Brad Lewis took to YouTube and Facebook within hours of burying his son, Jordan, who shot himself in the heart.? “This bullying has to stop,” Lewis said in a seven-minute video.
But is it right to blame a suicide on bullying?? Is it really that simple?? Aren’t many more kids bullied than the number of kids who harm themselves?? Has the term lost its impact because it means so many different things?
I asked myself these questions after reading the story about Brad and Jordan Lewis, and I even found that I am not alone in wondering if we have become too quick to cry “bully”.? A controversial notion, to be sure, but then I came across this comment by an expert, concerned that we may have in fact, dulled the edges of the term “bullying”:
“By calling everything bullying, we’re actually failing to recognize the seriousness of the problem,” said Elizabeth Englander, a professor of psychology and founder and director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State University.? “If everyone’s a victim,” she wrote, “then no one’s a victim.”
I appreciate Englader’s concern with a term being used so much it could exhaust its power.? I get that we like to hang labels on things precisely so we can then avoid doing the hard work of actually addressing the underlying problems that give rise to the situation.? I even write regularly about our national obsession with claiming to be victims as a way to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.? But human suffering is NOT zero-sum.
One person’s experience around being victimized does not diminish the reality of another person’s different experience.? Like most anything in life, it is subjective.? Human suffering is not a physical commodity in which the value or importance of ‘mine’ is necessarily diminished because of the presence of ‘yours’.? That’s simply not a healthy way to think.
If anything, the awareness that some people suffer should open our hearts to the fact that others may be suffering the same way.? Once we see a problem, we should be able to spot it more quickly and address it more effectively when it comes up in new settings.
“Bullying” will lose its meaning, not because of how much the term is used, but because we apply the label and then fail to respond the problem as it presents itself each time we invoke the term.? In other words, this should not be a battle about definitions, which will exhaust us all, and protect almost nobody.
The real meaning of “bullying” lies not in how often we use the term, or even in the experience of the one who claims to have been bullied.? It lies in our willingness and ability to make sure than as many kids are as safe as possible, as often as possible.? It’s up to us.
Listed for many years in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis” and recognized as one of our nation’s leading “Preachers and Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield serves as the President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a training institute, think tank, and resource center nurturing religious and intellectual pluralism within the Jewish community, and the wider world, preparing people to meet the biggest challenges we face in our increasingly polarized world.
An ordained Orthodox rabbi who studied for his PhD and taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, he has also taught the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs an ongoing seminar, and American Jewish University. Rabbi Brad regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and United States Department of Defense, religious organizations — Jewish and Christian — including United Seminary (Methodist), Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Modern Orthodox) Luther Seminary (Lutheran), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) — civic organizations including No Labels, Odyssey Impact, and The Aspen Institute, numerous Jewish Federations, and a variety of communal and family foundations.
Hirschfield is the author and editor of numerous books, including You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, writes a column for Religion News Service, and appears regularly on TV and radio in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Fox News Channel. He is also the founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings hundreds of Christian religious leaders to Israel, preparing them to address the increasing polarization around Middle East issues — and really all currently polarizing issues at home and abroad — with six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”