NOTE: THIS WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BINAH MAGAZINE
So this is me.
I am on my way to meet my sister-in-law for a morning out and as I am meandering along Sixteenth Avenue in Brooklyn, I see a school bus pull over to pick up some children. Although all drivers are patiently waiting in their cars until the children are safely in, I realize with horror (yes! Horror!) that the school bus does not use its flashing lights or open its STOP sign.
I am indignant. Blood pressure rising.
I whip out my phone and immediately call the yeshiva. And tell the principal my concerns. Who responds warmly, responsibly, and promises to do something immediately.
“You have too much time on your hands,” is the general consensus of my extended family when I repeat this story as we meet for cholent at my mother’s house.
I disagree.
“It’s dangerous for the bus driver to neglect to signal,” I argue. “A child’s life may be at stake. If I say something, the bus driver will get the message. And he will remember to use the signals.”
“I bet the signals were just broken,” my son says. “Not the driver’s fault.”
“Even more the reason I should say something! The principal will have to take care of it.
Am I the unusual one that when I see something, I say something? Or is the oddity the apathy of the people around me who cannot be bothered?
Have you ever heard of the Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience to Authority Figures?
Very creepy.
In 1961, Milgram, a social scientist, began a series of experiments on people to determine if indeed it was possible that Germans should be exonerated from wrongdoing on the premise that they were only following orders and therefore not responsible for their actions.
A subject of the experiment was told that he would be instructed to administer painful electrical shocks to another person in a different room. The shocks would be applied each time that person gave an incorrect response to a learning experience. The shock machine was a fake, as was the story of a person learning in the next room, but the subject did not know that.
The results of the experiment were shocking (pun intended!). The majority of subjects kept on administering the shocks, even as they listened to the (recorded) sounds of painful shrieks that was meant to simulate the reaction of the pretend person who was receiving the shocks. They continued increasing the intensity of what they were told were stronger and stronger shocks, only on the basis of being told to do so by the experimenter. Very few actually refused to continue; the rest doggedly applying the shocks because they were reminded that it was their job, even if they were free to stop at any time, walk out the door, without any repercussions.
These subjects were ordinary people like you and me. Fathers. Sons. Community members. Religious. Caring. Years later, a book emerged chronicling the lives of these subjects in the aftermath of published journal articles of the experiment, detailing their shattered lives and emotional distress these people suffered, realizing how they had collaborated in what appeared to be the torture of other individuals.
This experiment was replicated over and over in different parts of the world with the same horrific results.
Putting aside the question of abdicating personal responsibility in face of an authority, to me, this experiment is also how we plod along, watching the pain of others and simply do nothing because it seems too difficult or we are not in charge. Or, we rationalize that we may not understand the full picture so why get involved, or simply display an unwillingness to stand up for what is right when it may be met with ridicule, derision, punishment, or worse, apathy.
So I am walking with a friend home from a Kiddush one Shabbos morning and we pass by a lovely brick house on our way. And we hear furious shouts coming from the entrance of the house set deep in the driveway. My head snaps up from where I had been immersed in conversation, and my friend, who notices the scene first, reacts immediately and knowing me all too well, says fiercely, “Don’t you dare say anything!”
There is a small child, maybe seven or eight, and a mother stands over him, shrieking. And while the child is eerily silent, I hear the sound of sharp sounds of stinging slaps against a cheek.
I am stunned. How can I not say something? Do something? A child is being hurt!
My friend pulls my hand. She knows me too well. “Don’t do anything! It’s not going to help! You will only make things worse.”
And in my paralysis, these are the thoughts that compete through my mind:
“I don’t want to make a scene. I will keep quiet.”
“I’m embarrassed to say something. The mother will think I am crazy.”
“Everyone will know me as the nutty person who yells at mothers on the street.”
And lastly, “She stopped hitting him so it doesn’t matter anymore.”
And to my disgrace, I leave the scene not saying a word. There is a terrible irony in my silence for fear of humiliation when it should be this woman who is hitting her son, on street, who should have been the one flooded with shame.
In 1964, a woman was beaten and killed in two separate attacks by the same man, near her home. Through the long night, hirty eight neighbors heard her screams and witnessed the violence, but until she was dead, only one person called the police. When the papers ran this story two weeks later, witnesses were quoted as saying things like “I did not want to get involved,” “I was afraid,” “I didn’t realize what was happening,” or “I was tired and went to bed,” to explain their outrageous apathy at a time when the police could have arrived earlier to save her life.
Another similar incident was reported again in 2010 when a homeless man was killed and passer-byes walked around him, peered at him disinterestedly, or even took pictures before continuing on their way.
The Genovese Syndrome, named after the murder victim, was the phrase coined to describe this apathy, this reaction of bystanders in a crisis in which they do nothing.
Many scholars have tried to answer the question of why people react this way; but the only thing that is clear is a interesting phenomenon called diffuse responsibility in which the more people at a scene, the less likely an individual is to take action, taking his cues from the other bystanders who are doing nothing…
But while studies show that most people will continuing applying painful shocks if ordered to do so, as in the Milgram experiment; and most bystanders will demonstrate the Genovese Syndrome in crisis, there are still many individuals who will remain courageous and speak up. After all, there were subjects in the Milgram Experiment who refused to participate even once beginning the experiment.
What qualities distinguish the two groups? Research identifies a few key factors.
Viewing the world as meaningful. A person who acts upon his conscience see the world’s existence as essentially significant and consequential, feels connected to its people and environment; and feels moved therefore to take iniative, versus one who experiences the world as essentially meaningless, its existence random and therefore disconnected from himself and others.
Growing up in a tightly knit community with social expectations and rules of behavior that benefit the family and community such as charity, helpfulness, and altruism; rules of moral obligations to others that naturally extend to the greater environment with adulthood.
Being expected to find common ground with those who may appear different, by applying the Golden Rule of Do Unto Others What You Would Do for Yourself to find and experience the humanness in all.
It is such people who have saved Jews during the Holocaust, fought for the Blacks in the Civil Rights movements, and who stop children from teasing the village idiot.
This should be very easy, then, for the religious Jew. And for the children he is raising.
After all, the Torah gives meaning to our very existence and we are brought up to view everything in this world as significant. If that is true, then when someone is being hurt in Hashem’s world, if one person is distorting our existence, we feel personally responsible to rectify the situation.
Where else, if not in our orthodox community where family is sacred and community means everything, do we learn the social mores of interconnectedness? Is there a high school today that does not assign chessed hours to its girls; isn’t every parent involved in helping others in some form or another? We are raised with religious and moral obligations of chessed and tzeddakah from the second we are told to bring in a penny for the pushka in kindergarten.
And the Golden Rule was stolen from our heritage in the beautiful story of Hillel who said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others…and all the rest of the Torah is commentary.” Meet a Jew anywhere, and you are already on common ground. Such a foundation should breed the more general ability to feel the humanness of others.
So it would seem to me that raised with such Torah values, our children should be models of such behavior, our adults the torch bearers of IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING.
But somehow our children often show the same reluctance to stand up for someone else and upend the Genovese Syndrome with which most of our world is afflicted. And when children are bullied on the playground, others are quiet; and when children run after the mentally ill calling them names, adults turn the other way; and when I watch a mother slapping her child’s cheek, I am paralyzed with indecision.
Usually, when I write articles, I have strong opinions and definite answers.
Here? I don’t know. I simply don’t know.
Our Torah teaches us right. We are generally good people. but it’s scary to contemplate how many of us would fall into the same trap as those other ordinary subjects in Milgram’s Experiment, following orders. Closing our eyes to someone’s pain. Refusing to get involved.
But here is what America did see a few months ago, televised live across the country in all its shame and glory.
A producer created an fake scenario in which he planted a man dressed in an unwieldy, box-like yellow character in a city center. These characters are not unusual sights because they are actually people in costumes earning money when tourists take pictures with them. But this particular man in the yellow costume was instructed to lie on the street and flail his arms and legs as if he had toppled over and unable to get up. And then the cameras were surreptitiously turned on him and the surrounding bystanders to observe their reaction to this cartoon creature in apparent distress. Another social experimental variation of observing the Genovese Syndrome.
The camera pans out to show hundreds of people simply moving around the flailing character, stepping over his hands or feet to move on their way. Some people pretended not to see him; some people looked and then quickly glanced away. Some stopped to take pictures or laugh; some grumbled in disgust at his presence on the floor beneath them.
And then, in one single, glorious instant, three yeshiva boys appear into the camera view and as they move closer to the man on the floor, they notice him, and in one fluid movement circle him, ask him if he needs help, and give him a hand to haul him up. The camera then focuses on the confusion and amusement on the boys’s faces as the cartoon character grabs their hands and spontaneously twirls them into a dance singing a Jewish song.
“Hey, Ma,” my teenage son tells me. “Remember those boys? One of them was on the Eretz Yisroel Tour with me this summer.”
“Really?” I asked, intrigued. “What kind of boy is he?”
“Regular, Ma,” he said. “Just a regular yeshiva boy.”
So maybe we are doing something right. Because in that little clip, in our glory, our boys put all the rest of those Genovese bystanders to shame.
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