The Zombies, MiDvar Sheker Tirchak, and the Phony Gabbai

New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman)

A recent incident in New York City offers a striking illustration of how deeply deception has become woven into the fabric of modern society. According to a report in the New York Times, a group of some forty actors in Brooklyn answered a casting call seeking people to portray zombies in what was described as a “mock demonstration” for an instructional video. Participants were promised seventy-five dollars to don tattered clothing and have their faces painted. Yet when they arrived at the filming site, the truth emerged: the event was no mock demonstration at all, but a genuine pro-landlord rally organized by an advocacy group, staged to protest a proposed rent freeze outside a city hearing.

The deception cut especially deep because many of the hired actors were themselves renters who would have stood on the opposite side of the very cause they were now marching for. One performer, who said he lives in a rent-stabilized apartment, described the experience of discovering that the craft he loves was being turned against his own interests as deeply disturbing. Another said he would much rather have stood on the other side for free. Several reported feeling pressured to continue even after realizing the truth, having been warned that those who failed to appear would be placed on a “Do Not Cast” list. The casting company’s owner acknowledged that, going forward, his firm would exercise more due diligence — a quiet admission that something had gone wrong.

This episode, mundane as it may seem, opens a window onto a profound Torah principle. The Torah’s prohibition against falsehood is among the most emphatic in all of Scripture. “Midevar sheker tirchak” — “Distance yourself from a false matter” (Shemos 23:7). The Gemara (Shevuos 30b-31a) derives numerous halachos from this single phrase, and it is noteworthy that the Torah does not merely say “do not lie.” Regarding no other prohibition does the Torah employ the language of distancing. As the Sefer HaChinuch (Mitzvah 74) and numerous Rishonim observe, sheker is so corrosive that one must keep far from it, building a protective barrier around the truth itself.

The roots of this prohibition run deep. The Gemara in Sotah (42a) lists those who will not merit to greet the Shechinah, and among them is the kat shakranim — the company of liars. Falsehood is described as so antithetical to the Divine presence that it bars a person from the very encounter that is the purpose of creation. Chazal teach that “chosamo shel HaKadosh Baruch Hu emes” — the seal of the Holy One is truth (Shabbos 55a, Yoma 69b). To traffic in deception is, in a sense, to set oneself against the foundational attribute of the Creator.

The Mesilas Yesharim, in his treatment of the trait of nekius (cleanliness), devotes extensive discussion to the gradations of falsehood. He distinguishes between the outright liar — whose entire manner of speech is built on fabrication — and the more common and subtle offender, who does not lie outright but who manipulates impressions, conveys misleading half-truths, and arranges circumstances so that another person draws a false conclusion. This latter category is precisely what unfolded in Brooklyn. No one perhaps stated an explicit falsehood to the actors in every particular, yet the entire enterprise was constructed to create a false impression — that this was theater rather than advocacy, performance rather than partisanship. The very essence of the prohibition of geneivas daas, deceiving another’s mind, is implicated here.

The Rambam (Hilchos Mechirah 18:1, and Hilchos Deyos 2:6) codifies that it is forbidden to deceive people in buying and selling, and more broadly that it is forbidden to “steal the mind” of another, whether Jew or gentile, through any form of misleading conduct. One who creates a false impression — even without uttering a single false word — violates this prohibition. The casting arrangement, which used vague language and the lure of payment to enlist people in a cause they would have opposed had they understood it, exemplifies the kind of engineered deception the Rambam condemns. That the deceivers later protested they had been “very clear” only underscores how readily falsehood rationalizes itself.

What makes the Brooklyn episode so instructive is not its severity — no great harm was done, and all the actors were ultimately paid — but its ordinariness. Deception of this kind has become so routine in contemporary commerce, politics, and advertising that those involved barely recognize it as wrongdoing. Casting calls that conceal their true purpose, demonstrations staged with paid participants masquerading as genuine supporters, and the pervasive manufacturing of false impressions for advantage have become unremarkable features of public life. This is precisely the danger Chazal foresaw. When falsehood becomes ambient, when it is the water in which society swims, the Hamon Am grows dull to it.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin (97a) offers a sobering prophecy regarding the period preceding the redemption: that “ha’emes tehei ne’ederes” — truth will be lacking, will go into hiding, splintered into pieces. The Maharal and others explain that the erosion of truth is itself one of the markers of a society in decline. Ours is a world in which the line between authentic and counterfeit has dangerously blurred.

In a recent display of “Ha’emes tehei ne-ederes” someone recently pretended to be the gabbai of one of Klal Yisroel’s Gedolim and then tried brow-beating the person he had called into accepting the conclusions of the meeting that was to be held as a pre-condition.  The meeting was delayed and when the person had arranged a meeting in private, the Gadol said, “But I do not have a Gabbai.”  The Gadol and his rebbitzen requested that the phony Gabbai be called. He was forced to admit his name.

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