Plagiarism, Citation, and Redemption

Plagiarism, Citation, and Redemption

 By Jeremy Brown

Plagiarism, it
seems, has never been so widespread. Remember How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got
Wild and Got a Life, the 2006 debut novel from Harvard
undergraduate Kaavya Viswanathan? The author had plagiarized several
passages from others (including Salman Rushdie) and the publisher Little
Brown recalled
and destroyed all its unsold copies. It’s not just authors;
politicians plagiarize too. In 2013 the German minister for education
resigned amid allegations
she had plagiarized her PhD. thesis, and last year Senator Jon
Walsh of Montana had his Master’s Degree revoked by the US Army
War College, which determined that it
had been plagiarized. (Walsh dropped
out of the Senate race as a result of the scandal.)  

Plagiarism is
not just for politicians; academics do it to. Retraction Watch has reported at least
268 academic papers that were plagiarized. In fact plagiarism has become
so pervasive in academia (and the need to report it has become so
important) that a recent
paper paper in Ethics & Behavior gives advice for academics
considering becoming plagiarism whisleblowers. 

This seems
to be a very good time in which to remind ourselves that the full and proper
attribution of the work of others is a core Jewish value.  When authors of
ideas are properly acknowledged, the Talmud (Yevamot 97a) states that “their
lips move in the grave.” Life is briefly restored to the author when his
teachings are recalled.

Sadly, Jewish
literature has a many examples of plagiarism, improper attribution, and other
infractions of publication etiquette. So widespread is the plagiarism of
Jewish texts that it might even be considered a separate genre of Hebrew
literature. Some examples have already been examined in the virtual pages of
this Seforim Blog, but we will focus on
three. They are each different, and their ethical breaches are not to be
equated, but they are reminders of the responsibility of those who publish to
check, double check, and attribute. 

1. PARTIAL
OR INACCURATE CITATION

Inaccurate
citation is a relatively lightweight problem, but it’s a problem
nevertheless. The English language Schottenstein Talmud, published by
ArtScroll, chose a censored text of the Talmud as the basis for its
translation project. (Full disclosure: I enjoy the Schottenstein
Talmud, and study from it each day, God bless it).  As I’ve
pointed out before on
this blog, this was a sad choice, and a missed opportunity to return the
text to its more pristine (and more challenging) state. 

One example of
ArtScroll’s decision is found very early on in Berachot
(3a). There, the original uncensored text records a statement said in the
name of Rav:

 אוי
לי שהחרבתי את ביתי ושרפתי את היכלי והגליתים לבין אומות העולם

Woe is me
[God], for I destroyed my home [the Temple], burned my Sanctuary,
 and sent [the Jewish People] into exile among the nations of the
world. 

However, the
editors of the English ArtScroll Talmud chose to use a censored text in which
an additional phrase was slipped in by the censor:

Woe to my
children who sinned, [and hence made me, God] destroy my home
[the Temple], burn my Sanctuary, and send them into exile among
the nations of the world. 

Here is
a version of the uncensored text- the one that ArtScroll could have
used.  As you can see, the censor’s additional text is not there:

Image details: Babylonischer
Talmud – BSB Cod. heb. 95. 1342

Then, to
compound the error, the ArtScroll Talmud adds a footnote explaining the
metaphorical meaning of this erroneous text!

To be clear:
ArtScroll did not plagiarize anything, but they should have done a better
job of quoting the text accurately. After all, isn’t that what Rabbi Yochanan
taught us to do? Had they done so, the lips of the great sage Rav, whose
teachings were improperly amended by the censor, would again
“move in his grave”.

Now on to
more egregious issues – hard-core plagiarism.

2.  PLAGIARISM
IN PART

Copying a chunk
of text or some choice word phrases without proper attribution is also
plagiarism. One example of this is found in the 500 year-long debate over
whether Jews could believe in the Copernican model of the solar system in which
the sun was stationary.  In the late nineteenth century Reuven Landau (c.
1800-1883) took a conservative position against this model. He found it to be
existentially threatening, and argued that because humanity was the center of
the spiritual universe, it must live in the very center of the physical one.
But rather than outline his claims in his own words, he stole from the very
-widely read Sefer Haberit, an encyclopedic work that had been published
some one hundred years earlier. Here is an excerpt from Landau’s text, in which
he raises what he believes to be scientific objections to the Copernican model.
The bold text shows where the text is identical to Sefer Haberit,
first published in 1798. 

Quite simply
put, Landau stole from Sefer Haberit. A simple attribution was all that
was needed. And it was not there. (You can read more about this plagarism here,
and more about Sefer Haberit in my
book, and in this
recently published work from David Ruderman.)

Finally, let’s
look at an example of full, unadulterated plagiarism: the stealing, word for
word, of paragraphs – and then an entire book.

 3.
PLAGIARISM IN FULL: STEALING AN ENTIRE CHAPTER, WORD FOR (ALMOST) WORD

In 1788 in
Berlin, Barukh Linda (not to be confused with the plagiarist Reuven Landau)
published a small encyclopedia for children called Reshit Limmudim. In
it, Linda carefully explained the heliocentric model of Copernicus and how the
planets moved around the sun. This book became, in the words
of the historian Shmuel Feiner the “most famous, up-to-date book on the
Hebrew bookshelf at the end of the eighteenth century,” And then, a year
after it was published a Rabbi Shimon Oppenheimer, living in Prague, stole from
it.

Oppenheimer
(1753-1851) objected to the claim that the earth revolved around the sun, and
in 1789 in Prague he published Amud Hashachar in which he detailed his
opposition. But rather than use his own words, he stole, word for word,
the descriptions of the solar system from the pro-Copernican Reshit Limmudim,
carefully leaving out the bits that supported Copernicus. In a move that pushes
hutzpah to a new level, Oppenheimer even published a moving dedicatory
poem as if it had been written to him, though he changed a few awkward phrases
here and there, since the original poem mentioned Linda by name. However, the
poem plagiarized from one written as a dedication to the real author Linda –
from the great man of letters Naphtali Herz Wessely. 

When it came to
plagiarism, this Rabbi Oppenheimer was a repeat offender.  Because in 1831
he published Nezer Hakodesh,
a book on religious ethics (I’ll say that again in case you missed it – it’s
a book on religious ethics)…which he plagiarized from the 1556 work Ma’alot
Hamidot!  Here’s an example so you can see the scale of the
plagiarism.

There is a
fascinating end to the story. The famous Rabbi Yechezkel Landau (that’s
the third Landua/Linda in this little post –sorry), head of the Bet Din in
Prague, banned Oppenheimer from printing further copies of Amud Hashachar,
but not because it was plagarized.  Rather, Chief Rabbi Landau
objected to the book’s frontispiece, in which Oppenheimer described himself as
“The great Gaon, sharp and famous, the outstanding investigator Shimon”.
Read it for yourself:

Remarkably, in
his rebuke, the head of the Bet Din made no mention of the fact that sections
of the book were plagiarized, even though this information was widely known.
Oppenheimer proceeded undeterred, and published a second edition of his
plagiarized and anti-Copernican work – although he was “honest” enough to
remove the stolen poem praising his book – the poem that had originally been
written by Naphtali Herz Wessely in praise of Lindau’s Reshit Limmudim.

In his recently
published autobiography, the British comedian John Cleese (of Monty
Python and Fawlty Towers fame) recalls how he reacted the very
first time that he was recognized after a stage performance. As he walked home,
a family who had been in the audience pointed at him and waived. It was by all
accounts a small gesture, but Cleese recalled its effects in
detail even fifty years later:

I can still
remember the sudden feeling of warmth around my heart that swelled and swelled
and lifted my spirits. It is as though I had been accepted into a new family,
and acknowledged as having brought them something special that they really
appreciated. It was only a moment but  it was wonderful, and they didn’t
even know my name…in today’s celebrity culture it must be hard to imagine
that a tiny moment of recognition like that could feel so uncomplicated and
positive…

The need for
recognition is not a vice or a character flaw, but a profound human need.
To ignore it is not just an oversight but an act of neglect.  The rabbis
of the Mishnah and the Talmud understood the corollary: that to attribute
is to nourish. To acknowledge the creative act of another person is a kind
of blessing, like those required before eating, or on seeing a beautiful vista.
 Blessings and citations acknowledge the creative impulse in others, and
so make the world a little bit better. They are redemptive. As we approach
Pesach, the festival of our redemption, we should remember one final text about
the power of correct citation. It was, after all, a citation that saved the
Jewish people:

“Whoever cites
something in the name of the person who originally said it, brings redemption
to the world. As the prooftext states – “And Esther told the King in the name of Mordechai…”  (Pirkei Avot 6:6)