September 13, 2004

Alison on Aliyah:  Concentration of Responsibility

            There is a well-documented phenomenon in social psychology that is referred to as “diffusion of responsibility.”  It became most prominent after a woman named Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her apartment building in New York, late one night in 1964.  The man attacked her repeatedly, running off and returning several times while she lay screaming for help in what was a densely populated residential area.  She was stabbed multiple times throughout the half hour and finally died in the middle of a sidewalk near her home, as approximately forty people listened and some watched intently from their apartment windows above the scene.  It was established afterwards by the police that everyone thought that “someone else is taking care of it,” or “surely someone must be doing something to help.”

            While this is the most dramatic example of the phenomenon, one can see evidence of it nearly every day in nearly every society.  The more people there are to share the burden of responsibility, the more likely we are to diffuse it and the less likely we are to actually take it upon ourselves to act.  We all whiz past those unfortunate souls stranded with a flat tire on the interstate, figuring someone will help them eventually or that they have probably already called the auto club.  When a receipt falls out of someone’s purse, or a can out of her grocery bag, how many people just walk on by and how many people actually take the time to tap her on the shoulder and hand her the missed item?

            I’m starting to think that Israel – perhaps more specifically, Jerusalem – may be one of the cultures in which this phenomenon is far less prominent.  Indeed, some days it seems not to exist here at all.  Yesterday, I was sitting on a bus and as we pulled to a stop, those of us looking out the window could see a very old man struggling to his feet, hunched over, leaning heavily on his cane.  Two men at the front of the bus sprang into action, one jumping up to vacate his seat for the man; the other actually getting off the bus to help the man onto it.  It wasn’t even his stop – one cannot explain this by the fact that he was getting off in any case.

            Today, as I was walking home, I saw a policeman get out of his cruiser to help direct a man in a midsize car into a tight parking spot.  Last week, an elderly woman asked me to carry her (heavy!) bags of groceries from the market to the next main street, a good seven minutes’ walk.  I didn’t hesitate.  When we reached the intersection and I asked if she would be able to make it from there because I was going in the opposite direction, she simply replied, “Oh yes, I will find someone else from here.”  She had no doubt in her mind that help was imminent, even in a sea of strangers.

            I suppose one could coin a new term for this unique phenomenon, something like “concentration of responsibility.”  I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else, and I see it on a daily basis here in Jerusalem.  There is, however, a small but insidious downside:  the frequent sense of over-responsibility.  I have experienced this most often in the post office.  I will walk in and join a line of ten people, and even though I don’t utter a single word, I will be told by whomever is before me that she is the last in line and I am after her.  A few minutes will go by and the next person will come in, immediately asking who is last in line.  When I indicate myself, I always receive the answer, “Then, I am after you.”

            I did not understand this highly specific, highly scripted ritual until very recently.  It used to annoy me to no end, and I used to stand there in line trying desperately to understand why these people seem to feel the need to verbalize what is so blatantly obvious.  After all, we’re standing in line – how hard is it to see who is in front of you and who is behind?  And why am I supposed to care that that guy is after me?  Why does he feel the need to tell me so?

            I finally realized that this is classic Israeli behavior, and a classic example of the polar opposite of diffusion of responsibility, gone haywire.  Even though any one of us would help another get onto a bus or carry heavy packages, no one trusts his fellow man not to cut into a line or attempt to use his “connections” to advance faster.  Israelis find unbearable this uncertainty, this not knowing whether they will be able to arrive to the front of the line as expected without voicing their concerns, without apprising everyone around them as to the current reality as they see it.

            And so we feel the need to define ourselves constantly, both on a small scale and a large scale, both locally and globally.  We cannot just stand idly by, hoping that no one will cut in line or that we won’t be taken advantage of.  On an individual and a national level, Israelis spend their time telling everyone around them that this is who they are, this is where they stand, and this is what they plan to do.  We simply cannot afford to diffuse this responsibility to anyone else in the world or to any of the rest of the people standing in line.  We take action, every day and in every way.  And this defines us as Israelis.