Off the Record?

By: Yaelle Frohlich

Posted: 11/25/09

When you're working for a journalistic cause, deadlines can take on a sort of divine significance. And, as anyone who's ever had to hand in a sensitive topical piece knows, it can be difficult to get information and quotations from interviewees. Journalism code dictates that one may quote anything a person says, unless the person specifies that the remark is off the record before he or she actually says it. If you make this specification, however, a good journalist may try to coax you into relaxing your terms. Yet, many individuals-politicians and laypeople alike-are unaware of reporters' etiquette, pointed out Dr. Tsuriel Rashi, chair of the department of mass communication at Jerusalem's Lifshitz College of Education, following his November 9 lecture on Yeshiva University's Wilf Campus.

Rashi's presentation explored the way mass media communications is viewed in Judaism. During temple times, our ancestors received messages from prophets situated beside the heavily visited Temple Mount during the three pilgrimages. They also heard the proclamation of death (a mandatory announcement) of idol worshippers leading the people on the same wrong path or a Sanhedrin member who deviated from the majority's ruling. During the Babylonian exile, the torch system alerted Israel of Rosh Hodesh (new month) at the first sighting of each new moon. Our generation has television and the Internet.

What interested me most, however, was Rashi's description of media integration in the contemporary Orthodox Israeli world. Only after the society-polarizing assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, he argued, did the religious finally come to the realization that "there should be a journalist with a kippah [yarmulke], and there should be a journalist with a sheitel [wig]."

Other agenda-pushing parties long ago figured out the power of media. The seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, said that anything-including concoctions of the communications world-could be used to sanctify God's name (which explains the earliness of chabad.org's creation).

On the opposite side of the good/evil spectrum are Hamas and Hizbullah, with what Rashi described as "labyrinths of communications" endeavors. What makes Hamas's media system more consolidated than Israel's is that one person (or media center) is in charge of each area. For example, Ramallah is under one center's sole jurisdiction, Bethlehem under another's. "Whereas in Israel," said Rashi, "everyone wants in on stories."

Only recently, stated Rashi, has Israel realized that it must catch up in terms of its international media campaign. The media war has become so crucial that high-ranking Israeli military leaders who are Orthodox are now halakhically (according to Jewish law) permitted to grant media interviews on Shabbat (at least to non-Jewish reporters). Ten years ago, the rabbis would have banned such practice, said Rashi, but nowadays Rabbi Elyashiv's son-in-law acknowledges that media plays a crucial role in psychological warfare.

But media studies are becoming-and rightly so-an important part of education within Israel's Orthodox community. Rashi has developed a media program for dati leumi (religious nationalist) grade schools, and is in the process of developing one for regular state schools.

However, Rashi noted that many leaders of dati leumi schools remain wary of the visual technological arts-film production. This is a result, in part, of a Maale Film School production on the controversial (and, so-believed, discussion-inappropriate) issue of rape in the religious community. Jerusalem-based Maale, the world's only religious Jewish film school, trains religious students for entering the world of media. Documentaries and fiction films created by its students span a diverse array of religiously or socially relevant subjects, from wedding nights and the emotional ramifications of niddah (restrictions on sexual relations with a menstruating woman) to aging and mental illness in Orthodox families.

Heads of grade schools may think that shutting out select aspects of technological education will shelter children from the big bad world of unpleasant information. However, I cannot thing of a less effective solution to the indignity of suffering in shame and the stagnation of the religious-secular divide. An idea that has taken hold in some parts of the religious community in Israel and the Diaspora-and certainly in The Observer and other YU student publications-is that no subject cannot be tackled in a dignified-and, hence, modest-way. And in a world where anything not taught in class or at home can be accessed freely on the Internet, it is arguably ludicrous and dangerous to deem any topic taboo.

And what about the laws of lashon hara and rekhilut (gossip and slander)? Says Rashi, even the Hafetz Haim, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, knew that certain things had to be published for the public good, and therefore quoted Maimonides's rule that some things must be published, and if they are not it is a sin. Even without the horror stories of unchecked cases of pedophilia in the tight-lipped ultra-Orthodox community, frankness in classrooms and homes has the potential to strengthen Orthodox society by facilitating responsible media-aware discussion about controversial topics and allowing religious people to channel their inquisitive scientific and creative energies within a so-called safe environment.

I was dismayed last year when, in an Observer Features article about kallah (bride) teachers, several of the interviewed teachers were embarrassed to talk openly in the article about the pre-marital education they give young women. One believed that there were certain things unmarried women should not know that married women should, but declined to go into detail. Others shied away from questions in general. The article was an opportunity to inform young Orthodox women about a process that many of them will undergo. Many students at Stern College for Women, I dare assume, would rather hear the straight facts from a knowledgeable, observant woman than on the street or from hearsay, just as they would prefer to learn about health issues from a trusted doctor rather than from a Yahoo chat-room. In the long run, it will be a greater service to young religious people around the world for the administrations responsible for their education to loosen their chin-height necklines and get with the times. Yes, I said it. Silence, nowadays, is essentially subversion.

I do realize that people cannot be coerced into addressing topics with which they are uncomfortable. As with anything, comfort levels may take time to build. And ethically, Rashi explained in response to my question about the journalism code, you should explain unspoken quotation rules to people you interview beforehand.

The stakes are high in the communications game. To protect yourself, you must know what you are getting yourself into should you ever consent to a media interview. To protect the ideals of both a free and open society and preserve respect for a traditional Jewish way of life in the eyes of a highly educated youth, you might try not to be afraid of the microphone, the pen or the question.