What Would Naomi Campbell Do?

Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia, has been on trial for war crimes in the Hague for the last couple of years and, by and large, the general public has shown little interest. Until now.

(Enter supermodel.)



Naomi Campbell has, for some time, refused to become involved with the trial. Frankly, not that surprising. Would you be excited to testify in open court against a man accused of slaughtering thousands? Probably not. Well, Naomi's luck finally ran out and she was forced to take the stand last week. She maintains that in 1997, mysterious visitors knocked on her door and gave her a bag of dirty looking stones from an equally mysterious benefactor. Others claim that she knew the sender was a despotic warlord and that the stones were precious gems mined using slave labour.

So, here’s the deal: From a Jewish perspective, can such a gift possibly be kosher?

The Talmud makes it clear that the recipient of a gift or charity has the responsibility to make sure that what he is accepting is on the up and up. It’s not enough to just turn a blind eye and assume that the blame rests with the person who committed the original crime. And even if we are only suspicious about the source, we must err on the side of caution. Similarly, secular law dictates that it is illegal to receive property or benefit from a crime.

Parshas Shoftim talks about the responsibility of B’nei Israel to set up a system of judges, magistrates, and officers to maintain law and order:

"You shall set up judges and law enforcement officials for yourself in all your cities that the Lord, your God, is giving you, for your tribes, and they shall judge the people [with] righteous judgment."

The parsha speaks of judges both in the plural and in the singular: The plural refers to the many judges needed to keep society running smoothly and the singular refers to each individual as a personal judge of his own conduct. We are all required to judge the rightness and wrongness of situations and guard against bad influences entering our neshama. It is as though we are the city and we must set up guards to protect ourselves from any negative elements trying to invade us.

Simply doing the right thing for yourself is not good enough. Hashem requires you to stay away from even the whiff of impropriety. Ms. Campbell learned the very hard and very public way that being associated with anything immoral is just asking for trouble. Keeping away from negative influences in your life brings you one step closer to the path of righteous behaviour that Hashem laid out for the Jewish people so many years ago. It was a good idea then and clearly (just ask Naomi), it still is.

Keep your hands clean and your conscience clear,

Rabbi Shmulik Yeshayahu

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