Monday, 23 April 2018

My favourite sin of Lashon Hara

I am thinking of turning it into a parlour game or a drama documentary. The object of the game would be to see how long a person can go without committing Lashon Hara. I was once told I should be Head of BBC Light Entertainment.




http://halachipedia.com/index.php?title=Lashon_Hara


http://rabbisacks.org/tazria-5774-price-free-speech/

Tazria and Metsora, are about a condition called tsara’at, sometimes translated as leprosy. The commentators were puzzled as to what this condition is and why it should be given such prominence in the torah. They concluded that it was precisely because it was a punishment for lashon hara, derogatory speech.

Evidence for this is the story of Miriam (Numbers 12: 1) who spoke slightingly about her brother Moses “because of the Ethiopian wife he had taken.” God himself felt bound to defend Moses’ honour and as a punishment, turned Miriam leprous. Moses prayed for God to heal her. God mitigated the punishment to seven days, but did not annul it entirely.

Clearly this was no minor matter, because Moses singles it out among the teachings he gives the next generation: “Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam along the way after you came out of Egypt” (Deut. 24: 9, and see Ibn Ezra ad loc.).

Oddly enough Moses himself, according to the sages, had been briefly guilty of the same offence. At the burning bush when God challenged him to lead the people Moses replied, “They will not believe in me” (Ex. 4: 1). God then gave Moses three signs: water that turned to blood, a staff that became a snake, and his hand briefly turning leprous. We find reference later in the narrative to water turning to blood and a staff turning into a serpent, but none to a hand that turns leprous.

The sages, ever alert to the nuances of the biblical text, said that the hand that turned leprous was not a sign but a punishment. Moses was being reprimanded for “casting doubts against the innocent” by saying that the Israelites would not believe in him. “They are believers the children of believers,” said God according to the Talmud, “but in the end you will not believe.”[3]

How dangerous lashon hara can be is illustrated by the story of Joseph and his brothers. The Torah says that he “brought an evil report” to his father about some of his brothers (Gen. 37: 2). This was not the only provocation that led his brothers to plot to kill him and eventually sell him as a slave. There were several other factors. But his derogatory gossip did not endear him to his siblings.

No less disastrous was the “evil report” (dibah: the Torah uses the same word as it does in the case of Joseph) brought back by the spies about the land of Canaan and its inhabitants (Num. 13: 32). Even after Moses’ prayers to God for forgiveness, the report delayed entry in the land by almost forty years and condemned a whole generation to die in the wilderness.

Why is the Torah so severe about lashon hara, branding it as one of the worst of sins? Partly this has deep roots in the Jewish understanding of God and the human condition. Judaism is less a religion of holy people and holy places than it is a religion of holy words.

I wonder if it would amuse Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox rabbis to cite and describe the number and nature of daily Lashon Hara committed in this piece by the obviously Reform Stephen Games about the Ultra Orthodox rabbis who make up 75% of the Dayanim at the London Beth Din.

https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/how-chief-rabbi-has-sold-off-us-autonomy-1.19393

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/31964

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