Who Are You Talking To?
They may not be listening
Question:
I’m losing sleep and losing my mind responding to these Jew-hating jerks on Instagram. It’s beyond frustrating. I honestly don’t know why I do it…it’s not like I’m going to convince them of anything…but I can’t help myself. The lies they’re posting are so vile and so wrong.
I still feel like I’m wasting my time and energy, but what am I supposed do? Just stay quiet?!?
Advice from the Sages:
This topic is relevant to all of us.
The cacophony of angry chatter on social media steadily screamed into the black void of the internet has undoubtedly changed the way we talk to one another IRL (“In Real Life”).
The irony is that although American culture is superficially built around the principles of “good fences make good neighbors” and “whatever floats your boat,” when people have an opportunity to vent their frustrations about others into their selfie-cameras, they do so with a vengeance.
Among the many lessons I learned from the COVID pandemic was realizing how unprepared our modern, democratic, liberal society was for accepting new norms that everyone had to suddenly abide by.
When the pandemic hit the U.S. in 2020, we were living in New York, a multicultural city renowned for its “live and let live” culture. And yet, with the introduction of the six-foot social distancing rule and mandatory masks, overnight, we found ourselves in a police state with what felt like 9 million residents on civilian patrol.
Within a matter of hours of New York state announcing on twitter that people needed to wear masks outdoors unless they were six feet away, random pedestrians were yelling at us in the crosswalk for not putting masks on our toddlers in the stroller.
In one unforgettable encounter in Central Park, one unhinged Columbia Law Professor took it upon himself to chastise us for having a family picnic without masks. During a very unpleasant 15-minute conversation, which he video recorded on his phone, we explained to him that a) we hadn’t checked Twitter in the previous few hours, and b) regardless, we had been more than 6 feet away from him and everyone else (until he decided to come closer in order to reprimand us).
Unsurprisingly, no party walked away from that interaction changed for the better. Both we and him walked away with the same beliefs, only angrier.
The introduction of “COVID-rules” brought people’s opinions and judgments about others to the fore. But because most people are woefully untrained in how and when to provide constructive criticism based on those opinions, it was a complete mess.
More generally, even though passing moral judgments on the behaviors of others is not in vogue to admit, it is a normal and natural response when one possesses moral conscience together with eyes and ears. How is any Jew supposed to remain apathetic in the face of hateful lies being spread by Jew-haters? How is any person with a sense of right and wrong meant to feel nothing when observing any other reprehensible behavior?
So in principle, the impulse to correct misbehavior is natural and appropriate. In practice, though, we should ask ourselves the following questions before we launch into a tirade:
Are our angry responses directed at those who don’t care to listen making a positive difference? Are we really going to change that person’s mind?
and more importantly:
Are we missing opportunities to direct our attention and words towards those who might actually be open to hearing what we have to say?
Here is the advice from Rebbi Elazar bar Rebbi Shimon (Judaea, 2nd century CE) in the Talmud, which I believe is a helpful guide for life in general, and certainly for those engaged in social media vigilante work:
כְּשֵׁם שֶׁמִּצְוָה עַל אָדָם לוֹמַר דָּבָר הַנִּשְׁמָע — כָּךְ מִצְוָה עַל אָדָם שֶׁלֹּא לוֹמַר דָּבָר שֶׁאֵינוֹ נִשְׁמָע
Just as it is a mitzvah for a person to say that which will be heeded, so is it a mitzvah for a person not to say that which will not be heeded.
Once we accept the premise that the purpose of rebuke is not to hear ourselves speak but to actually have a positive impact on those we are speaking to, then, it follows that there is no point in rebuking people who aren’t listening.
The problem is that we’ve lost the art of rebuke. Apparently, we lost it a long time ago. In one well-known, 2nd century CE disagreement in the Talmud, Rabbi Tarfon comments that he’d be surprised if anyone in his generation could genuinely receive another person’s rebuke and take it to heart without firing back with his own zinger to deflect the criticism. In response, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria shared that, in his opinion, the problem was not that people couldn’t take the criticism per se, but rather that most people in that time did not know how to properly deliver the feedback in a way that it would be heard and accepted by the recipient.
Experience has shown that this remains true today.
When we rebuke others, we generally do so out of a crude sense of moral imperative — rarely, if ever, with sincere intent to change anyone’s mind or improve the path they are on for their sake. In the better case scenario, our rebuke is part of a pseudo-religious crusade for “truth and justice.” In a worse case scenario, it is merely to feel holier than thou. And since, in general, we’ve grown accustomed to repressing our feedback out of “politeness,” when we do open the floodgates of feedback, we tend to explode.
The truth is that rebuke is actually one of the 613 mitzvot. It is a mitzvah to offer perspective to another person if it will help redirect their behavior for their own good. Paramount should be our care for other people — even above our abstract pursuit of justice and truth. If we care about people, we should care about the choices they make, and if they are willing to listen because they know we care, then, we have an obligation to try and redirect their behavior for their own good.
It is this sincere care that should guide when, where, how and with whom we share our differing perspective.
A more precise translation of how the Torah defines the mitzvah is not “rebuke,” but “reproof.” “Reproof” is a better translation of the Torah’s word lehoḥiaḥ-להוכיח because its root hoḥaḥa-הוכחה literally means proof.
What does proof have to do with dealing with trolls online?
A wise person doesn’t tell someone off to merely get his feelings off his chest and blow off steam. Experience shows us that usually when we are angry or still feeling personally insulted, our ability to change the mind of the one who upset us is practically zero. The recipient will likely feel that we are “biting his head off” due to our own emotional issues, and will therefore not take to heart whatever life lesson we are supposedly trying to impress upon him.
The idea of sincere and effective reproof is to somehow use our words and actions in such a way that serve as self-evident proof to the person as to how he is in the wrong, and how he might change his behavior and mindset. It is the proof itself that allows the other person to convince himself based on the available evidence, not due to our disappointment, anger or pressure. And in the case that the lesson we have to impart was already clear to him once upon a time but has since been forgotten, then what he needs is to be reminded of the proof, hence, the term “re-proof.”
Although it seems so much easier just to “give ‘em a piece of your mind,” proof will always lead to longer term results because the person will have changed intrinsically rather than due to external causes.
But to bring this back, proof backfires when presented to a person who is not open to seeing it. It is for this reason that reproof can only be accomplished through a rapport that’s been established with the recipient that is strong enough and safe enough that he feels that we are communicating with him for his own good — not merely relieve ourselves of our emotional burden, and “check the box” that we “said what we had to say.”
Additionally, it clearly must be done with sensitivity so as to not humiliate the person publicly, which would certainly guarantee that he shuts down emotionally and reject outright whatever proof we have presented.
Lastly, for our proof to be cogent, we must be not only logically clear and coherent, we must also communicate it in such a way that we speak the recipient’s language, addressing the misconceptions at the root of his error.
All of these requirements for reproof to be effective are outlined in Maimonides’s Code of Jewish Law.
We can now understand why one of the great Torah teachers and legal authorities of the 20th century, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (1910-95) called it “the most challenging of all the mitzvot,”1 and why the many people with whom we have not established this trust are out of range for our changing their minds.
Don’t waste your time and energy talking to antisemites on Instagram.
Ask yourself: who are you directing your messages to? Who is the “you” that you are talking to? If the people you are addressing in your comments and videos would be just as happy to see you dead, you probably aren’t going to get through to them.
Pivot instead to communicate with those who are more open to the information and kind of thinking you are sharing.
The backstory behind this is that one day in the 1970s, a curious, not-observant, young Jew arrived to a yeshiva in Jerusalem to check it out. He was shaving his face in the dorm bathroom with a razor, which is forbidden according to the Torah, when an overzealous yeshiva student ran to one of the overzealous rabbis to ask him what to he should do. The rabbi’s atrocious advice was that he should inform this visiting student that he was violating Torah law. The student rushed back to the dorm bathroom to do as he was told. The visiting student’s response as he was finishing his shave was, “you guys are out of your mind.” He proceeded to pack up his stuff and left the yeshiva forever.
Not only was this rebuke unproductive, but it was counterproductive.
My own rabbi took the advising rabbi to Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach so that he would get rebuked for his gross misapplication of the mitzvah of rebuke. It was here that Rabbi Auerbach explained that this mitzvah is one of the most difficult mitzvot to properly execute, and it must be done with great wisdom and compassion, which this particular rabbi clearly did not possess.