by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

“Plagiarism is not a big moral deal,” according to Stanley Fish’s article of the same title in his latest New York Times column. Fish is a professor of law and humanities, so he should know, right?

Well, much as I enjoy his column for its intelligence, candor and literary style, this one seems to be morally obtuse. Professor Fish argues that the concept of plagiarism has no basis in morality. Rather, he says, it’s an “insider’s obsession,” a convention of academe or journalism; rules of the game one must play by. To be sure, the rules of plagiarism are a necessary protection for the author or songwriter whose work could otherwise be copied with impunity and whose reputation and livelihood thereby jeopardized. But the concept has no moral or philosophical basis.

Furthermore, Fish maintains that herein lies the explanation for the ubiquity of plagiarism among college students. Because “it’s hard to get from the notion that you shouldn’t appropriate your neighbor’s car to the notion that you should not repeat his words without citing him.”

Now we understand why so many students plagiarize. They just don’t get it. It’s so hard to grasp the subtle “insider’s” concept of plagiarism.

I think it’s Professor Fish that doesn’t get it. As qwertybnm wrote in a comment on the column: “In the vast majority of plagiarism cases I’ve dealt with, it was clearly a moral lapse, in the sense that students were consciously trying to pass off the work of others as their own. In other words the assignment was to write a short paper on a particular topic, and rather than write a short paper, they simply copied it from the Internet.

How is that not a moral lapse? If cheating for self advancement vis-a-vis ones non-cheating peers is not immoral, then I think you do not have a useful definition of morals.”

When I was a student, long before I got to college, none of us needed any elaborate explanation of why plagiarism was wrong. It was clear to us that just as stealing a pen is wrong, so is stealing the words the other guy wrote with that pen. The words (or the answers for the test) aren’t yours; they belong to someone else, and you should say so.

Judaism teaches midavar sheker tirchak, “you shall distance yourself from any false thing.” The vagueness of the language is meant to embrace all manner of dishonesty, including that which is not so obvious. So even if plagiarism is not as patently wrong as stealing a car, it is still a “false thing” to use another’s words without attribution. It gives the false impression that the words are yours, not someone else’s.

There is a deeper reason too. Until now, we have been treating plagiarism negatively, as a prohibition. The Sages framed the idea as a positive dictum: “One who quotes something in the name of the one who said it brings redemption to the world.” (Avos 6:6; Talmud Magillah 15a)

Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler explains that world redemption means the restoration of all and everything to its true place, its spiritual root. It is the ultimate revelation of truth in the world. Of the existence of God, of creation, and our role in it. A person who acknowledges the true source of his words or ideas contributes to that process. He shows by his scrupulousness regarding authorship that he is a seeker after truth; and he thus brings us that much closer to the ultimate truth of all things.

Plagiarism, whatever else it may be, just doesn’t get you there.

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