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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There is much more that can be said on the relevance of Avot
here, and readers are invited to offer their own thoughts and comments.
