FEEDING THE APPETITE FOR SCHADENFREUDE

A recent edition of an online Jewish periodical poked fun at a prominent rabbi who was caught propositioning an illicit sexual act (not pedophilia) in a public place. Good for a cheap laugh. Good for self-proliferating email distribution and a yuk around the dinner table. Good for feeding the public’s insatiable appetite for schadenfreude – taking delight in another’s undoing.

Perhaps in this open and unrelenting society, comedy was in order. Winding up as a one-liner in a Leno monologue or a Letterman Top Ten list has become part of the ritual of public purgatory, if not a bullet on the 15-minute pop chart.

Call me a sourpuss, but let me give this pants-down scene a different perspective: Despite the rabbi’s willful misdeed, this situation was a tragedy, not a Seinfeld sketch. A once-respected leader capitulated to misbegotten lust. Who knows the demons at work in his soul? Who knows the conflicts that tormented his conscience? All we do really know is that he is already suffering all the grief he deserved and then some. He is likely to have forfeited his job, his marriage, his esteem, his clerical authority, his ability to walk down the street without facing murmured scorn or derision.

And yes, perhaps he deserves all that. But, after society has meted out its explicit and implicit punishments, who will be there to give a modicum of solace and encouragement to a hurting, isolated, failed man who gave in to impulses that bespeak tortured unwholeness, not criminality? Who will comfort him, show him some understanding, restore his sense of self-worth?

It will not be a psychotherapist at $200 a session. It will, and must, be a person of exceptional compassion, tolerance and insight. Perhaps someone who has himself been humbled by scandal or impropriety, who knows the internal conflicts and lurking demons, a “wounded healer,” who has gained a great ability in comprehend others' troubles thanks to the awareness of his own pain.

Having mercy on a person who has suffered undeservedly is, sadly, a rare quality in our contentious, calloused society. Having mercy, or even understanding, to one who had done wrong and deserved punishment is even more exceptional. Yet, anyone who has been there knows that everyone needs someone by his side, someone who may loathe the sin yet acknowledge the humanity of the sinner.

“Everyone needs someone,” you say? Even Hitler and child murderers and cold-blooded killers? To that I have no rational answer, but I do have an existential one that I learned from Elie Weisel. I was privileged to have coffee with Weisel at the time that Ivan (“The Terrible”) Demjanjuk was on trial. Knowing his staunch opposition to capital punishment, I asked Weisel if his opposition extended to Demjanjuk, et al. “No,” he said. “That’s different.” He did not elaborate, and there was a note of finality to his voice. It said, “This should not require further explanation.”

I guess that there is a point of malignant depravity that moves beyond any claim to compassion or even human validation. And I guess that we must rely on some higher instinct with which we are blessed to know where to draw the line. This, however, I do know: Soliciting an illicit sexual act with an otherwise consenting adult is not mass murder. Likewise 99.9 percent of the sins that feed schadenfreude-hungry audiences a steady diet of scandal, titillating innuendo, lush gossip, comedic scripts and unjustified intimations of our own moral superiority.

OK, OK, so we got a good yuk out of a rabbi pathetically getting caught with his pants down. Next week another deserving candidate will be slimed. But, who among us will see tragedy in another’s downfall? Who among us will be there to wipe their tears and ease their burden?

If the public has a right to the comedic dimension of human downfall and moral frailty, then let them know well enough to also see tragedy as tragedy. For, imputing only comedy to a person’s undoing is the greatest tragedy of all.