A terrible and avoidable tragedy shocked Israel recently — at least for a day. A senior official in the Tel Aviv office of the Population Immigration and Border Authority committed suicide after being accused of racist behavior in social media.
It all started when an Ethiopian woman who had taken her three children to the office in order to obtain a passport for her youngest child related how she had been informed that there was a special line for parents of young children. When she attempted to leave the very long general line and join the shorter one however she was told by the clerk to go back to the longer line. Meanwhile she observed the clerk serving white parents who came after her.
According to her account when she went to the director of the office to voice her complaints he told her that if she was complaining of racism she should get out of his sight. When the woman’s account went viral the office director found himself being accused far and wide of racism.
In his suicide note the director related how until two days earlier he had considered himself blessed in every sense. He had three academic degrees had travelled half the world and had held a senior position in the intelligence services prior to retiring. All that came to a crashing end according to him when the woman in question demanded immediate service while he was dealing with others and then publicly accused him of racism. In his suicide note he explained in detail why that particular charge hurt him so deeply. He had been the founder of an organization called Equality for All the Citizens of the State and had even published a book on his efforts as an army commander to bind together all the diverse elements under his command.
Each one of the 6 000 responses to his accuser’s social media post he wrote was thus like a nail in his flesh and he could not make peace with being labeled a racist.
THERE ARE A NUMBER OF LESSONS HERE. The first is how right Chazal were when they said that one who embarrasses another Jew in public is considered as if he had killed him.
Second social media is a force multiplier many times over when it comes to the lethal power of improper speech. It brings out the worst in people by turning them into anonymous members of a crowd. It is well-documented how people in a crowd can do things they would never do otherwise.
An entire culture of social media shaming has arisen. Shaming others provides a powerful elixir of righteousness to those doing the shaming. As with all forms of lashon hara it begins with a weak ego in need of salve by putting others down.
A recent New York Times Magazine article recently detailed the phenomenon. The article began with the story of a young director of public relations for an international company. Just prior to boarding a flight from London to Cape Town she posted an inane comment to a friend that could be read as racist. She might as well have had a listening device planted in her living room with the entire world privy to her private conversations. Her comment went viral within hours of takeoff.
By the time she exited the plane thousands of people around the world were already gleefully speculating about her inevitable firing and her shock when she discovered that she had been punished while flying carefree above the clouds.
The author of the piece Jon Ronson has collected enough examples of such public shaming and its disastrous consequences on those caught in unwanted limelight to fill a new book So You’ve Publicly Been Shamed. Shaming on social media has become the 21st century version of Puritans’ stocks.
Finally the tragic suicide can help us learn how to avoid improper speech by not making precipitous judgments. I suspect that both the accuser and accused in the tragic case in Israel told their stories exactly as they perceived them. The woman may well have been poorly treated by the clerk (though that story too likely has another side). Certainly she felt that she was discriminated against.
It was in the context of her rising feelings of being treated unfairly that the director’s request that she wait until he finished attending to someone else seemed to her like more of the same racism. But the director was probably nothing more than a character who had wandered unwittingly into a play he knew nothing about. He had no knowledge of what preceded his discussion with the Ethiopian woman and only wanted to finish what he was doing first before speaking to her. So the accusation of racism came out of the blue and perhaps caused him to lose his temper.
In recent years I’ve had occasion to witness from the sidelines several public controversies in which I’ve known most of the parties on both sides. The experience is akin to watching two good friends divorce. All those involved are in my judgment extremely high-minded idealistic honest people — no matter what they say about one another.
How do I account for their sharp differences of opinion? In the heat of battle each of them has forgotten that there might be other perspectives from which the matters in dispute can be seen. Because I am not personally involved I am free to try to figure out why one party views things one way and the other party another way and thereby retain my high opinion of both.
Whenever we tread anywhere near machlokes it behooves us to acquire an objective friend to help us figure out how things might look differently from another point of view. If no such friend is available we have no choice but to befriend ourselves rather than plunge deeper into conflict.
Ask for What Not Why

Last week I had the privilege to be present for a panel discussion with the parents of Gil-Ad Shaer Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel H”yd on the first anniversary of their kidnapping and brutal murder. The panel part of a day of national unity in which 1 million Israelis participated was organized by Gesher a nonprofit that works to increase understanding between the various segments of Israeli Jewish society.
The power of the six parents to move us remains undiminished a year after they were first thrust through no choice of their own into the public eye. Rachelle Fraenkel became the principal spokesperson for the parents last summer because of her ability to speak an eloquent native English. But each of the parents possesses a nobility that leaves one feeling blessed to have been born into the Jewish People that produced them.
The parents knew with near certainty from the start of their ordeal last year that their sons had been murdered and yet they held themselves together and presented faces of hope as if to strengthen the rest of us until their sons were found. Still they have no desire to be viewed as exemplars. In an interview with the Times of Israel Ofir Shaer quoted his wife Bat-Galim saying “You can’t be strong in the face of death ” and added “You have to be there to feel the pain. We are not supermen and women.” They freely acknowledge the ache in their hearts and hole in their families that will always remain.
Their unbroken faith is evident. Iris Yifrach described how she turned to Hashem and told Him “You sent me this test. Now please send me the strength to deal with it.” Bat-Galim Shaer remembers the 18 days as the hardest days of her life but also “the most elevated.”
They were genuinely buoyed by the outpouring of concern and sympathy from across the Jewish world and continue to find solace in that memory. Of the decision to lend their names to a Jerusalem Unity Prize when first approached by Mayor Nir Barkat Avi Fraenkel says simply “How could we not do something to give back to the [Jewish] nation that has given us so much?”
Former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks spoke before the panel. He noted that we take our name as a nation Yisrael from Yaakov’s wrestling with the malach (angel). The angel implores Yaakov to release him but Yaakov refuses until the angel blesses him and gives him a new name. That encounter is so powerfully ingrained in the Jewish consciousness Rabbi Sacks suggested because it symbolizes our collective determination to extract blessing from times of struggle and darkness.
That is what the families have done. They do not want their sons to be remembered as only unfortunate victims but rather as having triggered a moment of national awakening. A line from the diary kept by Eyal Yifrach in his last year — a diary that has been a source of great inspiration — captures well the impulse to use every experience as a means of growth and coming closer to Hashem: “Do not ask lamah (why) but rather l’mah (for what purpose).”
Before Rosh Hashanah Rachelle Fraenkel spoke of the search for her son and his two companions: “We went out searching for the boys and we discovered ourselves.” What did we discover? That “we are part of something huge a people a true family. That’s for real.”
The parents acknowledge that the intense feelings of unity of last summer both during the search for the boys and the 50-day war in Gaza have not remained unsullied. The last election campaign was not notable for the lack of partisan vitriol. But they said that they had never expected a complete change overnight. Journalists and politicians hesitated before reverting to form and in many cases either restrained themselves or at least felt guilty when they did not.
One cannot discover what does not exist. And the savor of feeling close to our fellow Jews and the pleasure of looking for the best in each one that we tasted last summer was real.
True we have a long way to go — all of us — to fully actualize the closeness we experienced last summer. But at the Jerusalem Unity Prize ceremony at the president’s house I could not help thinking about the contrast between us and our neighbors.
Can one imagine ceremonies celebrating the aspiration for unity in love among them? Only hatred of the Jews and the desire to spill our blood joins them together and occasionally distracts them from turning their murderous fury on one another. Their ceremonies are filled with calls for death and destruction of the enemy; ours for coming closer to one another in love.
Better to be lovers of life than seekers of death.