The Commentator

Rabbi asked R. Joshua b. Korha: In virtue of what have you reached such a good old age? …He replied: Never in my life have I gazed at the countenance of a wicked man.

        Megillah, 28a

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

                                                                                    Oscar Wildeⁱ

The community I grew up in has a tendency to determine the hashkafic position of its members through a question. “Do you own a TV?” You either do or you don’t (or you do, but say you don’t, or don’t, but say you do). Schools, shidduchim, shuls, all the major “S” establishments of a functioning Orthodox community, use television to regulate who is appropriate and who is not.

I’m frustrated by this situation not only because it creates poles, but because I have trouble respecting either pole created. On one side stand people who are closing themselves off to anything that is not morally whitewashed. Movies, music, and TV, are evaluated based on the occurrence of certain details. Admittedly, regulating our exposure to the details under discussion sums up a vast majority of halacha. My problem with this approach is that it results in a kosher-calculating checklist inflexible to the fact that, while Chazal used euphemisms when discussing sensitive topics, great rabbeim unabashedly followed their teachers into the most private areas of life because “this is Torah and I need to learn.”ⁱⁱ Of course, one could argue that there is no comparison between exposing one’s self to the R-rated side of life when it is conducted as the Torah prescribes, and exposing one’s self to this side of life through The Simpsons. In fact, I agree: there is no comparison. This is precisely why the kosher checklist does not work. Both Torah and a large segment of modern entertainment refuse to provide shelter from life’s grittiest and most private experiences. However, secular society tends to think such honesty comes only in direct proportion to ugliness. Cynicism and crude humor are applauded because politeness is considered a quaint pleasure and a means to maintaining illusions. Oddly enough, this sounds like a strange twist on asceticism. Torah on the other hand promotes honesty because it strives for holiness to infiltrate all of life, implying that existence can only be fully explored when processed via a high moral standard. What follows from this distinction is that the pieces of American culture which pass the kosher test greatly lack artistic or intellectual integrity in comparison to what fails.

How can this be acceptable to a Torah community? God presents His words in an artistic form that allows disparate moments of life to be subtly and intricately integrated into a kaleidoscopic vision whose beauty and wisdom transcend its parts. This is the aspiration of all subsequent art. Agonizing over details is as much the obsession of the artist as the halachist, but one would think a vision of the whole is as important to the halchist as it is to the artist. When culture is dissected along lines that ignore the value of this whole, we become dulled to human complexities. Nice becomes the word of choice. Even when I see reasons for why TV should be deemed assur, I’m bothered by that which those who hold this way deem mutar.

 On the other hand, the camp that watches TV doesn’t inspire affinity, as much as apologetic tones. The argument I’ve always heard is that an intelligent person can learn from everything and relate anything to Torah. This may be true, but the fairly obvious counter argument is equally true, mainly that an intelligent person can learn from everything and relate anything to Torah! Once we consider every act as being potentially educational, being potentially educational is no longer a meaningful criterion to use when prioritizing one’s time. Entertainment may have a moral, but, unless that moral cannot be better obtained, so what? Extracting Torah values from pop culture is a rather redundant activity. If we are going to claim modern culture has value, we need to argue for the value of that which does not obviously coincide with Torah.

Pop culture, according to Wikipedia, “comprises the daily interactions, needs, desires and cultural ‘moments’ that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream.”ⁱⁱⁱ It is the vernacular people use to express, and think about, themselves. Skinny jeans, Harry Potter, Superbad, gay rights parades, low-carb diets and Starbucks are all examples of our pop culture. Epiphanies about one’s adolescence derived from a conversation comparing Harry Potter to Superbad while wearing skinny jeans after the gay rights parade over a low-carb latte at Starbucks is an example of pop culture. Analyzing Harry Potter or Superbad or Starbucks in a removed, academic fashion to extract impersonal information is not pop culture.^iv This distinction is important because it’s important to admit that when we stare bright-eyed at an imax, wild-eyed at a concert, or tired-eyed at a TV, we are not there to study, but to experience what it is to be human.

Emanuel Levinas, in Totality and Infinity, explains that communication between human beings is not an exchange of facts, but occurs through expression in which “the manifestation and the manifested coincide” and yet “the manifestation… remains exterior to every image one would retain of it.”^v Communication is inseparable from the ones communicating, despite the fact that the ones communicating always exist beyond the confines of the communication. Culture is a communication; the greatest benefit it offers is the chance to relate to another person and to our self. This is valuable only if personality is valuable. Rabbi Norman Lamm, in Torah Umadda, writes: “Faith, trust, worship—all are meaningful if all of man, in his entirety, every facet of his person and every aspect of his personality, is immersed in such faith, trust and worship.”^vi Anything that contributes so integrally to faith, trust and worship is valuable.

Before one can evoke a part of the self to the worship of God, one must be in touch with this part of the self. The self is not confined to the intellect, but includes the ability to laugh and make others laugh, athleticism, estheticism, nostalgia, rebelliousness, a beautiful voice, a quick wit, the need for safety or a good night’s sleep. Knowing the self means knowing about pride, foolishness, empty promises and moments of despair when God is far away. All of this is valuable. All this leads to worship of God

However, all this also marks man’s distance from God. The more personality is uncovered, the stronger the human component in the relationship between man and God becomes, the more blatantly man stands in contrast to God. Aviva Zorenberg explains in The Particulars of Rapture that the difference between “speaking to God face to face,” which Moshe did, and “seeing God’s face,” which Moshe did not, is that seeing God’s face is a request to “become that very face,”^vii while speaking with God face to face “respects difference.”^viii She concludes: “The only union possible is in relationship, which means separateness.”^ix If Torah is bound to one’s heart, then self-discovery and Torah study will inevitably overlap, but we still must understand who we are, individually and as a species, as opposed to God, before we can turn and face Him.

This will create tension. Torah is not self-evident and, as man discovers himself, he will discover points of contention between what he deems appropriate or desirable, and what God does. Such tension only points to the seemingly obvious observation that God has a number of chidushim up His metaphorical sleeve; that He wants to challenge us to reconsider our responses and refine our thoughts as much as He wants us to have our own responses and individual thoughts. A developed sense of self is a pre-requisite to a mature relationship and, subsequently, to growth.^x Between God’s ideal just out of man’s reach, and man’s nature unsure of God, lies the Jew.

This dynamic, between God, man and Judaism, is re-invented in every human being. This provides pop culture with its importance. For better or worse, pop culture harbors the re-inventing force, the uniqueness, of a generation. Art (and Torah) is characterized by embodying universal messages. Culture, on the other hand, is the collection of distinct ways in which a certain group expresses certain versions of these universal messages in relation to current events, sentiments, and other values. It is a constant dialogue between self-identity and group-identity occurring through words, humor, music, fashion, even nervous ticks. Once Jews accept an idealistic version of Torah Umaddah,^xi and opt to leave the ghetto, though our voice might be one of discord, to extract ourselves from this conversation altogether is an insult to God-given personality and an invitation to stagnate. Conversation though is not exempt from the ruling hand of halacha. It is an area fiercely guarded by Torah. This is because with self-discovery comes self-creation. On one hand, this is the incredible ability to use free choice to decide who one wants to be—it makes us similar to God. On the other hand, this is the immensely dangerous condition that one can be reinvented in a false image—it makes us similar to idols.

In his book Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs, Chuck Klosterman, mines the lowest of low culture for truths about humanity in modern America. It’s a brilliant book, but rather depressing mainly because, if we are who Klosterman claims we are, we are pathetic. We’re pathetic because rather than creating a culture which probes into the intangible recesses of the human soul as it swings its legs over infinity, we’ve created a culture where “being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable.”^xii Self-expression has turned into the immediate need to be recognized. The success of Facebook is somewhat, if not largely, due to its role as a tabloid for, by and of the people. Reality TV, as Klosterman points out, has made it popular to define one’s self by dominant characteristics that function to create drama.^xiii This is reflective of the desire to glorify the self, but is as useful to communication as defined by Levinas as brassed shoes are to a child learning to walk. The result is a society overflowing with facts but devoid of expression. Once man is convinced he can report himself, he becomes incredibly impatient with relationships—the discovery of the other or the new. An increase in pleasure or products becomes the only imaginable reason for human or divine interaction. God and man both become idols.  In the words of a good friend: “Attempting to grasp and portray the human character in the arts is noble. Believing that one has succeeded in doing so is depraved.” The worst of pop culture has tried to convince us that we can be what we watch. This, I believe, is more dangerous than nudity, violence, or obscenities, found in recent questionable, yet quality, works of expression. As long as there is dialogue, the self, the other and Torah have infinity in which to lay their case and look each other in the eye. However, how can even Torah combat a growing sentiment to look away? For example, consider the following: The community I grew up in has a tendency to determine the hashkafic position of its members through a question. “Do you own a TV?”

Tikva Hecht is a staff writer for Kol Hamevaser

ⁱ Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. (New York: Signet Classic, 1983), p. 17.

ⁱⁱ T.B. Brachos, 62a

ⁱⁱⁱ “Popular culture.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 1 Oct 2007, 04:55 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 3 Oct 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Popular_culture&oldid=161475191>.

^iv However, the notion to study pop culture at all might itself be a pop culture phenomenon.

^v Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Trans., Alphonso Lingis, (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1979), p. 296.

^vi Lamm, Norman. Torah Umadda. (New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1990), p. 224.

^vii Zornberg, Avivah. The Particulars of Rapture. (New York: Doubleday, 2001), p. 441.

^viii Ibid. p. 442.

^ix Ibid.

^x This is an idea my father, Rabbi Benjamin Hecht, often impressed on me. He explores the nature of this tension, and how we are to deal with it once it arises, in his article Tree of Knowledge Part III, which can be found at www.nishma.org.

^xi As opposed to a pragmatic form of Torah Umaddah, which considers interaction with the secular world as an unwanted necessity allowed only in order to survive.

^xii Klosterman, Chuck. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. (New York: Scribner, 2003), p. 40.

^xiii Ibid, p. 39.