Social pressure is a concept that has always been around and impacted how people behave. Yet perhaps in recent years this has become a concept that has been amplified in a dramatic way due to the way our society functions.
Several studies conducted over the last few decades including one by Psychologist Solomon Asch have shown how people will make wrong choices and read reality completely wrong, simply because of group pressure even though the truth is obvious.
In other words the desire to conform can often cause people to reinterpret reality and make choices that will allow them to simply fit in to the current way of thinking, even if it might go against their innate moral conscience.
In this week's reading of the portion of Shemot at the beginning of the book of Exodus, we see an example of what this can do to a society, when Pharaoh decides to "act shrewdly with the Jews". The commentaries explain that Pharaoh knew that simply telling his people to torment and enslave the Jews won't work, and instead he would have to gradually manipulate public opinion against the Jews, so that it would become normal and even correct to persecute the Jews. When enough time passes, it soon became normal for Egyptians to torture, oppress and murder Jews, and doing otherwise or fighting back was not something that was done.
Yet at the same time we also begin to see the exact opposite of this phenomenon.
The Torah records multiple instances in this portion, where people rejected popular thinking or tremendous pressure and still found the wherewithal to act differently.
In the first act of defiance recorded in the Torah, the two Jewish midwives, ignore a direct instruction by Pharaoh to kill the Jewish baby boys as they were born. This act could easily have cost them their lives and survival was the name of the game, yet the verse tells us that they were willing to take the risk and say no, since "they feared G-d".
In other words what helped them defy an order that what would have made sense for their physical survival, was the fact that they were answerable to a higher morality and had a deeper consciousness as to what was right and wrong in the eyes of G-d.
In the second instance, it is the daughter of Pharaoh himself, who demonstrates this same unique quality, when she sees a Jewish baby in a basket on the edge of the river and chooses to save him. Popular thinking and the people who were around her at the time, dictated that this baby should be killed like all other Jewish baby boys, yet here the daughter of Pharaoh despite being raised to think like that, acted in accordance with a higher set of values and saved his life.
Later on, Moses himself, who witnesses an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Jew to death, takes action and kills the taskmaster. It was an act that shocked everyone, as usually everyone would simply just let the unfortunate state of affairs just continue, and why bother even trying to fight back or correct an injustice. Yet Moses in his very first encounter outside the palace, makes the choice to not simply comply with the dictates and norms of a society that was corrupt, and acts to save a life.
It is a dramatic story with which we are all familiar with on so many levels, yet the piece about learning to act and think differently than what might be popular thinking, is as relevant as ever.
One of the keys in successfully doing this seems to be learning to attune ourselves to a higher sense of morality and purpose, that will enable us to see through the fog and confusion of challenging choices.
It is for this reason, that nurturing our spiritual core is a critical dimension of making healthy moral and correct choices.
The short term benefits to not complying to social pressure when it comes to choices of what is right and wrong, may sometimes seem like we are losing out and are therefore hard to make. Yet in the big picture, the inner meaning and the long term benefits that occur as a result of these difficult but correct choices, are actually what allow us to grow and move forward as a healthy, meaningful and happy society.
Good Shabbos & Shabbat Shalom
Yisroel