Finding the Value in all of the Laws: You Must Not Remain Indifferent (Parashat Ki Tetze Dt. 22:3, August 28, 2015)
Fri, September 4, 2015
Two years ago, I fell in the middle of a busy Chicago street, as I was walking back to the hotel hosting the rabbinic convention. A complete stranger, a man, picked me up, so that I would not be run over. But as I got back on my feet, I was surprised to see rabbis and others from the convention who did not stop to help me, not realizing or knowing it was me, or being bystanders who regarded me as invisible. I was visibly shaken and so touched that there were even some people who came up to me once I got to the other side of six lane street to make sure I was okay. None of them were rabbis or Jews. I learned, sadly, that day that helping others isn’t necessarily a Jewish value. Some people seem to go beyond their comfort zone, and others do not. The research actually shows that it is not always black and white, but that bystander apathy is real.
“The bystander apathy effect(as quoted in Crowded Minds: The Implicit Bystander Effect in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002, Vol. 83, No. 4, 843–853, Copyright 2002) is generally regarded as a well-established empirical phenomenon in social psychology. [Some of the most important work done by Darlay and Latané](e.g., Darley & Latane, 1968; Latane & Darley, 1968; Latane & Nida, 1981). A person who faces a situation of another person in distress, but does so with the knowledge that others are also present and available to respond is slower and less likely to respond to the person in distress than is a person who knows that he or she is the only one who is aware of the distress.”
In 2006, Drs. John M. Darley and Daniel Batson did an experiment to measure bystander apathy and its factors. (Reported in article by Jason Marsh and Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. in the online article We Are All Bystanders, 9/1/2006)
They went to the campus of the Princeton Theological Seminary. They told the students that they were to give a talk across campus. Along the way, the students passed a person slumped over and groaning in a passageway. Their response depended largely on a single variable: whether or not they were late. Only 10 percent of the future ministers stopped to help when they were in a hurry; more than six times as many helped when they had plenty of time before their talk. Further studies revealed that women received more help than men, and that people are more likely to help someone from their own racial or ethnic group. Being a rabbi or a minister doesn’t necessarily move you to be a sympathetic bystander as evidenced by the Princeton study and my personal experience.
What causes one person to help someone in distress and so many others to ignore the need? I stopped multiple times at Busch Gardens this week to help people who were clearly confused to find their way. In each case, they would have gone in the wrong direction had I not stopped. I have an awful sense of direction, and am terrible with maps, but I know Busch Gardens like the back of my hand. I didn’t even think about whether to stop in any of the cases, as I saw people confused and frustrated. Gary says that someday, when I have nothing else to do, I should work there giving people directions.
In their 2006 article, We Are All Bystanders, Jason Marsh and Dr. Dacher Keltner have a section called ‘Why people help.’ They write: “A leader in the study of the differences between active and passive bystanders is psychologist Ervin Staub,whose research interests were shaped by his experiences as a young Jewish child in Hungary during World War II.
“I was to be killed in the Holocaust,” he said. “And there were important bystanders in my life who showed me that people don’t have to be passive in the face of evil.” One of these people was his family’s maid, Maria, a Christian woman who risked her life to shelter Staub and his sister while 75 percent of Hungary’s 600,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis.
Staub has tried to understand what motivates the Marias of the world. Some of his research has put a spin on the experimental studies pioneered by Darley and Latané, exploring what makes people more likely to intervene rather than serve as passive bystanders.
In one experiment, a study participant and a person who worked for those running the study, called a confederate in the literature, were placed in a room together, and instructed to work on a joint task. Soon afterwards, they heard a crash and cries of distress. When the confederate dismissed the sounds—saying something like, “That sounds like a tape… Or I guess it could be part of another experiment.”—only 25 percent of the participants went into the next room to try to help. But when the confederate said, “That sounds bad. Maybe we should do something,” 66 percent of the participants took action.
And when the confederate added that participants should go into the next room to check out the sounds, every single one of them tried to help.
In another study, Staub found that kindergarten and first grade children were actually more likely to respond to sounds of distress from an adjoining room when they were placed in pairs rather than alone. That seemed to be the case because, unlike the adults in Darley and Latané’s studies, the young children talked openly about their fears and concerns, and felt more comfortable when they tried to help together.
These findings suggest the positive influence we can exert as bystanders. Just as passive bystanders reinforce a sense that nothing is wrong in a situation, the active bystander can, in fact, get people to focus on a problem and motivate them to take action.”
The research on the bystander apathy effect has fascinated me for over thirty years. One of the reasons is this week’s Torah portion. When I was a pre-teen, I was in the National Bible Contest on multiple occasions. One of the years, we studied the book of Deuteronomy. I remember really disliking this week’s portion, because it contains 72 of the 613 commandments of the Torah, and learning about obscure rules from God wasn’t really something that terribly appealing to a young girl. We spent a lot of time memorizing and learning all of these diverse laws that seemed totally unconnected: from marriage and divorce to personal property, to employer/employee relations, to whether or not a woman can put on a man’s clothing, and the obligation to build a parapet on your roof if you build a house. The list of laws go on and on.
I remember thinking that Deuteronomy 22: 1-4, was not very useful to me, even as we talked about how much time rabbinic literature spends on it. I didn’t think I would ever come across an ox or sheep going astray in my little Long Island suburban town of Merrick.
Deuteronomy 22:1-4 states: “If you see your neighbor’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your neighbor. If your neighbor does not live near you or you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home and it shall remain with you until your neighbor claims it; then you shall give it back to him. You shall do the same with his ass; you shall do the same with his garment; and so too shall you do with anything that your neighbor loses and you find: you must not remain indifferent.”
Rabbi Cheryl Peretz, Associate Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies wrote in 2009: “In many ways, this phrase (“you cannot remain indifferent”) could be seen as the overriding connection and theme for the entire portion. It is so easy to … ignore the people around us as we strive to succeed and to achieve our own goals. Indifference is, after all the death of any relationship and the birth of far reaching consequences.
In the words of Edmund Burke, an important player in 18th century England and in political theory once said, ‘All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.’
When we fail to respond to the needs of others, even animals, the Torah is teaching us that we fail ourselves and our society. The Torah wants us to be attentive to the pleas of those in need, not because it will benefit us, not even because it is what God wants us to do, but rather because it is part of humanity’s social contract. As Elie Wiesel so eloquently reminds us, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
The word used in our portion for indifference this week is L’hitaleim… lo tuchal l’hitaleim. You cannot overlook, close an eye to, deny, disappear, hide oneself. In English, perhaps the opposite of indifference is making a difference.
Each shooting, each disaster, each political news cycle, each act of violence, desensitizes us in a 24-hour media cycle age. Tikkun Olam, as a Jewish value, as I was reminded by a dear friend recently, does not require us to fix the entire world that we see on the news. Tikkun Olam, as a Jewish value, reminds us that all we need to do is just help one person at a time — to make a difference in someone’s life.
I am not an animal person, but we went to the Pet Shenanigan show at Busch Gardens two different days, and when the animal trainer did her shpiel about the fact that over 40 of the animals in the show were saved from shelters and are given a good home at the park with veterinary care and much love, I had tears in my eyes. Making a difference one animal at a time matters, too.
Whether or not you look to the Torah each with for guidance on how to live your life or not, this week’s most important Jewish value, is a value all human beings could take more seriously. “You must not remain indifferent.” Care about something or someone enough to make a difference. Save someone. Fight for someone or something. Help someone.
After eight days of caring my three year old grandson, after so many years of not having a little one 24/7, I was reminded about the constant care and feeding necessary for little beings who depend on us. I was also blown away by Micah’s sensitivity to us and our needs. Children sense things and respond so genuinely and generously. “Can I help you, Savta?” as I cleaned the toilet. “It’s okay, Savta,” reassuring me when the water from the paints spilled by accident. When do we stop focusing on the needs of others in our lives intuitively? At what age do we become too busy to focus on the small ways we can make a difference? At what age do we stop offering help instinctively?
The Torah has so many rules. We have so little time. It’s not about following the rules though, is it? It’s about knowing that there are many ways we can make a difference. It’s knowing that sometimes the small thing we do to help, or to show concern, can make all the difference in the world.
Shabbat Shalom.