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May 19, 2000/14 Iyar 5760, Vol. 52, No.37
Good neighborsEditorialTrebling the damages in a defamation suit brought against an organization whose very name decries such speech, a federal jury in Denver issued a $10.5 million verdict last month against the Mountain States Chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.The unprecedented and excessive award shocked the American Jewish world, undercutting the reputation of the 87-year-old Jewish defense organization while recalling the age-old Jewish prohibition against lashon hara - evil speech. The suit grew from a spat between two neighbors in an affluent Denver suburb; it degenerated into a repugnant lawsuit hung on flimsy evidence gleaned from illegally eavesdropping on private conversations laced with alleged anti-Semitic vitriol. It escalated into a cause celebre when ADL regional director Saul Rosenthal, brought into the dispute by Mitchell and Candace Aronson, publicly accused the Aronsons' neighbors, William and Dorothy Quigley, of anti-Semitism unleashing a barrage of media coverage. The jury's $9 million punitive damage award to the Quigleys, added to $1.5 million in compensatory damages, is a sobering reminder of the vast power of words and their capacity to harm, and the inherent license accompanying the protections of freedom of speech. In our own city, whispered rumors about what lay behind recent neighborhood opposition to the planned Jewish Community Campus led one Scottsdale city council member, George Zraket, to defend himself in a letter to the editor (Jewish News, May 12) against inferences of anti-Semitism. The Denver jury's award reminds of the potential harm of pointing fingers without substantive evidence. Rather than employing words as weapons, we can strive to use them as building blocks in assembling a contiguous wall of trust and respect with our neighbors. "A good fence," in the words of poet Robert Frost, built with boulders "to make (it) balance," will conjoin Scottsdale families with the JCC, the new neighbor in their midst, while respecting individual boundaries. "Good fences make good neighbors," observed Frost. It holds true in Denver - and in Scottsdale. |
