“All Our Deed are Recorded”

This week I attended a presentation for parents organized by Brauser Maimonides Academy presented by Dr. Eli Shapiro, creator of the Digital Citizenship Project. The goal of this project is to help children utilize technology in a healthy and positive way. One of the things we have to teach our children (and remind ourselves) is the notion of our “digital footprint”: that everything we post on social media and any place that we are mentioned on the internet becomes part of our permanent record, accessible via internet by anyone even years and decades later. Dr. Shapiro shared a news article that in 2017, Harvard University rescinded the admission of ten students after uncovering offensive and inappropriate posts on private Facebook messaging groups.

Some are fighting for a limit on the accessibility of their digital footprint. In 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that Google had to remove links to out-of-date information about a Spanish man, because he wanted to be free of people learning about his bankruptcy more than a decade before, every time they searched for his name. This has become known as “the right to be forgotten”, and other European countries have adopted similar policies. Though some want there to be a “right to be forgotten” in the US, most scholars find it unlikely that such a law could pass, since it might violate the First Amendment (free speech and free press).

Judaism does not believe in a “right to be forgotten”. As the Mishna in Pirkei Avot (2:1) teaches us:

Apply your mind to three things and you will not come into the clutches of sin: Know what there is above you: an eye that sees, an ear that hears, and all your deeds are written in a book.

At the end of Parshat Nasso we read about the donations offered by the Nesiim at the time of the dedication of the altar. Rashi (7:3) notes that whereas at the building of the Mishkan the princes donated last, here they donate first. Rashi explains that earlier the princes made a mistake by waiting to see what was needed to finish building the Mishkan (and nothing was needed.) This time, the princes learned from their mistake and are the first to bring gifts.

This week marked the passing of Rabbi Nathan Kamenetsky, son of Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky and author of the (in)famous book The Making of a Gadol.  In a 2003 New York Times article about the book, Joseph Berger noted:

What has made the book so controversial is that the portraits are perhaps too human. Rather than the saintly figures often depicted in biographies for the Orthodox market, the Lithuanian sages -- a godol is a great sage -- are shown wrestling with the lures of secular life and with their own sometimes crusty personalities. Even as they display remarkable analytic powers in tackling the Talmud, they read Tolstoy, they have relatives tempted by Communism, they write love letters to their fiancées, they are mercurial and moody.

As a result, the first edition of his book was banned by some Rabbis. However Rabbi Kamenetsky defended his book by noting that all details of a great person should be remembered, as it provides a full picture of their greatness. For us, knowing that great Jewish leaders struggled with shortcomings and confronted challenges similar to ours, allows us to appreciate them more. And if they had similar struggles then we should look to them as role models whom we can emulate, and not angels that have nothing in common with mere mortals.  Here again, we are reminded that all of one’s deeds are remembered; not only in Heaven but here on earth.