and teaching concerning hilkhot tzniyut, the rules of self-restraint in social and personal behavior. Some encouraging efforts have already been made in this direction,’ with more, hopefully, to follow. The argument here is that we have little choice but to do so. To protect what is left of our personal privacy in the age of the Internet, we must practice the traits of zzniyut. We must learn to restrain our tendency to live our lives increasingly in the virtual world, to share the facts and photos and data of our lives with the universe that lies on the other side of our computer and smartphone screens.
Yet tzniyut by itself is insufficient; the principle of k vod hab'riyot is, for two reasons, its necessary complement. First, as I have argued,“human dignity” is the fundamental principle that undergirds the entire discussion of privacy in the halakhah. Without a substantive sense of what our“dignity” requires of us, it is unlikely that we will value our privacy enough to take concrete steps to protect it. Second, to speak of the need for“self-restraint” may raise concerns among some in our community. Since the 18" century, liberal political thought has stressed the importance of such values as individual liberty and freedom of expression, and to the extent that we liberal Jews share in this outlook, we are rightly disturbed by the admonitions of those in political, social, or religious authority to“watch what we say,” even in the name of securing some important end. An objection of this sort would parallel the objection, cited above,'* that some legal scholars have lodged against the“right to privacy” in the common law and in American constitutional discourse, namely that the enforcement of privacy rights is at some level inimical to the exercise of free expression in a democratic society. There can be, in other words, a very real tension between liberty and security. And this is why k’vod hab riyot is so vital to this discussion. To affirm a Substantive conception of human dignity is to overcome the liberty-vs.-security dichotomy, to deny that we must choose between them, to assert that the values of personal freedom and Self-restraint do not contradict each other. To declare a commitment to k'vod hab'riyot is to acknowledge the overriding