The following is a short review of some of the provisions of Pirkei Avot that are relevant to the Chaim Walder affair and other instances of well-known personalities whose reputations have been tarnished. It does not seek to condemn or to condone.
Until recently, Chaim Walder was almost universally regarded as the epitome of a good Jew: caring, compassionate, learned and religiously committed, his books sold in the tens of thousands. Now he is dead, having apparently taken his own life, and will not face trial for any of the many accusations involving sexual abuse that have mounted against him. The need for probity and integrity among Jewish role models, and the need to call offenders to account for their crimes, are issues that demand action from both the Jewish community and society at large. But what can we learn about these issues when we examine them from the point of Pirkei Avot? Let us briefly mention some of the more obvious points.
A name made great is a name destroyed (Avot 1:13)
Sadly sexual abuse, breach of trust and manipulation of positions of power and responsibility are evident today in society at large. The media inform us of teachers, employers, social workers, law enforcement officers and sports trainers who are accused, charged and more often than not convicted of activities such as those of which Chaim Walder was accused. From the perspective of the victim, the suffering and the consequences may be the same, but most perpetrators are relatively anonymous and suffer no loss of reputation. The greater the fame of the accused, the greater the embarrassment and the greater the loss.
The degree of loss suffered by a reputation is however not consistent. Thus Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s name is still spoken of by many with warmth and affection, notwithstanding the allegations made against him. His tunes are still regularly sung in many synagogues, while Chaim Walder’s books are fast becoming unacceptable. The two cases can be contrasted, though: Carlebach was not accused of abusing children, and the accusations mounted after his death rather than during his lifetime. It also seems that sex-related claims damage a reputation more than other sorts of claim. Thus Roald Dahl’s books can be found in many Jewish households today even though he was an acknowledged antisemite, and the reputation of that complicated character Robert Maxwell was by no means destroyed by revelations of his fraudulent financial conduct.
Some names appear to be harder to destroy than others. Convictions for both sex offences and fraud, for example, have not lessened the loyalty and admiration of followers of Rabbi Eliezer Berland. Likewise, Rabbi Aryeh Deri’s conviction for bribery, fraud and breach of trust did not bring an end to his political career. The bringing of similar charges against former Prime Minister BinyaminNetanyahu may have intensified criticism among those who already opposed him but his popularity remains more or less unabated.
To avoid sin, remember that everything a person says and does is noted and recorded Above (Avot 2:1)
A religious Jew should bear in mind that he cannot avoid being observed by an omniscient and all-seeing God. It is therefore hard to regard anyone who imagines they can hide from God as being a sincerely religious person. If a person wouldn’t commit a crime in front of a human audience, why should they think it is preferable to commit it before a divine one?
To avoid sin, remember that everyone must give an account of himself before God (Avot 3:1)
Before engaging in any wrongful activity, a helpful exercise is to construct an imaginary dialogue in which a person seeks to explain to God why he or she has, for example, sexually abused a child. That should be capable of stopping a would-be offender from going further.
Whoever desecrates the name of Heaven in private – they will punish him in public (Avot 4:5)
The threat of being publicly shamed may be a greater deterrent than that of receiving Heavenly punishment – or even of being tried in a terrestrial court. Not just Chaim Walder but Jeffrey Epstein and Robert Maxwell ended their lives before the process of public humiliation was allowed to complete its course, and Zaka’s founder Yehuda Meshi Zahav came close to taking his life too.
Death provides no escape from final judgment (Avot 4:29)
The course of taking one’s own life is futile, Avot explains: the yetzer hara (evil inclination) entices a person to end it all and thereby flee from retribution. In reality, far from escaping it, one brings it about more speedily for the obvious reason that, the sooner a person dies, the sooner he will be made to give an account of himself before God.
We should not judge others until we are standing in their place (Avot 2:5) and, when we do judge them, we should seek to judge them favourably (Avot 1:6)
These two maxims are hard to apply at the best of times, and particularly difficult to put into practice for two reasons. First, we receive so much information from the news and social media, and it is bound to affect our assessment of the legal liability and moral culpability of a fallen celebrity. Secondly, it is so much easier – and more painful – to identify and empathise with a victim or the victim’s family than to put oneself in the position of a perpetrator of actions that one cannot imagine oneself committing. The difficulty of applying these maxims does not mean that we can ignore them, but they do remind us that, at first instance, liability should be established by due legal process and that the ultimate outcome lies in the hands of God, who knows the thoughts and feelings of people whom we do not understand.
Beloved is man, for he is made in God’s image (Avot 3:18)
Avot reminds us that we all have something of the divine in us and it is therefore incumbent on each and every human to accord an appropriate degree of respect to fellow humans. This works in several different directions. For example, the complaints and the suffering of actual and alleged victims should be treated with understanding and sympathy; their physical and psychological needs must be met even where a perpetrator is no longer alive. It also means that those bereaved through the loss of someone whose reputation is destroyed are entitled to be comforted and assisted through their own time of difficulty, and that those who seek to comfort them should not be called out and criticised for endorsing criminal activity by doing so. When famous and respected personalities go astray and damage others in the process, we are all the losers and, as human beings, we are all obliged to do what we can to minimise the damage and prevent its repetition.
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