Hello,
Yashar Koach for this question.
I understand well the desire, the curiosity, and the tremendous issue of following other people’s lives, primarily those that have a monumental story in their past.
Despite this,
It is not sensitive nor delicate behavior, and it is contradictory to the good values that a person must follow when engaging with others.
The Torah as well prohibits this by saying “a slanderer should not walk amongst your nation”, of which one of the meanings of this prohibition is the words of King Shlomo in Sefer Mishlei, “a slanderer goes about – revealing secrets”.
Man’s personal life is his own, and when we invade his privacy we perform two perversions of justice:
First is the damage to his life, and the matters which he wishes to live through alone without others discovering what is going on with him. When we are dealing with the low points of one’s life the violation is much worse, for we are talking about one of the aspects of embarrassment of others;
Second is the fact that we ourselves have become nosy people who involve ourselves in the lives of others, and all of this comes at the expense of working on ourselves.
Therefore, it is our obligation to withdraw from this drive to pursue gossip, and it is best to avoid it altogether, both for those who are being documented and for us.
Only when dealing with matters of which their publicity serves the ones being publicized, and primarily when the matter is done with their consent – is it permissible to deviate from the norm.
In general, Torat Yisrael does not recognize “the right of the public to know”. It very much recognizes “the responsibility of the public to know”. It is, however, difficult to determine the precise boundaries of this, but there is no doubt that constant pursuit of documentation is not in our purview to know.
If only we all could avoid this and allow the victims amongst us their personal lives without invading their privacy, and only when there is a genuine need would we deviate from this principle. The obligation to do so is first and foremost on the media, and this is a call to significantly limit their publications, but also for all of us.
All the best and Yashar koach,
Rabbi Yuval Cherlow
Head of the Tzohar Ethics Center
