When we baby boomers were children, we were crazy about the Three Stooges. My generation lived outdoors, but we stopped playing and ran inside to watch the Three Stooges.
How thrilled we were when we learned they were Jewish too. But in retrospect, the Three Stooges were not positive role models. In particular, the character of Moe. Moe was a bully, who was physically abusive to the other two characters, Larry and Curly (and those who replaced them, like Shemp). Moe would show his displeasure with his cohorts by slapping their faces, or poking their eyes out. It might have been fake, but we kids didn’t know that. We would imitate Moe and when our siblings or friends would annoy us, we’d bend our fingers into a V shape, just like Moe, and aim toward their eyes.
At best, Moe would be verbally abusive, and be derisive and critical of Curly or Larry when they didn’t do what he had ordered them to do to his satisfaction.
Just as disturbing to me is that Larry and Curly allowed the abuse. They did not fight back but accepted their “ punishment,” as if they deserved to be emotionally or physically mistreated.
Bullying has become an epidemic at school and in the workplace and within the family. A study of a few episodes of the Three Stooges could be educational in terms of how NOT to treat others, a middah that is considered the basis for the Torah.
