitzer’s fall from grace, I think it may lie less in his sin than in the reaction to it.   “In the downfall of your enemy,” Shlomo Hamelech admonishes, “do not rejoice” (Mishlei, 24:17).  Even someone who has earned one’s enmity does not deserve to be gloated over when he has fallen.  A recognition of the irony of the former governor’s political demise is certainly proper.  And feelings of disappointment, even of disgust, are not out of place.  But the derisive glee that arose and crashed like a tidal wave, is not so very far from a sin itself.

I find the act of a second rabbi I know to be more in line with the Jewish religious tradition.  This rabbi took the time to pen Mr. Spitzer a short personal note.  It conveyed the sentiment that great people, even Biblical figures, had sinned, some even in ways that, at least in some way, were a failure of moral fortitude.  Those people, the writer added, were in no way barred from teshuva, and the greatest among them indeed came, as a result of their falls, to change their lives for the better.

© 2008 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]



5 Responses

  1. to equate the “sins” that were commited by some biblical figures to the sin that spitzer commited is an insult to our biblical figures. It’s amazing how we today look back at our “biblical figures” as people who were sometimes out of control. Nothing can be further from the truth! We see on one hand that HaShem castigates Klal Yisroel for all her “iniquities”. On the other hand you have Billam HaRasha speaking about Klal Yisroel in the most glowing terms. How do you reconcile the two? Says Rav Avigdor Miller ZT”L, that HaShem keeps prodding Klal Yisroel to become better so He shows us His displeasure with us. Whereas Billam was only saying the true feelings that HaShem has for us. It would be kedai for the author and those who think like him to read the works of Rav Miller ZT”L to see history through the eyes of a Godol and not by some historian.

    Ah Freilichen Purim to All!

  2. Comment #1 “to equate the “sins” that were commited by some biblical figures to the sin that spitzer commited is an insult to our biblical figures.”

    What about “Kol hoamer Dovid chata eino ela toeh” and “Kol hoamer Reuven chata eino ela toeh”? are those not the biblical figures referred to? Perhaps Yehuda and Tamar? Maybe I cuiold hear it if he’s talking about Amnon, but any of the others? Im harishonim k’malachim . . . .

  3. I agree with Commenter No. 2: It is forbidden to be Melamed Zechus on a Rasha.

    For the past twenty years Spitzer has been — and still is — married to a Goya. His children are Goyim.

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