Slogans, clichés, platitudes, banalities, bromides: These are the emblems of our age, the go-to substitutes for thinking. On the most complex subject, find an appropriate catchphrase, repeat a fine-sounding banality, and you are done.
Note, for example, the secular media’s reaction to the recent “pride” parades. Notwithstanding the fact that the revelers were proud of transgressing the most fundamental of civilized behavior, not to mention that the Torah in Vayikra 18:22 refers to their activities in the strongest terms, the media editorialists and their liberal acolytes extolled the marchers for their “courage,” and then trotted out the old chestnuts of “diversity,” “tolerance,” and “human rights.” “A democratic society,” intoned one newspaper, “must be able to tolerate differences.”
When slogans are offered up as deep thought, there is not much point in debating the issues intelligently, or in pointing out that certain behaviors undermine the family and the bases of civilization. One wonders what their reaction will be when, in the coming years, we are inevitably faced with an annual “Thievery Pride Parade,” whose press release will declare,” I want what is yours and therefore it is mine.” And how will they treat the annual “Sinners Pride Parade” whose chairman will say, “We are tired of being told what to do and what not to do. The world of ‘Thou Shalt Nots’ belongs to the Middle Ages.” Will the media support these on the grounds of “diversity and tolerance”? Will they declare, as they do today, that deviant behavior enriches the culture of a community?
The secular world in general is uncomfortable with limits and boundaries. But consider the obvious: Tennis cannot be played without a net. Football and baseball require sidelines. Without these limitations, there is no game. Is it not reasonable that life itself should require certain boundaries beyond which we do not wander, for without them there is no life?
As a rabbi, I have dealt all my life with people who wandered off the straight and narrow. Not one of them has ever been proud of his or her transgressions. None of them wanted them publicized. Why, then, must today’s improprieties and lapses be vehicles for public demonstrations and declarations of in-your-face “pride”? Noteworthy: In Jewish law, there is a vast difference between violations of Torah law betzin’ah, in private, behind closed doors, and those done befarhesia, in public. Befarhesia is much more egregious, because it demonstrates no remorse, no shame. For example, a soldier might quietly disobey orders from his commandeer. But when he does so in public, that is much more serious. One is disobedience and insubordination, but the other is outright mutiny. But today we witness a new level: not just disobedience, not just a lack of embarrassment, and not even ordinary rebellion. Instead, we find actual “pride” in one’s anti-social and anti-Torah behavior. This is in fulfillment of the Mishnaic prophecy that in Messianic times, chutzpah yisgeh, insolence and arrogance will be dominant (Sotah 9:15).
We must already be living in Messianic times, because we continue to hear — even in the face of the most egregious rebellions and transgressions — platitudes and bromides about tolerance and diversity and human rights.
And as for “pride,” the deeds that make you proud and those that make you ashamed are crucial indicators of who you really are. King David’s psalms, for example, are filled with remorse at what he considered were his own transgressions. He was great enough to recognize certain behaviors as being unworthy of him, as — to cite one instance among many — in his Psalm 69:20: “Thou knowest my humiliation, my shame, my disgrace….”
Above all else, it would be wise to bear in mind King Solomon’s sober warning in Mishlei 16:18: “Lifnei shever, gaon — before the fall, there is pride.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 726)