Judaism believes that
words have great power. After all, the
world was created through words.
Language is a gift that should be used wisely. Gossip is dangerous and takes many forms,
including malicious slander, unintentional slips of the tongue and even
swearing (both in terms of cursing and in taking false oaths). Long before the invention of email, the
rabbis believed that a gossiper in Babylonia can kill someone in Rome.
CURSING: what does it mean to curse God's name? If, as
we read in Genesis, every human being is created in God's image, that divine
part of us that is the essence of our humanity. To insult God is to
debase our own innate godliness, our human capacity for goodness and kindness. Sometimes curses can be a creative way of
dealing with powerlessness. We see that in the
colorful Yiddish curses that have sprung up. And Jews have had good
reason to shake their fist at the heavens. When Job's wife implores,
"Curse
God and die," Job has every reason to do just that - but he refuses
to, recognizing that God's blessings and curses are intertwined. In fact,
the very word translated as "curse" in Job 2:9 is "barekh",
which also means to bless. Job refuses to render God one-dimensional, the
source only of evil and not of life's blessings too. That's what cursing does. It turns God into a
stereotype. Once "bleeping" becomes your only way of express
passion, you are unable to communicate creatively, to probe the complexity of
deeper feelings.
GOSSIP: Once on the High
Holidays, I
challenged the congregation to go from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur without
gossiping. No one could do it. It’s impossible. But everyone became much more aware of what
they were saying, which is really the goal of the laws of gossip.
It is our good fortune
that the greatest champion of sacred speech that the Jewish world has ever
known lived only a century ago. Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan was also known as the
Chafetz Hayyim, the Seeker of Life, after a book he wrote with that title.
Kagan was the first to systematize the laws of gossip for a popular audience.
He died in 1933, which is just about when everything began to go awry for the
civilized world. Now, as distilled by the Chafetz Hayyim, here is how Jewish
law instructs us to clean up our use of language.
• It is
considered lashon hara, evil speech, to convey a derogatory image of
someone even if that image is true and deserved. A statement that is not
actually derogatory but can ultimately cause someone physical, financial or
emotional harm is also lashon hara.
• It is lashon
hara to recount an incident that contains embarrassing damaging
information about a person, even if there is not the slightest intent that s/he
should ever suffer harm or humiliation.
• Lashon hara is
forbidden by Jewish law even if you incriminate yourself as well.
• Lashon
hara cannot be communicated in any way shape or form, for instance through
writing, verbal hints, even raised eyebrows. When that person you can't stand
turns away and you roll your eyes in disgust to a third party, that is a form
of slander known as "Avak Lashon Hara," the residue of evil speech.
• To speak against a
community is a particularly severe offense.
• Lashon hara cannot
be related even to close relatives, even to your spouse. The columnist Dennis
Prager argues that this goes too far, saying, "If you never speak about
other people with your partner, you're probably not very intimate with each
other." Telushkin suggests that if we are going to gossip we should
develop a way of talking about others that is as kindly and fair as we would
want others to be when talking about us.
• Even something that
is already well known should not be repeated. Princess Di had an affair. Yes,
she admitted it before billions of people in TV. Too bad. We still can't talk
about it unless that information has a direct bearing on the well-being of the
person we're talking to.
• Tattling is a no no.
This is called Rechilut in Hebrew. The crux is this: if you know that
a person has spoken badly about your friend, you don't go to your friend and
tell him, because all it does is cause him pain and provoke animosity between
the friend and that other person. Well, you ask, shouldn't we have a right to
hear what's being said about us? In practice, however, the one small piece of
gossip transmitted often provides a totally false impression. Who here has
never said a negative thing about the person you love the most? How devastating
it would be for a so-called friend to tell our loved one about it. Mark Twain
said, "It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you
to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to
you."
• And finally, not only
does Judaism prohibit the spreading of lashon hara, we can't listen to it
either. And when we can't help but hear it, we are instructed not to believe
it. Imagine how different our lives would be if everybody gave the victim of
gossip the benefit of the doubt.
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