That Hidden Camera...

Eagle Eye Hidden Camera

Frequently at work I come across women, teenage girls or women dressing young girls in what they presume are hidden places in the store.  I can't just ignore it. So I warn them:

"You should be aware of the fact that there are cameras all over here, and people are watching.  You're not in a private place.  We do have dressing rooms for trying on clothes."

Sometimes it stops them, and sometimes it doesn't.  But I wouldn't feel right without saying something to warn them.

I've been meaning to blog about this for the longest time.  We're in the Month of Ellul, the month of Teshuva, Repentance, when we're supposed to be extra mindful of the fact that G-d observes every act we do and every thought we think. G-d has His "security camera" observing us every second.

This morning I saw that the OU sent out an article by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb in which he mentions this as his Parshat Shavua and Ellul message.

The Shulchan Aruch, the Jewish code of law, opens with a statement recognizing that a person's behavior, when he is alone at home, is very different from his behavior when he appears before a great king. And it urges the religious person to be aware that he is always in the presence of the great King of Kings, the all-knowing God.
But it is not only from a spiritual perspective that it is wrong to act demeaningly in private. There is a practical aspect as well to the importance of behaving properly even in secret. There always is the very real possibility that our secrets will be "leaked" and that things we were sure would never be known will become embarrassingly exposed.
I know of no place where this is conveyed more cogently than in these words of caution, to be found in Ecclesiastes (10:20):
Don't revile a king, even in your intimate thoughts.
Don't revile a rich man, even in your bedchamber;
For a bird of the air may carry the utterance,
And a winged creature may report the word.
Indeed, as our Sages say (Berachot 8b), the walls have ears.
...
But many times, we go too far and indeed split our personalities between the Dr. Jekylls of our external visible behavior and the Mr. Hydes of our inner sancta. How well advised we would be to set as an objective for ourselves the words of the Daily Prayer Book:
"A person should always be God-fearing,
privately and publicly,
acknowledging the truth and speaking it in his heart."

Only G-d sees what we really are.  G-d sees through everything.  We can't hide our faces, actions and thoughts from G-d.  That's why when we hear that someone has died we say, "Baruch Dayan Ha'emet," "Blessed is the True Judge."

It doesn't matter what costume or uniform we have worn throughout our lives. G-d sees the truth, the אמת emet.  For the longest time, I've seen the word אמת truth as אמות amute, I will die.  That is the final, ultimate truth.  Someday we will all die, whether we want to or feel ready to or wished we had died sooner.

And on that day, the day we die, G-d will make His final judgment about how we lived our lives.  Will we be rewarded or punished?

The Month of Ellul and the early days of Tishrei, Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur are our "dress rehearsals" for the big show.  Every year G-d does His accounting, the subtotal of our lives, our deeds.  It's our chance, the big reminder to wipe clean our slates, get into practice, do some good spiritual housekeeping while we still have some control.

Let's remember that there's no hiding from G-d, the All Seeing and All Knowing.  Remember that the only ones we can change are ourselves.

Shabbat Shalom u'Mevorach

May You Have a Peaceful and Blessed Shabbat

Those Hidden Cameras, Catching the Boston Marathon Bombers, Almost Like the Book "Act of Treason"

Innocuous, hidden cameras are all around us.  I tell customers who are dressing/trying on clothes or undressing/dressing their kids in a corner of the store where I work that there are people watching and filming them.  It's actually no secret that there are cameras all around.  There's a screen alternating the various camera feeds for all to see at the קופה ראשית Cupah Roshit, "mini-office," customer relations corner in between the entrance and exit of the Sha'ar Binyamin Rami Levy supermarket.  They've recently upgraded to color from blurry black and white, so I asked jokingly to the manager of the shift if I should now start worrying about wearing makeup to work.

Just a couple of days ago when the American security authorities began asking the public who had been taking pictures of the Boston Marathon at the time of the bombing for all pictures, still and moving, so they could try to get a filmed record of what happened and who could have left the bombs, I thought of a book I had recently read, Act of Treason by Vince Flynn.

In Flynn's book, the fact that someone had placed himself behind a pole (or was it a tree?) at the time of the fatal explosion made one of investigators suspicious and ended up being the key to the successful investigation.  That summary of the book doesn't do it justice.  I did enjoy reading it but had to throw it out, since my copy was old and falling apart.  Who would have thought that just a couple of months after I had read the book, it would be so timely?

Most of us are totally oblivious to the fact that in today's world there are security cameras all over.  And even if there aren't security cameras, there are other cameras filming us.  I remember reading that a philanderer was caught cheating when his wife saw him with another woman when they were watching the then popular Woody Allen movie Annie Hall.  Allen had filmed some real life street scenes, without asking each and every person's permission and inadvertently included that man driving around with his lover.

Some food for thought...
Someone is watching us all of the time.  Why are we more afraid of being filmed and spied on by humans than the fact that G-d sees, hears and knows everything we do, all places and all times?  We can't hide from G-d, even though men can't always catch and punish the guilty...