Opinion: No more shandas, please

Posted

By Allison Josephs

Issue of January 8 2010/ 22 Tevet 5770
A little over two years ago, I took on the job — well, I don’t know if it’s actually a “job” since I don’t get paid to do it, but then again, I don’t get paid to be a mother, either — of improving the public perception of Orthodox Jews. This position — which, I might add, is self-appointed — involves harnessing the power of new media through my site, JewintheCity.com, to rebrand the image of religious Jews.

Things have been going as well as could be hoped for a poorly funded one-woman worldwide campaign. The biggest trouble I seem to be encountering, actually, is from Orthodox Jews themselves, as there’s been a slew of clearly misbehaving, allegedly law breaking, and downright naughty religious Jews making the headlines these days. For some reason, the media pays much more attention to the “rabbis” in the scandals (the secular media assumes all religious men are rabbis) than they do to me.

In the past year or so, the papers have been filled with awful stories like the Rubashkin immigration fiasco, a Ponzi schemer (not Madoff; this guy was Orthodox), a number of molestation allegations, rabbis in Deal and Brooklyn allegedly taking bribes and trafficking in human organs, the Tropper conversion scandal and now the Lakewood embezzler. And so on.

Please, people: just behave. You’re bringing us down with you. And you’re making my job harder by tarnishing all the good that most of us do but no one reports on. If you really feel the need to sin in, like, a big way, then leave the community. How about the halacha which instructs a would-be sinner to wear black and go somewhere where no one recognizes him to commit his immoral deed. Try that one out, if the urge to sin is too great to overcome!

While admittedly I don’t know exactly what each of the people in the aforementioned cases did or didn’t do that was contrary to the letter and spirit of the Torah law and/or illegal, it sure seems that each of them was connected to some pretty unsavory people at the time of their alleged misdeeds, and were at best treading very closely to the edge of halachic permissibility.

Whatever the particular circumstances of each may be, since all of these scandals are connected in a significant way to either fraud or sex-related improprieties, it’s no wonder that the Torah warns us “mi devar sheker tirchak” (from falsehood distance yourself) and “al tikrivu erva” (do not approach nakedness). These are the only two mitzvos in the Torah in which the slippery slope is spelled out as an inherent part of the commandment, and that’s because our Maker understands our weaknesses to a tee.

We have to respect these boundaries better, because when frum Jews make the headlines in a negative way, it’s far worse than when a priest or a minister sins:  Most people in the secular world know a Catholic or a Christian personally, and realize that the guy who made the news is the exception and not the rule when it comes to that group.

When it comes to our community, though, we tend to stick together (if you’ve noticed), and we tend to live in densely populated neighborhoods. That means that there are entire states, and countries for that matter, where people don’t come across an Orthodox Jew in their entire lives. So all that these people can rely on is what they see in the media (bad), what folks on the street say about us (also bad), and what headlines we make (shame on us for giving them more food for fodder).

You know what headlines I’d like to see in 2010? More stories like the one about Robert I. Lappin, a Reform Jew from Boston who earlier this year used $5 million of his own money to restore the retirement savings his employees lost to Bernie Madoff’s schemes.

We could and should be making headlines like that. Why, if more of us stepped up to the plate and set such examples, perceptions would be changed, hearts would be opened, generations would be inspired, and people like me wouldn’t have to work so darn hard.

Allison Josephs is the creator of JewintheCity.com, which features her online videos and blogs that challenge the public perception of Orthodox Jews and traditional Judaism. She earned a degree in philosophy from Columbia University and lives in New York with her husband and three children.