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When Death Becomes Theatre: The Idolatry of Public Praise

by Ram ben Ze'ev



When Death Becomes Theatre: The Idolatry of Public Praise
When Death Becomes Theatre: The Idolatry of Public Praise

The modern world has developed a ritual which it treats as sacred: the instant public tribute.


A famous person dies, and within minutes a chorus begins. Social media floods with accolades, praise, affectionate “rememberings,” and grand pronouncements, as though death itself confers holiness — as though the grave has the power to sanctify a life that was never virtuous.


Men who were alive yesterday as complicated, flawed, inconsistent, sometimes corrupt, sometimes immoral, sometimes actively harmful, are suddenly consecrated overnight as heroes, prophets, geniuses, or “one of the greats.”



Worse still, Jews — who are meant to be a holy (separate) people, anchored in Torah and not in the theatre of the nations — are increasingly joining in.


This is not compassion. It is not respect. It is not even mourning. It is idolatry.


It is the worship of fame, the worship of influence, the worship of cultural power — and the worship of self, because the person offering the tribute often does not truly honour the dead, but instead honours the way he appears to others for offering honour.


We are watching a generation replace the discipline of Torah with the emotional reflexes of the street.


The Torah’s View: Truth Is Not Suspended by Death


The Torah does not recognise celebrity.


It recognises צדיקים (tzaddikim, righteous people), חכמים (chachamim, sages), and בעלי חסד (ba’alei chesed, masters of kindness). It recognises those who walk with G-D in righteousness, those who sanctify His Name, those who refine the world, those who live with yirat shamayim and who bind their lives to אמת (emet, truth).


The Torah does not instruct us to admire power, wealth, notoriety, creativity, charm, or popularity.


And the Torah certainly does not instruct us to suspend truth the moment a person dies.


On the contrary, Torah speech is governed by discipline. We are commanded: “דבר שקר תרחק” (distance yourself from false speech). That is not a poetic ideal; it is an instruction. It means that a Jew must treat truth as sacred, not negotiable. And when truth is sacred, public tributes become dangerous — because tributes routinely contain the very thing Torah prohibits: exaggeration, distortion, and flattering language that creates a false image.


It has become normal to speak as though death erases moral flaws. It does not.


In Torah, death is not a public relations tool. It is not an opportunity for followers, fans, or observers to “rewrite the story.” Death is a threshold — a passage into דין (din, judgment) — not a marketing moment.



What the Nations Practise: A New Religion


The nations have always had their gods. The forms change. The impulse does not.


In one age they carved statues of stone. In another they lit incense to idols. In our age they post online.


The altar is the timeline. The incense is praise. The priests are influencers, journalists, and celebrities. And the masses bring their offerings in the form of emotional declarations and digital wreaths.


The point is not truth. The point is belonging.


The modern tribute is rarely about the dead. It is about the living — their need to appear moral, sympathetic, sophisticated, and culturally aligned. They do not praise the deceased; they praise themselves in the reflection of the praise.


The tribute has become a ritual of social obedience. If you do not participate, you are suspect. Silence is treated as cruelty. Discernment is treated as hatred. Truth is treated as an attack.


And so the world runs to speak — quickly, loudly, and publicly — because delay might mean missing the moment, missing the crowd, missing the chorus, missing the chance to be seen.


This is why the praise is so often unwarranted.


It is not an evaluation. It is a performance.


The Jewish Danger: When We Borrow the Nations’ Emotions


The tragedy is not only that the world does this. The tragedy is that Jews increasingly do it too.


We were not given Torah to become better participants in the culture of the nations. We were given Torah to become a different people entirely.


But many Jews now speak with the same cultural reflexes as the street: fast praise, sentimental slogans, shallow declarations, the illusion of righteousness through emotional identification.



A Jew will “like” posts praising people whose lives he never examined, whose values he never truly shared, whose influence may have harmed society, whose worldview may have opposed Torah. He joins the chorus not because he believes in the person, but because he fears the loneliness of being different.


This is assimilation of the soul.


And it matters, because once you treat fame as greatness, you will soon treat the famous as holy — and then you will treat their beliefs as worthy of respect, and then you will treat their values as “another perspective,” and then you will treat their corruption as “human flaws,” and then you will treat their rebellion as “complexity.” That is exactly how idolatry spreads.

It does not begin with bowing down. It begins with speaking kindly of it.


“We are not to praise even the good that we find in the idolatry or we will come to also praise the bad.” — רם בן זאב


This is not harshness. It is spiritual realism.


The Jew who praises the idol does not remain an observer. He becomes a participant. He becomes softened. He becomes emotionally attached. And once attachment exists, discernment dies.


The Holy Zohar: Speech Creates Spiritual Reality


The Holy Zohar reveals a dimension the modern mind barely remembers: words are not merely commentary — words create spiritual outcomes.


Speech is not only sound. Speech is force.


The Zohar treats death as a moment of intense transition. The soul is departing the body. It is entering the world of truth. דין is active. Spiritual measurements are being made. At such a time, careless speech is not harmless. It shapes reality.


The modern tribute culture is built on uncontrolled speech: gushes of praise, sweeping declarations, emotional exaggeration, slogans replacing truth.


From the Torah perspective, this is not “kindness.” It is spiritual recklessness.


To praise someone publicly is to elevate them in the minds of others. And to elevate a person wrongly is to distort the moral order of the world. It teaches people to admire the wrong traits.


It rewards the wrong behaviours. It turns influence into authority. It turns charisma into virtue.


It makes the crowd into a בית דין (beit din, court) that announces its verdict without evidence, without fear of Heaven, and without the discipline of אמת.


The Zohar would call this a sin of confusion — mixing אור (or, light) with darkness.



Tanya: The Psychology of the Tribute


Tanya helps explain why this public tribute instinct has become so powerful: because it feeds the ego while pretending to feed the heart.


A person says, “I’m grieving,” but he is not grieving. He did not know the deceased. He says, “I’m honouring,” but he is not honouring. He is curating an image of himself.


The tribute becomes a form of self-worship: look how sensitive I am, look how compassionate, look how aware, look how cultured, look how human.

This is the yetzer hara dressed in sincerity.


The Tanya teaches that the nefesh habehamit seeks expression. It wants emotional indulgence. It wants validation. It wants to feel big without becoming holy. And social media offers exactly that: an instant stage on which the ego can act holy.


The Jewish mission is not to “feel good” but to become refined — to elevate instinct into discipline, emotion into truth, reaction into דעת (da’at, applied understanding).


Tribute culture does the opposite. It trains the soul to react like a crowd.


Halakhah: Kavod HaMet Is Not Celebrity Worship


Halakhah teaches kavod hamet (honouring the deceased), but not in the sentimental way modernity imagines.


Kavod hamet is:


  • dignity

  • respect

  • avoiding humiliation

  • modest speech

  • seriousness

  • spiritual benefit: Torah learning, tefillah, and tzedakah


It is not consecration.


Halakhah does not permit a Jew to turn every dead man into a tzaddik. It does not permit a Jew to create false narratives. And it certainly does not permit admiration for a life that was not aligned with righteousness.


Death does not erase a person’s spiritual record.


And a Jew must never be afraid to say this: truth is not cruelty. Truth is Torah.



There is also another principle: Jews are commanded to stay far from falsehood. The standard tribute is saturated with distortions — “he changed the world,” “he was a great man,” “he inspired millions,” “we will never see another.” Many of these statements are untrue, and many of them are irrelevant. A man can “change the world” and still corrupt it.

A Jew should fear Heaven more than he fears being seen as “nice.”


A Better Jewish Response


So what should a Jew do when a famous person dies?


First: pause. Silence is not cruelty. Silence is discipline.


Second: do not imitate the nations. We are not their echoes.


Third: if you must speak, speak with אמת. Avoid exaggeration. Avoid slogans. Avoid emotional marketing.


Fourth: if you genuinely respect something that was good — identify it carefully and limit it precisely. You may acknowledge a talent without sanctifying a worldview.


Fifth: remember what death is meant to awaken: not admiration, but reflection.


A death should remind us that time ends. That judgment is real. That vanity evaporates. That only Torah and mitzvot remain. That the soul will be asked what it did with the breath it was given.


This is the Jewish tribute: to take the moment and become better, not noisier.


Conclusion: The Discipline of a Holy People


The world praises quickly because it has no anchor.


It lives by emotion, it worships influence, and it confuses celebrity with greatness. It cannot stand silence because silence demands meaning — and without Torah, meaning becomes elusive.


But we are not of that world.


We are the people of Torah. We are commanded to distinguish between light and darkness.


We are commanded to sanctify truth. We are commanded not to imitate the nations — not in ritual, not in speech, not in morality, and not in their idols.


And the modern tribute — this flood of praises and pronouncements — is nothing less than a new idol.


It is time we refuse to bow.


It is time we stop praising the altar of fame.


It is time we remember that holiness does not come from influence, and greatness is not measured in followers.


It is time we speak as Jews again.


“We are not to praise even the good that we find in the idolatry or we will come to also praise the bad.” — רם בן זאב




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