by Rabbi Dr Seth Grauer

Two weeks ago, I was sitting with my children in Shaarei Shomayim on Motzei Shabbat listening to Shlomo and Eitan Katz and I received a text on my phone from one of our teachers at Or Chaim and Ulpana, Yosef Kurtz, that reads:

I immediately said, ‘Oh no, everyone who sees this might mistakenly think that our students posed for a picture with Conan O’Brien on Shabbat.’ I of course knew the schedule of our students who had gone to NY for Shabbat to participate in an NCSY Jump competition and I knew that this picture had been taken after Shabbat.

In truth, our students had been staying on the East Side and they had walked to the West Side to spend a special Seudah Shlishit at the home of one of our alumni, Sam Meyer (’11), who has partnered with Bnei Akiva of the US and Canada to create and build a home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for Bnei Akiva Bogrim and alumni through a new movement called BABayit.

After Shabbat concluded and our students finished an inspiring Havdalah, our students literally bumped into Conan in Central Park while returning to where they were staying on the East Side.

I immediately texted Mr. Kurtz to inquire if there was a way we could clarify the text and show that the picture was taken after Shabbat and since this was posted on Conan’s Instagram account no such possibility existed.

My concerns ended up being somewhat prophetic because just a day later, Rabbi Gil Student, posted an article on his popular Torah website, Torah Musings, in which he said:

This past Shabbos, a group of Jewish students was walking in Manhattan and bumped into a famous non-Jewish comedian. I don’t know what conversation ensued but when he realized that they could not take selfies with him because of Shabbos, he took a selfie with all of them posing together. He then kindly posted it to his company’s social media account with a note that they could not take the picture themselves because of the Sabbath.

It’s a cute story about cultural sensitivity and kindness. I’m not comfortable with celebrity adulation but I won’t blame misplaced societal priorities on a group of well-meaning teenagers. However, despite the good intentions of everyone involved, I suggest that the entire episode constitutes an unfortunate violation of Shabbos rules and the picture should not be shared. I am not blaming the students for not knowing what to do in this situation. Instead, let’s use this as a teachable moment.

We will accept as a given here that taking a picture on a phone constitutes at least a rabbinic violation of Shabbos. However, in this case the comedian took the picture and he isn’t Jewish. I do not know the nature of the conversation but let’s assume that none of the Jews asked him to take the picture and he generously volunteered to do so. That takes us to a debate in the laws of mikveh preparations.

Rabbi Student then proceeded to write a beautiful Torah discussion around the myriad of issues involved and associated with posing for a picture on Shabbat. As part of the well-written and well-researched discussion, he raises issues such as the act of posing, asking for the picture to be taken versus simply permitting the picture to be taken, using the picture after the fact and even quotes a teshuva from Rabbi Zilberstein in Jerusalem about a family who unfortunately was forced to hold a Bar Mitzvah in a hospital in Israel and later realized that there was tons of wonderful footage that had been taken through security cameras and they wanted to use these videos and pictures to create a post-simcha montage for a keepsake.

“In fact, our students had never posed for a picture on Shabbat.”

The obvious issue and problem with the article though was that it was based completely on a faulty assumption and in fact, our students had never posed for a picture on Shabbat.

In an effort to defend the name and reputation of our students and our school, Mr. Kurtz immediately wrote a letter to Rabbi Student in which he said:

Dear Rabbi Student,

I read the article that was posted on your website regarding the individuals who were “Mechallel Shabbos” by taking a picture with a celebrity on Shabbos. As one of the individuals who was in that picture, I was deeply disturbed. I have researched this topic extensively, and have heard Shiurim from Rav Herschel Schechter and my own Rav in Toronto on taking pictures on Shabbos, and I would never pose for a picture knowingly on Shabbos. A simple look at the date and time that the picture was posted may have given you a clue that this picture was not taken on Shabbos. And besides, why were you not Dan Lekaf Z’chus? Why did you think it was ok to be Choshed B’Ksherim? The comment from the celebrity certainly implies that it was Shabbos, but being that it was dark in the picture, why would you immediately assume that the people in the picture were Mechallel Shabbos?

Hamalbin Es P’nei Chaveiro B’Rabim is far worse than posing for a picture on Shabbos and yet you assume that it is ok to put this online.

In your article, you wrote that you do not know what the conversation was that ensued, so let me enlighten you. The students thanked the celebrity for recently going to Israel and positively highlighting Israel’s contributions to society. They thanked him for showing the world how beautiful Israel was. He requested the selfie and everyone there explained to him that we had just finished the Sabbath so we did not have cameras and then he pulled out his phone and took a picture himself only after clarifying with me that it was ok that they all pose in the picture with him right after the Sabbath. Even to imply in the article that there was celebrity adulation due to misplaced teenager priorities is unequivocally false and hurtful.

I ask that the next time you write an article about people who can be identified and recognized, please be more careful with your research.

Best Regards,

Yosef Kurtz

This past week, I repeated this story after Tefillah one day to our students at Or Chaim and I mentioned that Rabbi Gil Student immediately updated the article on his website to reflect the fact that the picture was not taken on Shabbat, but I told our students that I believe there are a few key lessons which we can take away and learn from this somewhat humorous episode.

At last check, Conan’s Instagram post of our students had over 25 thousand ‘likes.’ For those of you who aren’t that social media literate, that means that at a minimum over 25,000 people have seen this picture and/or discussed it in some way. That is a staggering number which reinforces a message that we consistently deliver and are always speaking to our young men and women about which is: you need to be exceptionally careful with the internet and especially social media. Social media posts have a way of going viral and spreading without any controls and without any way to limit them.

No matter how many times we try and spread this message and sensitize our students to this new reality that we are living in, it never seems to be enough. Conan posted a picture and a day later a rabbi who doesn’t live in Toronto or even Canada wrote an article that could have been read by thousands creating an assumption that our students posed for a picture on Shabbat.

“The message is clear… we need to be so careful with how we use social media.”

The message is clear: social media can be a wonderful tool for connections, relationships, communication and the sharing of information, but we need to be so careful with how we use social media.

The second message that I shared with our students was that we need to be so careful before we jump to conclusions. All of us at different points in our lives make assumptions and draw conclusions based on credible circumstantial evidence and logical arguments. Our assumptions and conclusions are often correct, but at times they are gravely mistaken. While this alone is a problem, what is more concerning is that often when we make these mistakes and draw these incorrect conclusions we never find out about the mistaken impressions that we developed, our beliefs are never corrected and our perspectives are never illuminated.

In this week’s Parsha, Yitzchak built himself a picture and impression of Esav which was gravely mistaken, but gone uncorrected by anyone around him, it ultimately led to the bitter hatred between Yaacov and Esav and subsequent difficult life that Yaacov would lead.

Mr. Kurtz made the point to Rabbi Student that he should have been more careful to check his facts and be dan lekaf zechut – and to his credit Rabbi Student apologized and corrected himself, but I believe there is a much larger and greater lesson to all of us that while we often believe that we are certain and that our picture and understanding of whatever situation or care we are dealing with must be correct, perhaps we are missing some facts and perhaps our perspective is slightly off.

Living life with that sense of humility and recognizing the possibility (however remote) that there might be more going on than we realize will cause much less hurt and much greater long-term clarity and I believe happiness and understanding as well. It is certainly something that we should all strive for.