Erev Ki Tetze 5770 Privacy Rabbi Dr Andrew Goldstein 20 August 2010

This week’s Torah portion has in it more mitzvot than any other, and most of them have a modern relevance or interpretation or sound as if commenting on the modern situation or the news of the week.  It’s a fine problem, for a part time, out of practice, rabbi to choose which subject to chose.  It could be rules of war, execution by stoning for adulterers (or even out of control children).  It could be animal welfare and ecology, health and safety or marriage and divorce, and yes, not taking birds from a nest with the mother sitting on them.  Just look up Deuteronomy 21:10 – 25:19 and see them all.

The one I have chosen sprang out at me when somebody rang to enquire why I had not answered their email.  I said I had not seen it, but they replied, but I notice you have opened it.  In truth I had, but not read it….and then I thought: where is this all leading?  Once when somebody sent you a good old enveloped stamped letter, they could pay extra to get proof of delivery, but they couldn’t track whether you had opened the envelope or actually read their missive!

Oh. I know I’m old fashioned, but I get twitchy when asked for 4 letters and 2 numbers and they know immediately where I live as soon as I say HA6 1DW. And of course they can use this once secret code to switch on their in-car sat-nav or now, their blackberry and find the exact geographical location of my house: longitude & latitude to the 5th decimal point.  And go to Google & see if I have mowed the lawn.

The verses:  Deuteronomy 24:10-11:  “When you make a loan of any sort to your neighbour, you must not enter their house to seize their pledge.  You must remain outside, while the person to whom you made the loan brings the pledge out to you.”

Rabbi Elliot Dorff comments: “These verses are striking in their simplicity and their sheer humanity. Even though, as the lender, you may be in a superior economic and social position, you must respect the borrower by safeguarding his privacy and his honor in the eyes of his family.”  My first thought as we approach difficult financial times ahead, particularly for the poor, but also the middle classes, I wonder how the authorities out to redeem their property or unpaid goods, how they will  behave:  with understanding or viciousness?  I hope the Coalition Governments decision this week to outlaw car clampers on private land is but an example of a decision to ensure society is fairer to the individual, especially those sometimes in unfortunate circumstances.  Let’s wait and see.

But its privacy that is my subject.  Technological advances have advanced with such speed that it is increasingly difficult to “mind your own business”.  The details of our finances and insurances are shared electronically. What we buy at Tesco is know by some distant computer before we get the shopping out of the store.  Our Oyster Card or Freedom Pass records our every journey; our mobile phone calls our whereabouts, even when we are not talking, or so it seems.  Cameras record our every movement, in and out of shops, yes and when you entered this shul tonight.  And I have just read two thrillers based on hackers finding out detailed information about individuals, information they thought safely private.  And I know such plots are not just fiction.

What does it matter?  It is not mentioned amongst the famous Rights of Man, and indeed the right to privacy is now tested in courts especially by film stars and moguls.  And it is a two sided debate.  Investigative journalists have uncovered great crimes and mistakes of governments and commercial companies.  And yet the intrusion into the private lives of politicians and other leaders or media people can really ruin careers and lives as we have so often and increasingly seen.  Once there were unwritten but accepted boundaries, now no more and it is difficult to see how to put back the balance.

Going back to the mitzvah in the Torah, the concept of privacy is linked to human dignity. The right to privacy and dignity a commandment of the Torah  This week we saw the general agreement with the aim to have single sex wards in British hospitals. And privacy has to do with ones individuality and ones freedom of thought and private behaviour. 

Today is 10th Elul; only 20 days to Rosh Hashanah. Jews still gather in their hordes to halls that are nearly empty all year round, but for 2 days crammed to the seams.  We stand shoulder to shoulder and yet the aim is to stand as an individual before God.  We confess our sins, but not to a confessor, we do it out loud, but so that others cannot know what we are saying or thinking.  The brilliance of the liturgy is that we recite our sins in unison, the whole congregation together.  We recite our sins, some we can recall committing, some that we could never conceive of having committed or ever committing, yet we repeat them in order to maintain the privacy of the person standing crushed up against us.  A brilliant liturgical ploy that allows us to voice out loud our concerns yet identify them only in the privacy of our hearts and minds, a place that nobody except ourselves can enter.

I pray that in these coming High Holydays you can find time when standing in the crowd to have your own private moments in those moments find yourself anew and please God find God is with you as the only intruder.