Altruism: The Seth Goldstein Story

For those of you who don't remember the story of Kitty Genovese, here's a reminder: Kitty Genovese was a woman who, in 1964, was stabbed to death in front of her apartment building. While she screamed for help, people all around heard her cries, but nobody did anything about it. How could something like this happen? There are, actually, several reasons. First of all, there's the bystander intervention model: according to the model, one will help another person if a) he/she notices the incident, b) interprets the incident as an emergency, and c) assumes responsibility. In the Kitty Genovese case, none of the bystanders could get past step C. It's possible that, in this case, the presence of other bystanders caused people to turn away from helping. Thankfully, we have people like Seth Goldstein. While he was running in some place in Tennessee for cross-country, a runner next to him collapsed, the result of a seizure. While four other runners ran by, Seth stopped racing in order to make sure the runner was safe. The four other runners either didn't get past Step B or Step C, and this is because they saw other people around to take responsibility. Thankfully, Seth took responsibility and made a big Kiddush Hashem.