Rabbis face some of the same issues of confidentiality that other clergy do, and clearly state and federal law affects rabbis much as it does clergy of other faiths. The Jewish tradition, however, sets a high standard for all Jews in protecting confidentiality, and so the real question is: Are secrets told to rabbis any more confidential than a secret told to another Jew?

Civil Law
Let us begin with the requirements of civil law. In order to make it possible for society to have effective medical, psychological, legal, and religious services, the privacy of communications between the professionals who provide such services and their clients has been protected by law in most jurisdictions. In many states, the law not only safeguards such professionals from being forced by courts, police, or other parties to reveal their clients' secrets, but imposes legal liability for a breach of that confidence. (For more on this topic, see Chapter Two of my Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003.)

One important limit on this guarantee of privacy was articulated in 1976 in the landmark Tarasoff case. The California Supreme Court held that a psychologist not only had the right, but also the duty, to break a client's right to privacy if the client indicated an intention to endanger others-in that case, to kill someone. It is not clear whether the court would have extended this exception to cover the client's intention to commit non-violent felonies, such as damaging another person's reputation or property, or even if a client intended to inflict self-harm short of suicide, such as taking drugs. Even so, a rabbi (like a doctor) would neither be permitted as a matter of professional ethics nor required under Tarasoff to divulge a wife's drug habits to her husband. However, the rabbi may, and probably should, urge her to talk to her husband about her drug habit so that he can aid in her rehabilitation, and it would be good for the rabbi to volunteer to help her have that conversation: but her permission is necessary for the husband to be informed.

Even minors are protected to some degree by these privileges. Both state and federal law has taken special care to protect the privacy of minors of age 12 or older with regard to substance abuse and HIV testing. Clergy, therefore, need to learn that civil law requires them to keep such confidences secret. However, assuming that the parents are not abusive, here too clergy may, and probably should, urge minors with such problems to enlist the aid of their parents.

Jewish Law
Jewish sources do not speak directly about whether professionals have special duties beyond those of all other Jews to keep what they know about other people's physical, mental, legal, financial, or moral condition confidential. That is probably because our society relies on professionals far more than any community did in the past, and so the special issues involved in the professional-client relationship did not arise in the past as often, as urgently, and with the same complexity as they do now. Jewish law does, though, make it clear that communities may choose one social good over another. So, for example, the Shulhan Arukh, an important sixteenth-century code of Jewish law, specifies that in conditions of scarcity, the community must feed the hungry before they clothe the naked, that women are to be given such social support before men are, and that redeeming captives takes precedence over sustaining the poor and clothing them.

Similarly, Jewish law maintains that communal needs may also take precedence over the interests of individuals. A community may not demand that an innocent person give up his or her life in the interests of the community, but social needs may trump lesser interests or even rights. So, for example, even though a borrower being brought to court for non-payment of a debt may suffer by being judged by a less qualified judge, the Talmud relaxes its normal qualifications for judges in cases of collecting loans "so as not to lock the door before [potential] borrowers"-that is, to make it reasonably easy for creditors to convene a court to regain their property to ensure that money will be available for those who need to borrow money in the future, an important component of the economic welfare of the community. The Rabbis also enacted other revisions in Jewish commercial and family law that limit the former rights of specific parties `for the fixing of the world" (mipnei tikkun haolam). Thus even though the historical contexts of traditional Jewish law did not raise the question of special privacy requirements for professionals, in our day we may apply its concern for the general welfare to protect professional-client confidentiality.

All Jews, however, are governed by strict Jewish laws requiring the keeping of confidences. Specifically, the Torah prohibits not only spreading falsehoods about other people (sheker, lying), but also spreading true but negative facts about someone else that the hearer has no need to know-that is, lashon ha-ra, "speech about the bad"-and even spreading neutral facts that the hearer has no need to know-that is, rekhilut, gossip. The Talmud takes this further, insisting that even if there is no harm intended or anticipated, a person may not reveal a private conversation to an outside party unless the original speaker gives explicit permission to do so.

A Higher Standard for Rabbis?
How, then, would a rabbis duty to maintain confidentiality go beyond this high standard that applies to all Jews? The Talmud interprets Leviticus 19:16 ("Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor") as requiring Jews to help others in need. In the Talmud's examples, if a person is drowning or being accosted by robbers, a Jew may not just ignore the situation but has a positive duty to help the victim, enlisting the aid of others, if necessary. This is in sharp contrast to American law, where, until recent passage in many states of "Good Samaritan laws," a person who tried to help someone in dangerous circumstances and unintentionally inflicted harm on that person could be sued, and where only two states (Wisconsin and Vermont) have laws making it a misdemeanor to avoid helping someone in dire straits.

Let us now apply this Jewish duty to counseling. If, for example, a Jew knows that person A has a criminal record of fraud, Leviticus 19:16, so interpreted, would seem to require that person to warn any of As potential business partners of the extra risks involved in doing business with him or her. Because society needs counseling services, though, and because people will only seek such services if they can be assured of confidentiality, we may interpret Jewish law as permitting-or even insisting that a rabbi who knows of A's past keep quiet about it. That clearly impinges on the potential partners' welfare, for they may be taking on a larger level of risk than they realize or want: but the need of the community for counseling and for confidentiality in that context may outweigh the partners' individual or collective well-being. In interpreting Jewish law in this way, I am narrowing the domain of Leviticus 19:16 to exclude rabbis who are keeping confidences made known to them in their professional roles. That makes the rabbi's duty to maintain confidences somewhat greater than that of any other Jew, but only slightly so, for the Torah and later Jewish law require all Jews to avoid divulging other people's secrets.