I have some thoughts on the Jewish Journal’s decision in its latest issue to publish a series of private email sent by Rabbi Shlomo Schwarz (Shwartzie) to non-Jewish (by Orthodox standards) women who’d attended his Jewish singles events.
I bet that there are private emails sent by every member of the Jewish Journal that if I published them and wrote a similar article to the one the Journal just published, it would not only end that person’s career at the Jewish Journal and in Jewish journalism but in all journalism, and would probably cost the person many friends, perhaps even their spouse and their life.
If this story explodes, I suspect that it will be the Journal that will come up the loser.
Regarding these women who shared private emails with the Journal for publication, why would any sane person allow such women in their life knowing their predilection for fighting dirty when their feelings have been hurt?
Few men play this dirty. I can’t imagine a man sending on private emails to a newspaper because his feelings had been hurt. Women are more adept at playing dirty. They have fewer compunctions about posting flyers around a neighborhood and sharing damaging private stuff that does not need to be shared.
The only justification I see for publishing private emails is if they contain credible threats of violence or dangerous illegality (such as sexually suggestive stuff with kids).
