Coldplayed

Many readers of Avot Today may never before have heard of US tech company Astronomy or its former chief executive Andy Byron, whose life has just been turned upside down after he was caught on a giant screen at a Coldplay concert, first embracing a female co-worker and then abruptly ducking and seeking to flee the camera once the pair were spotted. The video clip of this incident went viral.  Byron, a married man, has since tendered his resignation and Astronomy issued a statement that said, among other things:

“Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met."

Students of Pirkei Avot may be reminded that, if we think we may behave in an inappropriate manner, it is worth considering both the risk that we will be outed by our fellow humans and the certainty that there will be a Divine audience of One. Thus we learn:

“Whoever commits a clandestine chillul Hashem [desecration of God’s name] is punished in public. When it comes to chillul Hashem it’s one and the same whether it’s deliberate or unintentional” (Rabbi Yochanan ben Beroka, 4:5)

“Contemplate three things, and you will not fall into the grip of transgression: Know what is above from you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book” (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, 2:1)

All the world’s a stage, observed one of Shakespeare’s characters in As You Like It, and the men and women it—that’s us—are merely players. Unlike actors on stage, though, are parts are for the most part unscripted and we make them up as we go along. That’s what free will is all about. We are judged too: not on the quality of our acting, but on the role we choose to play. If we look to the consequences of our choice, as Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel advises at Avot 2:13, we may win plaudits for the quality of our choice even if we are none too impressive in the way we play our part, since our good intentions are factored into our assessment even as we struggle to match up to our own ideals.

Pirkei Avot throws up another question that the Coldplay scenario frames. If we know what Andy Byron and his colleague were doing, should we even watch the viral clip? Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar teaches at 4:23, among other things:

אַל תִּשְׁתַּדֵּל לִרְאוֹתוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת קַלְקָלָתוֹ

Do not endeavour to see a person at the time of his degradation.

This teaching was articulated in an age in which there were no media technologies. The only way one should see a person who had been shamed or humiliated was by being there with him and looking at him. But is it still relevant now? It may be.

In a person-to-person situation, the person who has experienced degradation may be uncomfortably aware of others staring at him. This is not the case with the Coldplay concert clips, where Andy Byron is unlikely to meet even a small fraction of its viewers. However, we should ask whether watching another’s degradation has an adverse effect on ourselves. Arguably it does. The Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 2a) notes that the Torah portion dealing with the nazir, who takes it upon himself to refrain from drinking wine, immediately follows the portion dealing the sotah, the suspected adulteress. This is because, shocked or moved by the sight of the woman in her degradation, a man may wish to take an oath from distancing himself from one of the possible causes of sexual immorality.

All in all, this episode is a fascinating example of the interplay of modern technology and ancient ethics, showing how the latter can shed some highly relevant light on the impact of the former.

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The Power of Three

Two is company, three is a crowd” (Old English proverb)

In practice, much of the art of good behaviour is not just a matter of doing the right thing. It is a matter of not doing the wrong thing when there are others watching you. For example, going round with a big smile on your face (Shammai, Avot 1:15) is only meritorious when there are others to smile at. Grinning into the mirror above your washbasin counts for nothing. It is thus the presence of others that defines the parameters of applicability of normative good manners.

At Avot 3:15 Rabbi Elazar haModa’i teaches, among other things, the following:

הַמַּלְבִּין פְּנֵי חֲבֵרוֹ בָּרַבִּים, אַף עַל פִּי שֶׁיֵּשׁ בְּיָדוֹ תּוֹרָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים, אֵין לוֹ חֵֽלֶק לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

Someone who humiliates his friend in public (literally “among the many”), even if he has Torah and good deeds to his credit, has no portion in the World to Come.

The thrust of this teaching needs no explanation. It is an exhortation to us to have regard for the feelings of other people and not to put them to shame in front of others. The threat is that, if we do not take due regard for them, whatever benefit we may hope to obtain in one’s afterlife will be lost forever.

The Sefat Emet poses a question on this teaching: who or what is the public? It is possible, he observes, that just three people might satisfy this criterion.

Three is the public for a related issue: when one person speaks words that arguably transgress the laws of lashon hara (impermissible speech about another person), there is a leniency where those words have already been spoken in front of three people. There is a presumption that whatever a person says in front of three others may be repeated since the person who first says them, knowing that everyone has a friend who will repeat it back to the person spoken about, will have taken care to say nothing derogatory in the first place. But this, while vesting significance in the number three, has no obvious practical bearing on Rabbi Elazar haModa’i’s teaching.

The Sefat Emet, it seems, is out on a limb since what constitutes בָּרַבִּים (“in public”) is not a question that troubled our major commentators. Rambam, Rabbeinu Yonah, the Me’iri, Rashi, the Bartenura and the Ruach Chaim are among those for whom it appears to hold no interest or relevance at all. A swift survey of the literature ancient and modern shows that the main issue in this mishnah is the severity of the offence of embarrassing another person in public, whatever the means of embarrassment and whatever the circumstance.

Why then has the Sefat Emet asked this question?

I think we can assume that the Sefat Emet was fully aware of the severity of shaming others in public. But he may have been looking at this mishnah from the point of the person who has shamed or humiliated his friend. 

In his Notzer Chesed, Rabbi Yitzchak Isak Sufrin of Komarno comments that such is the severity of shaming one’s fellow that one is compelled to appease him בָּרַבִּים. This being so, it is of course important to know how many people are necessary as an audience for the act of contrition and appeasement.  Now we see why the comment of the Sefat Emet is not merely relevant but important. While words spoken wrongly and shamefully about another person may travel unceasingly around the planet, the Sefat Emet wants to know if we must have a measure of rachmanut, mercy, on the wrongdoer too. He need only find three people before whom to offer his apology.

This question has obvious implications for people who are shamed and humiliated on the social media, through TikTok, X or other channels where information goes viral with rapid intensity. The Sefat Emet does not answer this question, but it is presumably for poskim today to weigh it up. Three looks like a promising answer, since that is the minimum number of judges to constitute a Beit Din—but all we have at present is a “perhaps”.

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