Mensch•Mark For Tishrei 5: Quoting One's Sources - Omer Davar BeShem Omro
Judaism puts a premium on honesty & authenticity. Presenting our own work and crediting the work of others is an important step in the direction of presenting - and discovering - who we really are.
About the Mensch•Mark Series
The Talmudic tractate Avot, 6:6 provides a roadmap as to how to live an ethical life. This passage includes 48 middot (measures) through which we can “acquire Torah.” See the full list here. For each of these days of reflection, running from the first of Elul through Yom Kippur, I’m highlighting one of these middot, in order to assist each of us in the process of soul searching (“heshbon ha-nefesh”).
We recall today the first anniversary of 10/7/23. May the memories of all the departed be for a blessing, and may all hostages soon be returned to their home in safety.
Today’s Middah:
Quoting One's Sources - Omer Davar BeShem Omro
One would think that simply quoting sources would not be considered such a premium mitzvah. But it’s right up there. The rabbis understood the need for integrity and authenticity in the presentation of oneself and imparting knowledge. That’s why the quote from Avot cited below is among the first any rabbi learns. And now, in an A.I. era, this has even become more important. So, should a rabbi credit A.I. if Chat GPT is used to put together sermons? My answer: absolutely. Only we should be very careful not to use AI for composition in the first place, only, carefully, for research.
URJ’s Take:
Text
"Whoever repeats a statement in the name of the one who said it brings redemption to the world." (Avot 6:6)Commentary
The sages deemed it so imperative that credit should be given for another's ideas that they identified the act as a cause for redemption, both communal and personal. (Midrash Shmuel) In the Pirkei Avos Treasury, a verse from the Book of Esther is used to illustrate this understanding of the Text. "As it is said: "And Esther said to the king in the name of Mordechai". (Esther 2:22) When Mordechai uncovered a plot to assassinate King Ahasuerus, he reported it to Queen Esther. She in turn related it to the King in the name of Mordechai, and the act of loyalty to the king was recorded in the royal chronicles. Later, when Ahasuerus sought to reward Mordechai, Haman "happened" to be present and was charged with honoring his archenemy Mordechai. That was the beginning of Haman's downfall and the subsequent salvation of the Jews. Thus, the commentary suggests that repeating something in the name of the original source was the catalyst for redemption. (Pirkei Avos Treasury, p. 425)The word we use to describe "the use or imitation of the language, ideas, and thoughts of another author, and representation of them as one's original work" is plagiarism. (Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language). The Talmudic sages issues a specific warning against plagiarism, stating that not only should one refuse to pass off as his/her own whatever he/she has heard from others, thus falsely taking credit for someone else's statement, but he/she should also mention by name the person from whom he/she heard it, thus displaying indebtedness to the source. (Tiferes Yisrael)
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin suggests that a person involved in a discussion has two possible motives for interjecting a new fact or insight: to help bring the participants to a deeper understanding of the issue under discussion, and/or to impress everyone with his or her intelligence. If a person presents as his/her own an intelligent observation that he/she learned from another, then it would seem that it was done to impress everyone with how smart he or she is. But if that person cites the source from which he/she learned this information, then it would seem that the motive was to deepen everyone's understanding. Rabbi Telushkin concludes that a world in which people share information and insights to advance understanding and not just to advance themselves is one well on its way to redemption. (Telushkin, The Book of Jewish Values. p. 93)
Repeating something in the name of the one who said it is considered a great source of merit for that person - even after his or her passing. Tradition has it that the lips of the deceased move in the grave when one of his/her ideas is repeated. (Talmud, Yevamot)
My Take: Harvard’s President, Attribution and Authenticity
It should also be noted that when Harvard's president resigned last winter, the reason was not her regrettable testimony to Congress and lack of conviction in condemning antisemitism. It was for her betrayal of strict academic standards of truth and attribution in her prior work. While I do not think her testimony before Congress warranted dismissal - a clear change of course in dealing with antisemitism on campus would have been much more constructive - I do think it's no small thing to ask our community leaders to stand up for truth. The Talmudic rabbis were absolutely obsessed about attribution. As we have seen in Pirke Avot, Whoever repeats a statement in the name of the one who said it brings redemption to the world. (Avot 6:6). That's a pretty big deal.
So yes, the accusations that led to Claudine Gay's resignation were impeachable - just not the ones many Jews have been focusing on. It's about truth. Veritas. Or as they say at Brandeis, Emet.
Here's what I wrote about the word Emet in 2014:
I spoke about A.I on Rosh Hashanah 2023. I could not have imagined in 1990 that within my lifetime, not only would the whole concept of truth be subverted, but that humanity would be subsumed by a world of artificiality and deception. As I stated in that sermon:
A.I. is built on a premise that artificiality can appear real, that a mechanical construct can fool us into believing that it is sentient. And even when it learns from its mistakes and spews out more facts, it is still fake. We must stand up for the primacy of the real.
As we move forward through uncharted waters, we need to maintain our independence of thought and understand that, in the words of Pamela Meyer in her TED talk:
Lying is a cooperative act. Think about it, a lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.
Ultimately, we have the power to affirm, protect and defend truth. This year, more than ever, we need to do just that.
See this passage on Being Authentic, adapted from a 2008 Yom Kippur sermon ) (Yes, I’m crediting myself)
We hate fakers. When Jayson Blair plagiarized and besmirches the name of the New York Times, it bothers us. And it is so easy to plagiarize these days – as simple as cut and paste – so easy that many student papers now have to be vetted by online scanners before their professors will read them. As one high school senior told Westhill’s newspaper “The Westword” last year, “Cheating has become the norm to maintain the status quo. It’s so ingrained in our lives; half the time we don’t even realize the implications of our actions. It doesn’t seem immoral on the surface—you do what you have to.”
According to research from the Society for Human Resource Managers, 53% of people lie on their résumé in some way. And I’m not proud to confess that I just lifted that entire last sentence from Forbes.com.
Last spring, a Time magazine article entitled “Ten ideas that are changing the world,” featured a consulting firm called the Aurora Group, whose leaders, James Gilmore and Joseph Pine are preaching to businesses the gospel of authenticity. "The dominant reason people buy today is their perception of what's real or fake," Gilmore told an Ohio newspaper. "Reality ain't what it used to be."
Gilmore's book, "Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want," has spent a good deal of time at the top of business book sales charts. It speaks of how we are moving from what he calls a “service culture” to an “experience culture.” Customers want to be engaged personally. The only problem is that he is teaching businesses how to LOOK authentic, not necessarily to BE authentic. So what’s authentic about that?
I picked up a cute little spoof at Barnes and Noble a couple of months ago, because its title seemed to fit in with this sermon: it’s called Faking it: How to Seem Like a Better Person Without Actually Improving Yourself. “The important thing isn’t who you ARE,” this book reminds us, “it’s who other people THINK you are.”
No wonder we’ve seen the revival this year of the old saying, “Fake it ‘til you make it.”
There is something to be said for faking it ‘til you make it. Twelve step programs utilize that principle, and it also is used by motivators to build self esteem. If you pretend to have self confidence and repeat an activity enough times, that confidence eventually kicks in. It also works with Jewish observance. Our ancestors at Sinai said “Na’ase v’nishma,” meaning we will do and THEN, we will understand.
Sometimes we have to suspend disbelief before beginning to observe a new mitzvah, like lighting candles, for example – and eventually that mitzvah will gain meaning for us.
But there are limits to faking it. I can recall once when I was having Shabbat dinner at the home of a family with elementary school aged children. We began with the kids reciting the blessings – the Kiddush, the Motzi - flawlessly. As I remarked at how impressed I was with their knowledge of the blessings, the mother said to me, “We’re making memories.” The implication being that the dinner was somewhat staged so that the kids would recall it later on, when they grew up. That’s admirable, but for these memories to indeed be indelible, they have to be of events that are in and of themselves meaningful, and not merely staged for future reference. It’s got to be more than just for the children.
In other words, it’s not about LEAVING your legacy so much as LIVING your legacy.
With so many people passing themselves as something they aren’t, we now can understand why Yom Kip-purim, which literally can be translated as “a day like Purim,” is considered the antidote to that holiday that seems its polar opposite. On Purim we put on masks. On Yom Kippur, we take them off. Tonight’s service begins with a painful admission:
Ah…God? All those vows we took last year – and the ones we’re about to make this coming year – well, God, we didn’t mean it!! Sorry! All the promises we made are not really promises. We simply couldn’t keep them.
In America we have a word for that these days, unfortunately: a mortgage (written in 2008). But it points out, from the very beginning of the Yom Kippur service, that we are putting up with no fakery here. Today the masks come off. Today only complete transparency will do! We know that we’re going to make pledges that we will not be able to keep, like those Jews who pretended to have converted in medieval Europe in order to save their lives. We take our promises seriously – and we acknowledge our imperfections openly.…