Do You Enjoy Other People’s Tzaros?

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September 12, 2024 | ט' אלול התשפ"ד

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By a Lakewood resident: Do You Enjoy Other People’s Tzaros? The answer to the question asked in the title to this article is: I don’t but, apparently, many in Lakewood, NJ, derive immense enjoyment when other people have tzaros.

Lakewood, NJ – The answer to the question asked in the title to this article is:
I don’t but, apparently, many people in Lakewood and the surrounding New Jersey townships with Frum communities do derive immense enjoyment when other people have tzaros. Specifically, I am talking about those who listen in to Hatzolah of Central Jersey radios.

I recall that many years ago, a woman started a movement. She asked everyone who saw a Hatzolah ambulance racing down the streets with its light and sirens on to say a kapital of Tehillim, rather than running to see what the emergency is.

That should be our first instinct. We should join the “Tehillim Movement”, not the “curious onlooker movement.”

I think it should be fairly easy for everyone to understand how Hatzolah works. People call them when they are facing very serious emergencies. These emergencies are often matters of life and death. They also could be psychiatric episodes or any other type of personal situation.

The calls very often contain a family’s personal information and other potentially embarrassing details that they do not want getting out to the public.

By all means, most Hatzolah calls are very personal in nature and are not meant to be heard by prying ears, just like the Hatzolah response is not meant to be ogled by prying eyes.

In the legal world, there is a concept of HIPAA laws, which protect the identity of individuals. We also all understand that there are “rules of mentshlichkeit” (in addition to the halachos of “Hezek Riya”) that govern how we act.

No sane person would ever casually walk over to someone’s mailbox and peruse his mail. No decent person would peek into his neighbor’s window and just stare at him or his family. If someone would try this, he would be viewed as a dangerous and scary person. No good person would ever tap into his friend’s phone calls and listen in to his private conversations.
So why do some people seem to think that the basic rules of metshlichkeit do not apply to listening in to Hatzolah radios?

There is an entire group of people in our town who love to hear all the emergency calls that come in on the Hatzolah radio. Some are children who “buff” the calls with scanners. Many are adults that even do this for a living, making a business out of taking pictures at the scene of Hatzolah responses or even livestreaming the calls for anyone and everyone to hear. These people should be ashamed of themselves!

Hatzolah is in the midst of investing a tremendous amount of money into protecting their radio frequencies. It will take time until they actually get this up and running, as doing this includes a big investment and a lot of work. It is unfortunate that this is necessary at all as everyone should understand on their own that listening to a Hatzolah radio, deriving enjoyment when hear a tzara over radio and quickly running to the scene to post a report on Jewish news platforms and WhatsApp Groups, to grab a picture, video or just to be nosy is terribly wrong.

Interfering in Hatzolah’s work by peeking into an ambulance to see a person gushing blood or in the grips of some other medical emergency is horrible conduct. Trying to be the first to see what happened or gossiping about it is simply insane. For the life of me, I can’t comprehend how any decent person could enjoy doing that!
I can promise you that if, chas v’shalom, something like this happened to you, you would be furious if you were being wheeled into an ambulance and 50 people were poking their heads in to see what’s going on.

We also have to understand that due to the very nature of their work, Hatzolah has to be solely concerned with the caller’s safety. This means that oftentimes someone in an emergency situation may be in their pajamas or some other form of clothes that they would not want to be seen wearing in public. Basically, by gawking at the scene, you are intruding into someone’s bedroom. How could anyone do that?

Parents have a responsibility to educate their children about many things. We teach them the importance of personal safety, stranger danger, not to walk into a street without looking both ways, not to play with fire, etc. We also must teach them that it is inappropriate to listen to Hatzolah radios, chase ambulances and stare at response sites.

I am speaking from experience. I personally experienced recently a very uncomfortable situation of the sort described above and I can testify that it is not geshmak.

I also have discovered that we have reached a very troubling point where many people are afraid to call for help in times of emergency because they don’t want their neighbors, friends or kids from their neighborhood to hear about their confidential, personal health issues.

So, when you sit, laugh and enjoy other people’s tzaros, bear in mind what you are really doing. Think about the potential outcome of your actions.

Don’t listen to Hatzolah radios and don’t let your kids do it! Treat others the way you would like to be treated!
It is basic decency!

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The views expressed here by a Lakewood reader, 100% reflect the views of FrumNews.com. Otherwise, we would not have published this opinion article.

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