Are Situational Ethics the New Moral Imperative?

(The following article appeared in the September 22, 2011 issue of the Jewish Ledger in Rochester, NY. This article was intended to be published after 'A Tale of Two Cities.' Unfortunately, miscommunication with the Jewish Ledger's editor led to this article being published and 'A Tale of Two Cities' being pulled)


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Are Situational Ethics the New Moral Imperative?

Staring at blind man on the corner waiting to cross the street towards the ballpark, those around him oblivious to his plight, I left my son to his autographs and crossed the street to help the gentleman.

Are you oblivious to the plight of those around you?

To rationalize not helping someone in such obvious need as the blind man in front of the ballpark, one need employ situational ethics. “I do the right thing, I am concerned about my fellow man BUT my bus is almost here.” To ignore the blind man’s plight, one must view the man as an “It,” to borrow from Martin Buber, as a thing, as a noun to which we adorn adjectives. The moment we decide to keep to ourselves, we enter into a relationship with the blind man as an object.

How do we traverse the chasm between relating to the man as an “It,” to defining our relationship as one of distance to experiencing the man as a “You,” not an “it?”

Situational ethics.

Situational ethics define our actions. Why would you ignore the blind man? How else do you explain ‘normal’ citizens walking by a beaten man on a New York City Subway? You can’t spare a five spot for the malnourished homeless addict on the corner?

Situational ethics.

When posed with a particularly difficult situation, all of us, at some time in our lives, compromise our ethics. Make no mistake: in certain situations, momentarily augmenting the importance of one ethical standard over another is permitted. When your friend’s wife glances at her twelve week year old daughter and joyfully proclaims to you “Isn’t she cute?” does the situation call for the ethical stalwart of honesty? Should you tactfully convey your firm conviction that her child is not so cute? Or, should you exhibit the emotional intelligence of empathy, ethically bound to preserve the woman’s mental health and feelings of joy?

For a moment, consider the tenuous predicament of Temple Beth El mentioned in last issues Urban Drash. To refresh your memory, the word ‘Jew’ was spray painted on the back of TBE’s religious school in November 2010. The red spray paint remained on the religious school for three weeks before TBE’s facilities manager removed the defacement. According to sources at TBE, the city dragged their feet in removing the graffiti. Whether the police department failed to view the graffiti, necessary before removal, OR, the person responsible for graffiti removal was not dispatched after an official police assessment, those facts remain uncertain.

What we know as fact is an anti-Semitic act occurred at Temple Beth El which was dealt with in a slow manner geared to hush any publicity.

Is Temple Beth El obligated to publicize the incident, exhaustively investigate, and use an unfortunate event as a profound teaching tool?
Is following the moral law to teach from an unfortunate incident self defeating? Does moral law change such that TBE’s actions in the day of Synagogues as business are permissible?
Or does TBE have a moral imperative to employ situation ethics? Should TBE let reason and pure logic guide their response and purposely sweep the event under a rug?

Make no mistake, Synagogues are businesses and need to be operated as such. TBE made a concerted decision to not publicize an event few know about because unwanted, uncontrolled publicity would adversely affect membership: bad publicity is bad for business. Instead of speaking loud, they whispered in closed circles. Rather than inform the community, they chose to remain quiet.

Although TBE properly employed the moral imperative in this situation, I am reminded of my college admissions essay that asked to focus on a song that echoed your world view. I began the essay describing a record player playing Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence, the lyrics as clear today as they were twenty five years ago: “Silence like a cancer grows.”

Is silence ever the answer?
The moral imperative says yes!