If I would bore a small hole in my private quarters on the boat, the whole boat would fill with water, imperiling everyone

“Cursed be the man who makes any… image, and sets it up in secret….” Devarim 27:15

What causes a society to unravel? Moshe’s parting words to the nation abound with warnings against the sins that will result in exile from the land they’re about to inherit. This curse above adds an element hinting to the source of a society’s destruction: the hidden secrets that undermine society’s foundation.

Several curses later (Devarim 27:24), we find another curse with the same idea: “Cursed is he who strikes down his neighbor in secret.” (Rabbi Ari Kahn, M’oray Ha’Aish)

There was a trick I used when my kids were young, that I learned in “Mommy School” years ago. Whenever a child told me something that bordered on fiction (euphemism here — let’s call a lie a lie?), I’d look deep into their eyes and say, “Stick out your tongue.”

They were convinced I somehow divined if the statement had been true or not based on the status of their tongue (the placement of their taste buds?).

In reality, I was watching their body language, their eye movement, and the ease with which they agreed to the test or not. Most times I was right, leaving my children awed that Mommy’s instincts bordered on the supernatural.

It’s interesting how much emphasis is placed on hidden transgressions. Generally, when imagining what would bring down a society, we picture things that go awry in the public sphere. Public desecration of holy places, corruption of public institutions and politicians, even depravity in the public eye seems far more dangerous to a society than things that happen in the privacy of one’s home.

Yet these curses seem to show the opposite. This unexpected emphasis teaches a subtle but important lesson: When it comes to public deviation from the law, the Torah-mandated judicial system is capable of dealing with the problem, whereas the surreptitious sinner poses a greater threat to the stability of the society.

Secret sins, the sins committed behind closed doors, cause moral corrosion from within. These sins don’t reach the public eye or ear, yet it’s precisely these sins that harm the public whole, one individual at a time.

The dissonance between the public facade and a private life that’s in shambles erodes the individual’s dedication and identification with the collective, and society cannot long endure if it’s supported by such feet of clay.

Before we launch the great enterprise of living as a holy nation in a holy land, a public declaration must be made as a commitment to the decency and holiness of each individual’s personal life.

Disclaimer: I do have to say that this method was useless on one of my children, but I chalk that up to the ease in which they slid from one personality to the next, a cross of Huckleberry Finn, Ramona, and Pippi Longstocking.

The double life of the secret sinner is a cursed life; it undermines the individual’s connection to society, and eventually undermines the foundations of society as a whole.

The antidote to this is mutual responsibility. The symbiosis between the individual and society must be at the very forefront of our consciousness as we build our society.

We are all on the same boat. If I would bore a small hole in my private quarters on the boat, the whole boat would fill with water, imperiling everyone.

Our society is rife with dichotomy. On one hand, the speed with which we share personal information has gotten uber sophisticated. Our lives are so full of the details of everyone else’s lives, it’s a wonder we manage to live our own.

At the same time, we’ve become all that more devious. Our privacy is sacred (perhaps in an effort to combat all that TMI), and we live more separately than previous generations (think shtetl and tenements), enabling us to maintain the little secrets that society would love to know.

Yet we each give ourselves away in little ways, and we shouldn’t be so complacent to think that our body language, our speech, our actions and reactions are maintaining the lie we want to be living.

I challenge you. Look into the mirror alone in your house and say aloud to your reflection, “I’m completely proud of who you are, inside and out.”

Then stick out your tongue.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 960)