I love lashon hara, I really do.
Is there anyone here who does not love some good gossip?
We all know it’s wrong, but it’s also really hard to overcome. Someone starts talking and your brain comes up with three million reasons why you are allowed to keep on listening. “I may end up hiring this individual one day. Maybe one day our grandchildren will get married.”
So how do we curb this very human impulse?
Some people have a jar. They gossip, they speak or listen to lashon hara, and they put a dollar in a jar. Eventually, you spend too much money, and you kick the habit. But I believe there’s a better way; it involves a deeper understanding of where our love for gossip comes from.
Dr. Robin Dunbar is the preeminent scholar of gossip. “She suggests that gossip functioned as a sort of grooming tool for social groups that were growing in size. As human beings shifted from smaller, hunter-gatherer societies to larger communities, there was a need for an effective, low-cost way to communicate social norms and keep bad behavior in check. Gossip was a way for our ancestors to mitigate the negative impacts of delinquents and free riders.” (https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne9ae8/gossip-may-have-played-a-role-in-human-survival)
But there’s another reason I heard years ago from Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld that really resonated with me, and it goes like this: If you had a choice of two types of gossip. Behind door one is gossip about John Doe, a stranger you never met. Behind door two is gossip about your next-door neighbor, or the person sitting next to you in shul, or even better, me. Which one are you going for?
No question about it. You’re going for door two. Why is that?
Let’s think about how we view ourselves. Are you a stingy person or a generous person? Are you smart or not so smart? Are you an honest person or not?
What many of us do is we look around and we define our worth based on our surroundings. For example, am I smart? Well, one friend of mine says words that I have to check up in the dictionary after we’re done speaking. Another friend does not know how to spell dictionary. Me, being somewhere in the middle, I guess I am of average intelligence.
Am I honest? Well, I have one friend who never told a white lie, who makes sure to return all the pens she mistakenly took home from work, sends back the package to Amazon when they send a double of her order, and thinks three times before she says anything lest it be a lie. This other guy I know is in jail for embezzlement. I’ve never been arrested before, so I guess I’m a pretty honest person compared to that guy, but not so honest, compared to Ms. No White Lies.
But let’s say you come over to me one day and tell me that Ms. No White Lies regularly cheats on her taxes. You know what happens to me and my self-worth? It goes up. A moment ago, I was plotted somewhere in the middle between Mr. Jail Guy and Ms. No White Lies. But now that she’s down here, I just went up.
Most of us define our self-worth relative to others. And so, when we gossip, specifically about the people in our lives, the people we know, and best of all, when we gossip about people who we are supposed to look up to, it takes them down a notch, which in our relative assessment of our own self-worth lifts us up.
You bet that makes us feel good.
But a person who judges their own attributes based on his or her own potential, a person who does not look to the right or the left and instead looks inside, that’s a person who does not need gossip. If my self-worth comes from within then I really don’t care about what he or she did; it doesn’t affect me at the slightest. The greatest antidote to gossiping is being happy with who we are. (Rabi Freifeld suggests this to be the meaning of the well-known verse: “Who desires life” meaning, the individual who is in touch with their own life, “guard your lips from speaking evil,” is someone who is well-equipped to not speak lashon hara.)
Not speak Lashon Hara has developed into a beautiful trend in Jewish circles. Obviously, it has been a mitzvah for a few thousand years but it only really became “in” about 100 years ago when Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kaganoff wrote a book outlining the laws of forbidden speech. Then about thirty years ago, a man by the name Michael Rothchild started something called the Chafetz Chaim Heritage Foundation which published endless books and movies on the topic. A few years ago, the New York Times featured an initiative taken on by a number of Orthodox girls’ high schools to not gossip one hour a day.
But like all good things, sometimes too much of it is not that good at all. There is a caveat to the laws of Lashon Hara – if one has information that can save people from harm, not only are they permitted to share that information, they are obligated to do so.
For example, if someone calls you about a man or woman they want to date and you know something egregious about said person, you are obligated to warn them. You are not doing anyone any favors by withholding that information. You are causing untold anguish.
Even worse, unfortunately, in our community, when people know of an abuser, they sometimes refrain from letting the authorities know. Why? Lashon Hara. That is a perversion of the laws of Lashon Hara. If someone is a danger to others, we are obligated to do what we can to prevent them from harming others, be it physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. And to be clear, telling a rabbi does not count as preventing further abuse. I have yet to meet a rabbi who is qualified at policing perpetrators.
Rabbi Avraham Hirsch Eisenstadt, the author of Pischei Teshuvos, was one of the most influential Halachic authorities of the 20th century. This is what he wrote about not speaking Lashon Hara when it is warranted:
“There is a sin even greater than [speaking lashon hara], and one which is more widespread, namely, the sin of refraining from informing another about a situation in which one can save him from being victimized—all out of concern for lashon hara… One who behaves in this manner, his sin is too great to bear, and he violates the injunction “You shall not stand by the blood of your brother.”
Lashon Hara is bad. Not speaking lashon hara can be much worse.
In our parsha, the Jewish People gossip about Moshe. After he kills the Egyptian slave-master, he comes to the fields the next day and learns that people were talking about him. When Moshe hears this, he exclaims, “Achein noda hadavar. Now I know!” Now I know what? Rashi explains that Moshe was struggling to understand why the Jewish People were suffering so terribly. When he realized that they were engaging in gossip he understood. The Maharal of Prague sheds some light on Rashi’s comments. He explains that gossip has such a negative effect on us because words are otherworldly, they belong in the spiritual realm, they do not belong here on earth. When we bring them down, when we take an idea from our soul, into our mind, through our mouth, and into this world, we need to make sure it is protected. It’s like nuclear energy; in the right setting, it is the engine of the world. In the wrong hands, it brings about destruction. When we misuse our words – that spiritual gift exclusive to humans, it has devastating effects on us and the world around us.
May we develop a sense of self that is independent of our surroundings; a sense of self based on who we are and who we need to be. May we appreciate the precious gift called language. And may we refrain from bringing destruction by saying too much and refrain from bringing destruction by saying too little.