I’ve been thinking about the widening Long Island SAT cheating scandal, since another 13 people were arrested last week. Now five young men have been charged with taking college board exams on behalf of others, and 15 with hiring them to do so.
It is time to do what Jews do in such scandals: examine the last names. One can never be sure from such circumstantial evidence, but I cannot help noticing that one man arrested for taking the tests has an apparent Persian Jewish name, while two others have common Ashkenazi names. A fourth was an alum of the North Shore Hebrew Academy, an orthodox yeshiva high school. Among those paying the test takers – and these are the real cheaters – two were North Shore Hebrew Academy students.
Bad news for the Jews. It’s a bad indicator of honesty in our corner of society.
What’s so bad about cheating, a particular sub-category of lying? First, cheating on tests violates the general moral principle that one should not receive credit or benefit from work one did not do. Also there is a consequentialist argument: by getting a better score, test cheaters enhance their applications, gaining a leg up in the competition for scarce spaces in school, and diminishing the chances of honest applicants who did nothing wrong.
Moreover, I would focus on the question of personal virtue. Ethics is not only about the deeds one does or the effects of those acts. It is about what makes for virtue, or excellent human character. (In fact, the word ethics comes from ethos,the Greek word for character.) People in general, and religious Jews in particular, should be honest. We should be people of emet. And the Hebrew emet means not only to accurately report the facts, to have our words accurately correspond to external states of affairs. Emet means we should avoid deceit and trickery. We should be sincere (another meaning of emet), with our inner core matching our outer presentation to others.
I don’t mean to rub it in the face of the poor North Shore Hebrew Academy. I’m sure they are mortified at this very public stumble regarding their moral education. I am sure that cheating also could happen in my own kids’ school, which I think is a genuinely moral place. But I am reminded of the Talmud [Berakhot 28a] reports that Rabban Gamliel II tried to bar all the hypocrites and fakes from the Torah academy, admitting only students “whose insides matched their outsides.” Perhaps an elitist demand (for which the Talmud criticizes him) but it is a powerful moral aspiration nonetheless. I hope our Jewish schools educate for that sort of integrity.
People generally – although as a rabbi I am speaking primarily to Jews – should pursue the virtue of this kind of honesty, sincerity and integrity because it is a noble and courageous way to live. You have to face reality as it is, not evade it or skirt your way around it. These young adults have a lot left to learn about life if they cannot reconcile themselves to sub-par SAT scores. I have bad news for you, honey. It’s going to get worse.
But there is always temptation to put one over on someone. With just a little lie, after all, you can really get a leg up against the competition. For this reason, the Sages consider deception as a kind of theft – indeed “the worst kind of theft,” says Tosefta Bava Kamma 7.8 (in Lieberman ed., p. 31. See also Talmud Hullin 94a). Hebrew idiom captures this point: we call deception geneivat da’at, or “stealing the mind.”
Robbing someone of money is bad enough, but a mind is a terrible thing to steal.
- Nedarim, Daf 79 - January 12, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 78 - January 11, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 77 - January 10, 2023