I imagine there are those who believe that a decadent environment at work or school will not erode a lifetime of proper education. I was also ambivalent on the matter until my friend David, who has had a rather successful career in Hollywood, related how the glamour comes with a price.
David was working on a set with top-dollar actors, and a knot of cameramen, sound grips, other technicians, producers, directors and production assistants. It was a talented and seasoned group of individuals skilled at their craft, experts in cinematic-perfection – but not renowned for their sterling character or refinement of tongue.
After being in their company and exposed to their language for several long, hectic and frazzled days, David came home and his infirm wife made a request. His exceptionally atypical response was, “I am not your %#@*ing slave!”
The audience gasped, indeed yelped, and David actually cupped his mouth as he uttered the phrase. I am talking about an extraordinarily kind man and a very loving husband who heaps affection upon his family in industrial quantities. And yet, and yet, he was victimized by his environment.
Although we cannot always govern where we work or find ourselves, or perhaps specifically because we cannot, the very first verse in Tehillem exhorts, “Fortunate is the person who doesn’t follow the advice of the wicked, who doesn’t associate with sinful people and who does not spend time with scoffers.” (Scoffers are cynics who make all efforts at goodness seem pointless.)
The advice of Psalms is that people of bad character can readily influence those in their surroundings to become like them. Any undesirous disposition, like a disease, is contagious. The nature of contagion is that it does not discriminate.
Bad character will affect and ruin children from good homes as much as it will decay those already on the slide. Children from good homes who suddenly engage in self-destructive or felonious behavior like taking or selling drugs did not learn this around the Shabbos table. Bad companions have a far more puissant influence than good company. This is why it is far more common to hear of teenagers influenced by their peers to start taking drugs than you hear of those who have been influenced to curtail the practice.
As the Sefer HaChinuch famously declares, “A person is influenced by his environment.” This can work for the good or the bad; but it works more powerfully for the bad. The example that resonates for me, as politically incorrect as it is, relates to the fact that President Barak Obama – who five months before his first presidential bid withdrew his membership from the church presided over by Pastor Jeremiah Wright – was an active member of Wright’s community for 20 years.
Pastor Wright married the Obamas and baptized their children. The title of Obama’s 2006 memoir, The Audacity of Hope, was inspired by a sermon Wright delivered as was his 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention. The influence of weekly exposure to a man who preached anti-white and anti-American rhetoric, awarded a lifetime achievement award to Louis Farrakhan, the virulent, anti-Semitic racist, has got to be more than just a book title and an address.
Barak Obama is as flesh and blood as any other human being, and people are influenced by those whose company they keep. It would be outrageously naïve to believe that you can hear your religious leader preach on a weekly basis and not be influenced.
Certainly the readers of this column know how much the words of a rabbi or darshan influence for the good. A negative influence, as explained, is always stronger than a good influence. Joseph Telushkin elaborates upon what is not naturally obvious. “If we choose this profession [criminal defense lawyer] we should be aware that we will be spending a large amount of time with many people who have concluded that the Ten Commandments do not apply to them.”
Chodesh Tov – have a pleasant month!