Playing Telephone is for Children
One of the things I love about the Beit Midrash of Teaneck (BMT) is the plethora of scholars who grace us with their presence. Some deliver on-going classes, others just a lecture or two (or four). Yet attendees are grateful to, and benefit from, all who share their knowledge and erudition with us.
But I have my favorites. One is Rabbi Nathaniel (Nati) Helfgot, a local congregational rabbi and preeminent thinker, writer, and educator, especially on Bible topics. Indeed, I’m careful not to schedule doctors’ appointments when he gives BMT’s Parshat HaShavuah (weekly Torah portion) class. (In this column’s first draft, I included a list of other BMT favorites. An ounce of discretion, however, left that on the cutting room floor.) Recently, R. Helfgot gave an illuminating presentation on the Book of Bamidbar (Numbers), and an interaction we had during that class inspired this column.
After analyzing Bamidbar’s overall structure, R. Helfgot raised a question about that analysis. As my fellow classmates know, I’m a firm believer in classroom participation (some probably think a bit too heavy on participation), and I quickly proffered an answer. Smiling, R. Helfgot noted that I jumped the gun, and then discussed an answer from the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, that was quite similar to mine (or, really, vice versa).
That baruch shekivanti moment with respect to a Torah idea the Rav had previously given made my day, indeed week. (Baruch shekivanti – blessed [is the One] who has directed me [to a previously articulated opinion] – is a phrase many use when they discover they independently arrived at a thought that someone greater than they had expressed earlier.) But beyond the cute self-congratulation, what I found especially interesting and moving was that R. Helfgot also noted that he didn’t learn this answer from one of the Rav’s students or read it in an article. Rather, as a 20-year-old friend of one of the Rav’s grandsons, he once had the serendipitous privilege to learn Torah directly with the Rav one Shabbat afternoon where this question and answer were discussed.
One lesson that was drilled into my head as a litigator, and which I tried to instill into my clients as I prepared them to give testimony, was the meaning and significance of firsthand knowledge. I carefully instructed them that when being questioned by the opposing attorney, they “know” a fact only if they experienced it through one of their five senses. Thus, R. Helfgot’s firsthand testimony that this was the Rav’s answer, based on what he heard directly from the Rav, clearly would pass muster in court. He knew the Rav said it, and we can rely on that.
That’s not necessarily true of other things we hear about great people. Too often they’re second- or third-hand (or more), which leaves us wondering whether they were actually said by or occurred to the named person. One of my favorite examples is the story of the learned rabbi who, while watching his wife clean the kitchen for Passover, told her (unasked) that a number of difficult tasks she was performing were not required by the Shulchan Aruch, the Code of Jewish Law. “Get out of my kitchen,” she supposedly told him, “before you and your Shulchan Aruch treif it up.” Did it really happen? Maybe, but I heard it attributed to at least three different rabbis across generations.
It’s not only rabbis who fall prey to having words they never said put in their mouths. I like to sprinkle my columns and their titles with quotations, and, using my legal training, I cite check them. Often, however, though there might be dozens of Google hits attributing a particular quotation to a specific individual, they’re second-hand. And further investigation sometimes reveals that the attribution is incorrect. To paraphrase what Yogi said (really), they never said many of the things they said.
I have a favorite example here as well. I wanted to use the following quote (regular readers should understand why), which is almost universally ascribed to Ghandi: “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” Problem: this quote can’t be found anywhere in Ghandi’s writings or speeches. Indeed, one article that debunked this erroneous attribution added that it was actually Hubert Humphrey who said something very similar in a November, 1977 speech: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
That settles that, I thought. Except, ironically, it did just the opposite. Descending down a Google rabbit hole, searching, unsuccessfully, for a firsthand news report of Humphrey’s speech, I found what I thought was an even better prooftext: two typewritten copies of the speech, one of which appears to be the delivery copy containing Humphrey’s handwritten additions and emphasis notations. Neither copy, however, contains the quotation ascribed to him. Bottom line: Two terrific quotes with author(s) unknown.
Why is this important? The most elementary reason is because truth is important. While the truths of the quotes themselves are, in many ways, dependent on their own internal merit, the fact that people like Ghandi or Humphrey, a personal political hero of mine, said them is an important data point. Moreover, dropping our guard to say it’s not really important who said something, results in further guard-dropping to say that the exact words are also not that important. One end result of this chipping away at the edges of truth are paraphrases and misquotations which often are, as in the old children’s game of telephone, completely different from the originals.
Quotation marks matter; they tell us that what’s written between them are the exact words – the exact ones! – that were used. Accuracy matters. Truth matters. If we don’t care about those basic values, we end up using AI to do work humans should do, resulting in lawyers being sanctioned for ethics violations for submitting legal briefs containing cases that are AI hallucinations. Getting it right is really the right thing to do.
One final personal and somewhat related complaint about (mis)quotations. I love getting feedback on my columns, As I’ve previously written, while I prefer readers telling me how much they agree with me (I’m only human after all), I also appreciate disagreement. What I very much do not appreciate, however, are non-civil or insulting responses and, relevant to this column, people disagreeing with something I did not write. I have a thick skin; it’s okay to tell me that something I wrote was wrong. But please don’t tell me how wrong I was about something I did not say.
I sometimes drive my overly patient editor a bit nuts when I strew my quotes, in true Bluebook style, with brackets and ellipses. I do it not only out of habit but also because I want my readers to know that even if they don’t agree with the point I’m making, they can rely on the facts upon which I’ve based my argument. And I also want Judy and Jim and Alan and Ed to know that their teaching was not in vain, and that even in retirement there’s still a litigator lurking somewhere inside my columnist identity. A columnist-litigator who appreciates that the values and ethics of the courtroom also apply outside it; who knows that quotation marks are sacrosanct; who understands that accuracy counts.
A columnist-litigator who still deeply believes that truth matters.
