June 15, 2026|ל' סיון ה' אלפים תשפ"ו The Knicks, Social Media and the Spies By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

On Wednesday night, the Knicks taught two important lessons. Lesson number one: never give up hope. Lesson number two: never go to sleep early.

At halftime, I was ready to start working on this week's drasha. By the fourth quarter, I was too busy watching what may go down as one of the greatest single-game comebacks ever on a championship stage. Most people will take from that game a message of resilience, perseverance, and refusing to quit when the odds seem impossible.

But I think there is another lesson hidden in that comeback. To get there, though, we need to talk about the Tower of Bavel, Jonathan Haidt, and the spies in this week's parsha.

In 2024, Jonathan Haidt published The Anxious Generation, a bestselling book arguing that the rise of smartphones and social media has contributed significantly to the mental health challenges facing young people today. But two years before publishing that book, Haidt published an influential essay entitled, "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid." In that essay, he argued that social media created a modern-day Tower of Bavel.

The promise of social media was extraordinary. For the first time in human history, billions of people could communicate instantly across continents, cultures, and backgrounds. It seemed as though technology might reverse the biblical curse of Bavel by allowing everyone to participate in a single global conversation.

According to Haidt, the opposite happened.

Rather than fostering greater understanding, social media fragmented society into competing tribes. For most of human history, public discourse passed through gatekeepers – editors, institutions, communal leaders, and other structures that filtered information before it reached the masses. Social media flattened those structures. Suddenly, everyone could broadcast to everyone else instantly.

There were obvious benefits. More voices could be heard, and authority could be challenged when necessary. But there was also a cost. Information no longer passed through the kinds of filters designed to test its accuracy, provide context, and evaluate the consequences of sharing it.

The result was not simply more information; it was less trust. Many people no longer know what to believe. Speaking personally, if CNN and Fox News report the same story, I am reasonably confident it happened. If they don't, I often find myself wondering where the truth lies.

At the same time, social media rewarded outrage over nuance, emotion over reflection, and viral content over careful analysis. Why? Because attention has become the most valuable commodity. Likes, clicks, and shares drive engagement, and fear and anger generate engagement far more effectively than thoughtful conversation.

The result was a new form of Bavel. Everyone was speaking, but fewer people were truly listening. Trust in institutions, leaders, and even one another began to erode. Haidt's concern is not simply that social media spreads misinformation. His deeper concern is that it weakens the trust necessary for communities to function.

When I read Haidt's argument, I immediately think of the story of the spies. Because perhaps the Torah's original social media crisis occurred in this week's parsha.

Many mefarshim ask: What exactly was the sin of the spies? After all, they were sent to investigate the Land and report back. Perhaps the problem was not only what they said, but how – and to whom – they said it.

Notice the sequence. The spies return and initially report to Moshe, Aharon, and the people. But then they move beyond a factual report and begin spreading their own interpretation. Instead of simply describing what they saw, they frame it through a lens of fear and circulate a negative narrative about the Land.

Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch suggests that their mistake was not merely their message but their method. Had they been genuinely concerned about the powerful nations and mighty giants inhabiting the Land, they should have first brought those concerns to Moshe and Aharon and worked with the leadership to determine how the nation should move forward. Instead, they bypassed the leadership and appealed directly to public opinion.

This is the significance of the phrase, "Vayotziu dibat ha'aretz asher taru otah el Bnei Yisrael" – they spread their negative report about the Land directly to the people. At first, they play the political game well. In the presence of Moshe and Aharon, they acknowledge that the Land is indeed flowing with milk and honey. But then they pivot, emphasizing the strength of the inhabitants, the fortifications of the cities, and the impossibility of the mission.

The Midrash paints the scene vividly. Each spy goes from tent to tent within his tribe, whispering words of despair: "I feel sorry for you. Soon you will be ruled by the Emorites. Your future is hopeless."

It was a brilliant strategy. Fear spread faster than facts – and it worked.

"Vatisa kol ha'edah vayitnu et kolam" – the entire nation raised its voice and cried. The people embraced the spies' narrative. Fear overwhelmed faith, panic eclipsed trust, and an entire generation became terrified of what the future might hold.

The tragedy of the spies, then, may not only have been the content of their message but the way they communicated it. They transformed a leadership discussion into a viral public campaign. Before anyone could carefully evaluate the claims, the nation was swept up in the narrative. Fear became contagious. Trust collapsed.

And that may be the deepest connection between Haidt's Tower of Bavel and the sin of the spies. The spies were not lacking information. They had plenty of information. The problem was that information became detached from trust. Once fear spread through the camp, the people stopped trusting Moshe, stopped trusting God's promise, and ultimately stopped trusting one another.

And that may be one of the greatest challenges of our interconnected age. We live in a world that offers unprecedented connection but not necessarily belonging, unprecedented communication but not necessarily trust.

So, yes, social media presents enormous challenges to us, but as we often say, sometimes the Torah provides the refuah before the makkah, the antidote long before the disease.

The Torah commands, "Lo telech rachil b'amecha" – do not be a gossiper. Yet the details of how to speak responsibly were developed and popularized in a remarkable way only about a century ago through the work of Rav Yisrael Meir Kagan, the Chafetz Chaim. At the time, some may have viewed the intense focus on the laws of speech as excessive. Today, the Chofetz Chaim seems nothing short of prophetic.

Because we need the Chafetz Chaim now more than ever.

We live in a world where everyone has a platform. Every phone is a publishing house. Every person can instantly share a rumor, an opinion, a criticism, or an outrage with hundreds or thousands of others. The guardrails that once slowed communication have largely disappeared.

The Chafetz Chaim teaches us how to rebuild those guardrails.

The Chafetz Chaim provides seven conditions that we must observe if we speak negatively about someone, even if there is a valid purpose.

He teaches us to verify facts before disseminating information and to distinguish between facts and opinions. The spies saw real things, but they interpreted those facts through fear and spread their interpretation as truth. In an age of social media, we should resist the urge to forward every rumor, article, or accusation before carefully evaluating it.

He teaches us to speak to people, not merely about them. Halacha requires that one not spread negative information about another person when it is possible to address the concern directly with that individual first. The spies never sat down with Moshe to work through their concerns. Instead, they brought their grievances directly to the crowd.

Here, we are challenged to study the Chafetz Chaim not as theory but as practice, to learn even a small amount of these halachot and begin applying them in real conversations and online interactions. Because this is not only about avoiding harm; it is about actively building trust and strengthening relationships in our communities.

I suspect I am not the only person here who has, at times, wished that someone would approach me directly about something I said, rather than circulate inaccurate assumptions about it. Healthy communities are built when difficult conversations are conducted respectfully and face-to-face, not through public criticism or secondhand narratives. Trust grows when we dare to speak with one another, not merely about one another.

Through his halachot of speech, the Chafetz Chayim teaches us to prioritize relationships over narratives. Social media often encourages us to view people as categories, labels, and opponents. Torah teaches us to see human beings, judge favorably, and build relationships that transcend disagreement.

Ultimately, the laws of speech are not merely rules about words. They are rules about trust.

Jonathan Haidt argues that social media weakened many of the institutions that once helped create a shared reality. The Torah's response is not to eliminate speech but to strengthen the communities that make trust possible: families, shuls, batei midrash, friendships, and relationships with leaders and mentors. Speech is a moral act. Every conversation either adds to or withdraws from the reservoir of trust upon which a community depends.

A community is not held together by shared information. It is held together by shared trust.

And perhaps that brings us back to Wednesday night’s Knicks game.

When the Knicks fell behind by 29 points, they had every reason to panic. Players could have started hunting for their own shots. Everyone could have tried to become the hero.

Instead, they trusted one another.

The ball kept moving. Players stayed within the system. Role players stepped up. No one abandoned the game plan.

The comeback was not an individual achievement. It was a triumph of collective trust.

That is the opposite of what happened with the spies.

The spies saw giants, and the nation fell apart. The people stopped trusting Moshe, stopped trusting God’s promise, and stopped trusting the collective mission. Fear spread faster than faith.

The Knicks faced a daunting scoreboard, a seven-foot-four giant, and stayed together. The spies faced a frightening report and came apart. The difference was trust.

That, in many ways, is Jonathan Haidt’s concern about social media. Not simply that we have too much information, but that we are losing the shared trust that allows communities to process information together.

And that is precisely what the Torah seeks to protect. The laws of lashon hara and the teachings of the Chafetz Chaim are not merely about speech. They are about safeguarding the bonds that hold communities together.

We live in a world saturated with voices asking, “What do you think?” The Torah presses a different question: “Whom do you trust?”

A Torah community is not built on uniform thinking, but on enduring trust – trust that allows people to disagree, to struggle, and remain bound to one another. It is that trust that turns fear into resilience, disagreement into dialogue, and individuals into a community.