Teaching Materials
Shmooze
Teaching Materials
Would you consider a 17 year old German in 1941 morally responsible for choosing to become a member of the Hitler Youth?
No one is born and raised in a vacuum.
If you were born into a Shiite family in Iran, you would most likely view the State of Israel with a certain degree of animosity. If you were born into a Jewish family in Jerusalem, you would most likely view Israel as your physical and spiritual homeland.
If everyone is affected by social conditioning, how can anyone be morally responsible for his or her actions? Why should a 17-year-old German youth be held morally responsible for choosing to join the Hitler Youth party? Wasn't he socially conditioned right from the start to dislike Jews? Was he ever exposed to any other belief system? Besides, all his friends are joining!
Yet the world does hold Nazis accountable.
Why?
Every child naturally absorbs the beliefs and values of his environment. We are all socially conditioned to think a certain way. So many of us think our beliefs are the right ones when, in fact, they are merely an accident of birth.
Social conditioning is not a strong, rational basis for values. Think how different your beliefs would be if you grew up in another society. Breaking out of the confines of your upbringing and re-examining the foundations of your beliefs is the first step to becoming a true thinking individual. Without questioning and verifying the validity of your ingrained values, you can never know if your positions are correct. You cannot call your opinions your own. You are just a puppet of society, an intellectual automaton.
Dr. Stanley Milgrom, of Yale University, ran an experiment where participants thought they were testing the role of punishment in learning. Every time the student - who in fact was Milgom's collaborator - made a mistake in memorizing a list of words, the real subject of the experiment was asked to push a button, giving increasingly strong electric shocks. (Unbeknownst to him, no actual shock was given.)
The majority of participants reached the point of knowingly administering fatal doses of electrical current, believing they may have killed the student. Yet they submitted to the authority figure telling them to proceed with the experiment rather than defy him.
Milgrom's experiment demonstrates that you don't have to be sadistic or deranged to put people into gas chambers. You can be completely normal and just not independent enough to question the morality of what you are told to do.
We are all responsible for choosing our beliefs, whether we grew up in Germany in 1941 or in North America in the new millenium. Without the strength to question authority and to defy the prevalent norms, evil is within everyone's grasp. It's just a matter of time and circumstance.
Yesterday's German youth and today's terrorist are both responsible for their actions, despite their social conditioning. Instead of actively questioning their society, they chose to remain passive.
Being a Jew means questioning your social conditioning, striving to be individuals of integrity, searching for truth. Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, became the first Jew because he had the independence and courage to question his pagan surroundings. He rose above his idolatrous upbringing, went against his entire society and proclaimed his belief in one God.
With independence as fierce as Abraham's, comes the liberation of the self.
IN SUMMARY
- Everyone is conditioned by society to accept a certain set of beliefs, whether that society is Nazi Germany, Syria or Long Island.
- Social conditioning is never a valid basis for one's convictions.
- Everyone is morally responsible to develop independent thinking, reevaluating the foundations of his beliefs and searching for truth.
- Without the strength to question authority and to resist prevalent norms, perpetrating evil is within everyone's ability - it's just a matter of time and circumstance.
Excerpted from Shmooze: Thought Provoking Discusssion on Essential Jewish Issues.
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Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith is the co-editor of Aish.com and director of Research and Development for Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem. He is the author of Shmooze: A Guide to Thought-Provoking Discussion on Essential Jewish Issues. |
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