[Avodah] Even More on How the Torah Portrays Great Men

[T613K at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/9/2008, Larry.Levine at stevens.edu writes:

>>That author's brother, R' Mordkhai  Schwab, however, had a negative view of 
"story tell-when he told me, "The  Satmarer Rav, R' Yoilish Teitelbaum, never 
told 'stories ' because he  said, 'You cannot educate through lies  
[shekar].''' R' Mordkhai agreed with R' Yoilish in reference  to stories intended to 
glorify their principals while dehumanizing them.  <<



>>>>
My understanding of what the SR said was not,  "Tell the truth, warts and 
all" but "DON'T make up stories that never happened  or add embellishments to 
make the mofes greater."
 
There's a story going around the internet right now about an Iranian ship  
loaded with radioactive sand that was supposed to be blown up off the coast of  
Israel, so the sand would blow all over Israel, and miraculously the ship was  
boarded by Somalian pirates who started dying in droves, thus the plot was  
uncovered and the Israelis were saved and this all happened on Yom Kippur!   
Amazing story!  Radioactive sand!  What a load!
 
Somebody thought that this story would inspire people but there is no  
justification to disseminate sheker.  If you want to write an inspiring  work of 
fiction it must be clearly labeled as fiction.
 
Where the gray area comes in is when you write a true story about somebody  
but you leave out everything that can be construed as negative.  At what  point 
do the omissions themselves so alter the story that it is no longer  "truth"? 
 There's no clear one-size-fits-all answer to this question.   BTW we just 
enjoyed an amazing election campaign in which the press demonstrated  that it 
/can/ ignore and omit all negatives when it wants to and that "Dan  lekaf zechus 
-- no matter what!" /can/ be a working principle of the working  press.  Some 
issues really are black and white.
 


--Toby  Katz
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