Speech is Why We’re Here

Although the Gesher HaChaim enumerates no less than thirteen specific attributes that distinguish human beings from animals, the miracle of speech is the gold standard of that distinction, and through it man connects to Hashem by way of Limud Torah and tefillah.

Rabbi Zev Leff informs us that this use of our faculty of speech for the purposes of learning Torah and dialoging with Hashem is not incidental.  At its core, speech is the outward representation of the Neshama and the means by which one manifests his inner kedusha.  

It’s all about bringing out the spiritual potential from our Neshamos through speech by way of Torah and tefillah.  In this way we build the world and infuse it with the energy it needs to exist.

When you crystallize what’s in your mind it coalesces into a thought that subsequently morphs into speech which is invariably a catalyst for action.

Simply put, speech is why we’re here.

Therefore, it follows that a person who takes speech, whose purpose is to give life, and uses it instead to tear down people and the world, is abusing the essence of life and turning it into an agent of death.  Loshon Hora vaporizes a person’s claim to be a human being by destroying that aspect of creation that distinguishes us from the animals.

Is it any wonder then that Rav Leff tells us that Loshon Hora is an act of destruction that he compares to total death?

And do we not also see this in what happened to Miriam when she spoke Loshon Hora against her brother Moshe, and as a consequence thereof all of her skin turned white from tzoras?

Why tzoras?

Whereas Loshon Hora negates a person’s spiritual life and transforms him into a virtual dead person soul wise, a metzorah, whose flesh is covered from head to toe with tzoras, represents the physical mirror image of that rotting soul.

Like we said above, speech is why we’re here. 

And when man puts that faculty of speech into play to create, by uniting man in the service of Hashem, he hits the high note of his purpose in this world.

The Chofetz Chaim’s Twofer

In GuardYourSpeak: Don’t Even Think About It, we mentioned that in the introduction to Sefer Chofetz Chaim the Chofetz Chaim lists 17 Laveen (negative mitzvos) and 14 Aseen (positive mitzvos) that one might potentially violate by either speaking or believing loshon hora.  While most of these mitzvos are not about loshon hora per se in their essence, the Chofetz Chaim tells us that when one crosses the line on loshon hora he may also be violating one or more of these Aseen or Laveen.

Then in GuardYourSpeak: Duck!, we tightened the noose around the vagueness by jettisoning the word potentially, and then noted that when you decided to create even the faintest of sound waves that tilted toward Loshon Hora you empowered the Satan to charge you with violating an absolute minimum of 6 out of the 17 Laveen and 5 of the 14 Aseen that the Chofetz Chaim listed in the introduction to his sefer.  And for good measure, you also brought two of the three curses down upon your head.

For those without calculators, this works out to a minimum of 11Torah violations for every comment that crosses the line from what is permitted to what is not, with two curses thrown in for good measure. 

And one of them is Do not go tale-bearing about another Jew.

You told Reuven what Shimon said about him?

Mazel tov!  The Chofetz Chaim specifically mentions you by name in his sefer.  Not the one your parents gave you when they named you for your great uncle, but the one that names you for yourself, because the act of placing into Reuven’s ears what came out of Shimon’s mouth stamped you as a talebearer, for the Chofetz Chaim asks rhetorically who is a talebearer, and then answers: The one who learns about things and then goes from place-to-place saying “This is what he said about you,” or “This is what I heard he did to you.”

And Mr. Talebearer, if you could fold your cards at this point and slip away quietly into the night things would be bad enough because the Chofetz Chaim adds that even if the Rechilus that you spoke is true, your type of language destroys the world.

But the truth is that your situation isn’t bad enough as is.  It’s actually much worse than that by a long shot because, ironically enough, the Chofetz Chaim’s very severe indictment of your loose lips is, comparatively speaking, the good news.

After informing us in very severe terms that your type of language destroys the world, the Chofetz Chaim then tells us that every verbal foray into the nether world of Rechilus brings even a greater sin in its train which is included in the of Lav of Do not go tale-bearing about another Jew.

You told Reuven what Shimon said about him? 

Mazel tov again!  You have double dipped!  Your remarks degraded a fellow Jew thereby qualifying them as Loshon Hora, even if they were truthful.

Duck!

In GuardYourSpeak: Keep Your Lip Halakhically Zipped, we said that The Beis Din shel Maala….doesn’t give your sins the time of day UNLESS the Satan, in his role as the prosecuting attorney, brings an accusation against you, because without an accusation there can be no court case.  And Loshon Hora is the only thing that can point the Satan’s accusative finger in your direction.

Hashem, in classic mida keneged mida mode, gave the Satan the power to condemn you based on your condemnation of other Jews.

That’s already the good news, because if you thought to assuage either your conscience, your fear of punishment or both by comforting yourself with the thought that the itzy bitzy shtickel of Loshon Hora that you said over after davening would be pareve enough to qualify for the Shemiras HaLoshon version of White Collar criminal treatment, you thought wrong.

As we said in GuardYourSpeak: Don’t Even Think About It, in the introduction to Sefer Chofetz Chaim the Chofetz Chaim lists 17 Laveen (negative mitzvos) and 14 Aseen (positive mitzvos) that one might potentially violate by either speaking or believing loshon hora.  While most of these mitzvos are not about loshon hora per se in their essence, the Chofetz Chaim tells us that when ones crosses the line on loshon hora he may also be violating one or more of these Aseen or Laveen.

And if that doesn’t sufficiently lay a mine field through which those who are loose of tongue must thread their way, the Chofetz Chaim adds 3 Curses from the Torah.

You opened your mouth and let loose with a word or two that touched the third rail of Loshon Hora?

Even if what you said was only one tenth of a percent Loshon Hora of the most pareve variety you’re out of luck because when it comes to Loshon Hora, there ain’t no such thing as pareve.

In the Satan’s hands, the impact of he may also be violating one or more of these Aseen or Laveen in reference to that itzy bitzy shtickel of Loshon Hora that you said over after davening, coalesces into one heck of a serious indictment because it appears that the Holy Chofetz Chaim was actually understating the case when he wrote that he may also be violating one or more of these Aseen or Laveen.

The emes is that there's also no such thing as may also be violating, because the Satan doesn’t walk into court on the strength of maybes.

When you decided to create even the faintest of sound waves that tilted toward Loshon Hora you empowered the Satan to charge you with violating an absolute minimum of 6 out of the 17 Laveen and 5 of the 14 Aseen that the Chofetz Chaim listed in the introduction to his sefer.  And for good measure, you also brought two of the three curses down upon your head.

And that's just the Satan's default position.

A good lawyer would tell you to duck because they’re gonna throw the book at you. 

Keep Your Lip Halakhically Zipped

Most of us are well aware that the bottom line of Loshon Hora is that the Torah forbids us even to speak the truth about someone if it is denigrating or will cause him damage.

But what if you kept your lip halakhically zipped? Then we are told that the Satan will not have reshus to speak the truth about you. 

Say what?

Rabbi Mendel Kessin does yeoman’s service by laying out for us the mechanics of how Loshon Hora impacts procedurally on the Beis Din shel Maala.

Din (judgment), he says, is a cause and effect concept.  A person does A and gets B in return.  And except for special occasions, Hashem stays out of the picture and lets the Beis Din shel Maala judge us.

The fact is that a Jew can commit multiple sins in the course of a week or even a day, and the Beis Din doesn’t even so much as throw a glance in his direction.

Why not?

It’s not as hefker as it appears because the truth is that this would be considered normal procedure in any criminal court in the United States. After all, what court is going to concern itself with the various crimes that abound within its jurisdiction unless and until they are brought to its attention by the prosecuting attorney representing the governmental authority?

The Beis Din shel Maala works pretty much the same way, and that’s why it doesn’t give your sins the time of day UNLESS the Satan, in his role as the prosecuting attorney, brings an accusation against you, because without an accusation there can be no court case.  And Loshon Hora is the only thing that can point the Satan’s accusative finger in your direction.

Moreover, Rabbi Kessin explains that the entire nature of the prosecution is built solely on Loshon Hora because the Satan is doing nothing less than speaking Loshon Hora about you.  Hashem, in classic mida keneged mida mode, gave the Satan the power to condemn you based on your condemnation of other Jews.

Interestingly, there are also privacy laws in Shomayim but when you speak Loshon Hora they're suspended, and the Satan is given access to what heretofore was legally out of his reach, and as a consequence your file of sins is directly laid before him, and he can now immediately prosecute you.  It’s as if you wrote your own indictment with your tongue for the Satan to sign.  It therefore follows that if you don’t speak Loshon Hora then the Satan can’t speak Loshon Hora about you.

Rabbi Kessin tells us that even if you discipline your tongue you’ll still be judged, however, for whatever it was that you either shouldn’t have done or neglected to do, but the Beis Din shel Maala won’t be able to touch you because if your tongue is squeaky clean Hashem Himself will judge you.  He will give you time to do Teshuva, and even if you mess that up He will spread out, over a long period of time, whatever punishment is coming your way.

And when you’re one with Hashem there are no rules because He’s all Rachamim and can do whatever He wants.

So it all comes down to this.  In relation to the Beis Din shel Maala, you are nothing more than a ventriloquist because the Satan can’t open his mouth unless you first open yours, and give him what to say.  And if you don’t, you stroll out of court past a mute Satan who sits there like a dummy.

And once you’re out of there it’s only between you and Hashem.

Someone Who Wants To Be Purified

The Gemara (Arachin) teaches us that everyone who speaks Loshon Hora amplifies their sins and enlarges them until they reach Shomayim.  Moreover, as we learn in the Tanna De’Vei Eliyahu, the (actual) Loshon Hora spoken by a person ascends to the Heavens, to Hashem’s Holy Throne of Glory.

In his Preface to Sefer Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, who is universally known as the Chofetz Chaim after his sefer, opens our eyes in regard to the atmospheric fallout engendered by the speaking of Loshon Hora.

For starters, he tells us that the reason that the Torah was so strict with the sin of Loshon Hora is because the very speaking of Loshon Hora causes the Satan, who is the Prosecutor against Klal Yisroel, to gain strength and grow in power against us all.  He then brings the Zohar HaKodesh to let us know that there is a force in the world that is nourished by those who speak Loshon Hora.  Its name is Sachsuchah and with the impure power that is his by virtue of all of the Loshon Hora that is spoken, he ascends to the Heavens and spreads death, war, and catastrophe throughout the world.

And that’s only his warm up act.

The Chofetz Chaim goes on to tell us that Loshon Hora triggers the attribute of mida keneged mida (measure for measure) which is one of the modes by which Hashem brings justice to the world.  He once again cites the Zohar HaKodesh to point out that from this impure power/evil spirit that we referenced above evolves other forces of strict unmerciful justice.

You sent a pekel of some serious Loshon Hora in Hashem’s direction?! 

That’s really unfortunate because the bad news is that in the same way that man defiles his speech with language that is forbidden, he also prevents all of his subsequent words of holiness (all of his Torah learning and mitzvahs) from ascending to Heaven.  The conclusion of the Zohar is that all of the good things you have done are suspended in mid-air.

They do not ascend, period.

The Chofetz Chaim then impresses upon us the seriousness of this state of affairs by asking:

How will we merit the coming of Moshiach?

The good news, however is that the Chofetz Chaim has an answer.

At the end of the Preface, after an exhaustive explanation of both the destructiveness of Loshon Hora and the merits of learning his sefer in order to uproot this great sin from our midst, the Chofetz Chaim states that if people study these laws carefully, the Yetzer Hora will not have such great power to control society into committing this sin.  Automatically, if one backs away from this sin, even a little bit, then as time goes by he will wash his hands completely of it because this sin is so caught up in the routine of our everyday lives.  The implication being that if we get a running start vis á vis the sin of Loshon Hora, in due time we’ll be able to flip the switch on the cruise control.

The Chofetz Chaim then hits the high note as he concludes the Preface by letting us hear that someone who wants to be purified of this sin will have Siyata D’Shemaya (Divine Assistance), and in the merit of both learning these laws and not speaking Loshon Hora, Moshiach will come soon, speedily in our days.

The One Thing

In EmunahSpeak: Nothing but Thoughts, Rabbi Shalom Arush told us in the name of Rebbe Nachman that character traits are nothing but thoughts, with the prevailing thoughts delineating the essence of one’s mindset at any given time.

A person usually speaks what’s on his mind, so if the prevailing thoughts in one’s head are grist for the loshon hora mill is there any wonder as to what’s going to spring forth from between those not so tightly closed lips?

If you don’t think it you can’t say it, and if you do think it make sure it’s squeaky clean.

In GuardYourSpeak: The Clarity of Context, we observed that Whatever you see your neighbor do you also did once upon a time or may well do tomorrow with but a slight variation on the theme, not enough to take it out of whatever aveira was the touchstone between your two neshamos at different points in time.

And on this we asked, (so) why is it that there is a Grand Canyon disconnect between the understanding with which you view your actions and the jaundiced eye that you cast upon the missteps of your friend, sufficient to ignite within you a desire to talk about it?

The answer, of course, was that we are more accepting of ourselves because we possess the clarity that comes from being cognizant of the context from which all of our mistakes flow, which in turn enhances our understanding of all of our shortcomings.

But while context goes a long way in explaining the double standard by which we judge the actions of others vis á vis our own, it doesn’t go the total route.

It’s a montage with a wide angle focus that can present us with a myriad of facts sufficient to morph what was originally nothing but a bare bones sketch into a high resolution image bursting with detail as to the back story of what it was that caught our eye. That in turn impacts on what motivated the behavior that was weighed by us and found wanting.

But there are other times where the context of a situation is an open book that's in our face, and it may not even be a situation in which we are dwelling on yenem’s faults which, as we said above, will almost invariably lead to loshon hora, while rationalizing our own. Maybe it’s a case where your friend is, in fact, messing up while you’re being a big tzaddik.

There’s someone in your shul that shows up late every morning about two minutes before Borchu, and he doesn’t come rushing in either.  And it just so happens that you’re the first one there.  You don’t know him that well but you do know that there’s nothing doing in his house that would slow him up in the morning.  

The number of kindred scenarios is only circumscribed by the limits of your imagination, and it goes without saying that both your mind and tongue should be focused elsewhere just as it should always be except when there is a legitimate toellis afoot.

We’re talking here about our inability to see past our self imposed delineation of reality.

In the situations where we are find ourselves bereft of proper context, such as those which we spoke about in GuardYourSpeak: The Clarity of Context, our tendency, as we said, is to cast a cold eye on the other guy's doings while rationalizing our own miss-steps. 

But on other occasions, when there is a clear distinction in our favor between our avoda and that of our friend, leaving us nothing to rationalize, it never occurs to us that for all we know, maybe talking during davening is the one thing he does wrong whereas never uttering a word during davening is the one thing we do right.

It’s Lowly

Much of the loshon hora that is spoken, be it born of ignorance or willful blindness is fueled by a number of misconceptions as to what is fair game for one’s barbed tongue.  And those misconceptions are themselves rooted in a serious lack of understanding as to what the laws of loshon hora are all about.

Rabbi Yitzchak Berkovits tells us that the prohibition of speaking loshon hora is the Torah’s way of letting us know that, in addition to not being allowed to damage a fellow Jew, we are supposed to be a higher people.  We are aristocratic, and it is therefore beneath our dignity to focus on the negative.  Yidden are supposed to exclusively dwell on the positive.

Our attitude as to what our true focus should be is best illustrated by a vignette from the Chovos Halevovos in which a rabbi was walking through the street with several of his students. They came upon the carcass of a dead dog. "What a vile sight," they remarked. "Look how white its teeth are," responded the rabbi.

But Rabbi Berkovits goes on to punctuate his thought with a qualifier that goes beyond negativity to touch the very essence of what loshon hora is all about.

“Looking for the negative,” he says, “is something lowly even when it causes no harm.  The prohibition is not to do something negative but rather not to do something lowly.”  If there is a constructive purpose in drawing attention to the negative at any given time then by definition it’s not lowly, and it may well be permitted.

So with the bottom line feel for the what of loshon hora firmly in hand, what about the who, as in who does the what apply to?

Everybody.

You can forget about all of the popular misconceptions that hold that the laws of loshon hora don’t apply to certain classes of people because the reality is that there are no free passes and no stealth rides under the radar.  The laws of loshon hora represent a thoroughly egalitarian framework which allows for no exceptions whatsoever in which a Yid would be allowed to freely speak loshon hora without having a positive purpose that would qualify as a proper toellis, irrespective of who was the object of one’s loshon hora.

And no exceptions mean that one can’t freely denigrate non-religious Jews for the same reason that you can’t talk on religious Jews.  It’s lowly.  And it’s no less lowly to speak loshon hora on goyim for no good reason.

One of the fundamental principles of the laws of loshon hora, as laid out by the Chofetz Chaim in his sefer, is that none of the exceptions that would allow someone to speak loshon hora l’toellis (for a legitimate purpose) apply if the one spoken about would suffer undue harm, as that may be defined relative to time and place.

And Rabbi Berkovits makes it clear that this rule even includes apikorsim.

Moreover, while it is most certainly permissible to contrast the differences between a Torah and an anti-Torah lifestyle for educational purposes, you can’t run down stam apikorsim by speaking loshon hora about them without any shmeck of toellis just to have a good time.

Because it’s still lowly.

If You Wouldn’t Say it….

Rabbi Yossi is quoted as effectively saying that he wouldn’t say anything about someone that he wouldn’t say directly to that person himself.

The fact is that he never actually said it this way.  What he actually said, as quoted in the Gemara, was that Never once in my life did I have to retract anything that I said to anyone, but nevertheless, by wrenching his words totally out of their context a popular misconception has arisen that assumes that it’s permissible to speak loshon hora if one is speaking directly to the victim of said loshon hora.

In the commentary of the Be’er Mayim Chaim to the first Halacha in Klal Gimmel, the Chofetz Chaim devotes close to a dozen pages to vaporize this misconception.

For those lacking the staying power to attend to the Chofetz Chaim’s detailed and cogent analysis, the dozen pages of the Be’er Mayim Chayim can be summed up in one word:

Fuggedaboutit!

Like most things in life, there’s also a flip side to Rabbi Yossi’s words, be they actually said, be they supposedly said or otherwise, that the Chofetz Chaim didn’t deal with, and if made into a rule of thumb it would spike the vast majority of one’s loshon hora from the get go.

Success in holding the line on loshon hora is a matter of attitude and focus, and if the attitude is that the laws of loshon hora are an obstacle to one’s desired discourse then the focus will be on trying to dance around them. Those who cite, or rather miss cite, Rabbi Yossi do so because they are seeking wiggle room to say what needn’t be said and more often than not shouldn’t be said altogether.  Those, however, who hearken to the converse of what Rabbi Yossi was purported to have said focus on Hashem’s desires, as opposed to their own, so as to not say anything other than what should be said.

So how can we slice and dice Rabbi Yossi’s words so as to morph them into verbal body armor?

It’s a simple fact of life that most of the baali loshon hora amongst us are not so brazen as to exercise their tongues in the presence of those who they are attempting to run down with their speech, and all the more so for the casual speakers of loshon hora.  If one thinks his next door neighbor is a jerk it’s not likely that he will so express himself when the neighbor is in hearing range.  It’s basic human nature.

Therefore, if you wouldn’t say it in front of yenem don’t say it behind his back.  

And if you would?

For everyone but the fewest of the arrogant few, who in any case are reading neither this, nor Sefer Chofetz Chaim, there is no such thing as and if you would because you wouldn’t.

The difference between this statement and that of Rabbi Yossi is small and somewhat subtle, but bottom line it’s all the difference in the world.

If one internalizes these fifteen words, then ninety per cent of the loshon hora scenarios that one would normally encounter in his war with the Yetzer Hora will be removed from the battlefield.

It’s simplicity itself.

There are no conditions and rules to remember and no inferences to be drawn.  At the end of the day there’s nothing but these fifteen words standing between you and ninety percent of all of the loshon hora that you would otherwise speak over the course of the rest of your life.

It’s as simple and as difficult as that.

You Can’t Believe a Word of it

Shemiras HaLoshon is in today.

The words, Shemiras HaLoshon, that is.  What those words are meant to represent can be quite another story.

Did you ever notice that there are several halachas listed in Sefer Chofetz Chaim that tend to be generally ignored, as if by prior agreement, with the majority of Klal Yisroel in on the conspiracy?

Who has not witnessed, at least once in his life, not to mention the more likely scenario of dozens of times, if not more, the trashing of a people of impeccable character, including great rabbis who were universally considered to be great tzaddikim with usually only the speaker’s camp, group, sect, or whatever, opting out of the adulation?

And speaker wise, (re: the baali loshon hora), we’re not talking pygmies here.  Many of them are great men in their own right, and the information that they are giving over they in turn heard from the lips of other great men.

So what gives here anyway?

Most, if not all of it that’s not actually out right slander (motzi shem ra) is spoken under the rubric of toellis (speech that is necessary for a specific purpose).  One avails himself of this heter, as per the guidelines laid out in Sefer Chofetz Chaim, so as to make known something that would be important for the listener to hear, such as negative information concerning a shidduch or perhaps a potential business partnership.

The truth is that one man’s tzaddik can be another’s apikoris, so given the elasticity of the heter of toellis where the line between objective and subjective necessity of one’s words tends to get subconsciously blurred, it would be more productive to shift our focus elsewhere.

We said above that many of them are great men in their own right, and the information that they are giving over they in turn heard from the lips of other great men.  While everyone and his uncle who has a negative comment to make about someone will do their best to morph their words into pristine examples of speech bursting forth with positive purpose, if what they are saying they in turn heard from the lips of others then they have a serious problem.

Where exactly is the heter that would permit one to believe this stuff?

It may be all fine and dandy to either actually sanitize one’s negative comments under the ultra-violet exception of toellis or to fool oneself into thinking that he did, but neither scenario is going to fly in the realm of being mekabel (accepting) someone else’s words because what most of us forgot, or maybe never knew, or better yet don’t want to know, is that there is no mention anyplace in Sefer Chofetz Chaim of any kind of heter to be mekabel loshon hora l’toellis.

What this means in English is that you can’t believe anything you are told about anyone for any reason whatsoever, and if doesn’t concern you in some way you can’t even listen to it. 

Unlike the speaking of loshon hora, there’s no wiggle room here on the mekabel end within which to drey.  So how is it that so many of us seem to be running on what amounts to permanent chutzpah cruise control in the realm of believing loshon hora that more often than not we shouldn't even be listening to in the first place ?

When we said that you can’t believe anything you are told about anyone for any reason whatsoever, we omitted to mention that there two exceptions to this no, nada, nicht, never rule of being mekabel loshon hora, which is that if a person is an established apikoris or a rasha then you are allowed to believe what’s said about him.

And these are the only exceptions, so we ask again in reference to those who are mekabel loshon hora about our great rabbis and other upstanding people:

Where’s the heter?

Could it be that the taiva to speak loshon hora is so great that they have to morph tzaddikim, with which they have disagreements that amount to no more than chaluki deos (differences of opinion), into apikorsim just to be able to speak about them?

How can one posit such a possibility?

Great rabbis or just plain fine upstanding Jews are exactly that.  What you see is what you get.  It isn’t likely that one would find any of them doubling as apikorsim or reshoim on their night job.  And it’s just as unlikely that you’ll ever encounter an exception to the rule that forbids you to be mekabel loshon hora from someone. 

What we are looking at here is simply gross ignorance of the Halacha that is unfortunately not limited to the ignorant.

There are a number of exceptions to many of the rules laid down in Sefer Chofetz Chaim, and many of those exceptions have to run a gauntlet of five or sometimes even seven conditions. 

This isn’t one of them.

The Halacha of not believing loshon hora that’s told to you is about as clear as things get vis á vis the laws of loshon hora.

You can’t believe a word of it.

The Clarity of Context

In the wonderful world of average people a.k.a. our world, we the people, the Beinonim who occupy the great center that fills in the divide between the Tzaddikim from the Reshoim all tend to stumble in very similar ways.

Whatever you see your neighbor do you also did once upon a time or may well do tomorrow with but a slight variation on the theme, not enough to take it out of whatever aveira was the touchstone between your two neshamos at different points in time.

So why is it that there is a Grand Canyon disconnect between the understanding with which you view your actions and the jaundiced eye that you cast upon the missteps of your friend, sufficient to ignite within you a desire to talk about it?

When assessing the doings of our friend we have nothing in front of us but the bare bones of undefined actions which by themselves are meaningless without the benefit of the what, why and who of the matter.

Where’s that back story that would flesh out the possible motivation for whatever it was that ran afoul your perception of right and wrong? 

Better yet, what happened to the mitzvah aseh of one must love his fellow Jew as he loves himself?

The Chofetz Chaim tells us that someone who speaks loshon hora or gossips about a fellow Jew, or someone who listens to these remarks and accepts them as the truth, even if the remarks are truthful, clearly demonstrates that he has no love at all for his fellow Jew and most certainly not fulfilling his obligation from the Torah “to love your fellow Jew as you love yourself.”

But by us, by our faults, foibles, speed bumps, and sometimes blatant aveiros, it’s a different story because when we shine the light on our less than gallant doings we dust off a different pair of eyes of a somewhat softer variety.

The irony of course is that while we are only privy to a mere smattering of our friend’s left turns, the complete and very detailed accounting of our own rebelliousness against what the Torah demands of us is constantly in our face.  Given the enormity of our debit balance in contradistinction to the little we know of our friend’s red ink, how is it possible for our eye (and then tongue) to be drawn in the direction of our friend’s weaknesses?

The Chofetz Chaim lets us know that even though we are aware of our many sins, far more than have been disclosed about our friend, we push them all aside because we love ourselves.

We are more accepting of ourselves because we possess the clarity that comes from being cognizant of the context from which all of our mistakes flow, which in turn enhances our understanding of all of our shortcomings.

In keeping with the mitzvah of “love your fellow Jew as yourself, the Torah demands that we deal with our fellow Jew in exactly the same manner, to zealously guard and protect his honor and interests to the best of our abilities.

And this can only happen if his comings and goings are assessed within their natural context.  Then and only then can we obtain the clarity necessary to see ourselves in him.

Don’t Even Think About It

You know how it is.

We see someone do or say something that we don’t approve of, and right away he’s guilty of whatever it is we’re charging him with in our minds.  We didn’t (at least this time) make a derogatory comment about it to anyone, nor were we mekabel this negative inference from yenem.

Neither saying nor hearing anything leaves us squeaky clean on our ride

under the radar as far as the laws of loshon hora are concerned.

Our thoughts, however, are a different story because as we explained in EmunahSpeak: Nothing but Thoughts:

You are what you think.  

We were speaking there in relation to character traits and we went on to point out that If his (a person’s) thoughts were saturated with humility it would be physically IMPOSSIBLE for him to conduct himself in an arrogant manner.  And so it is for every other midda, be it positive or negative.

And the same can be said even for certain mitzvos.

In the introduction to Sefer Chofetz Chaim the Chofetz Chaim lists 17 Laveen (negative mitzvos) and 14 Aseen (positive mitzvos) that one might potentially violate by either speaking or believing loshon hora.  While most of these mitzvos are not about loshon hora per se in their essence, the Chofetz Chaim tells us that when ones crosses the line on loshon hora he may also be violating one or more of these Aseen or Laveen.

But most of them are also violated without even uttering a word of loshon hora.

If someone is speaking loshon hora is he not, as was also said there, simply reading his lines; the lines that he has written for himself; the ones etched into his thoughts?  

If you said it, you first thought it.

And if you thought it, then even if you’re a tzaddik who kept his mouth shut in the aftermath of the judge and jury role playing that was outlined above, and you didn’t tell your wife, your co-worker or your best buddy what you saw or heard, you have to know that you’re a tzaddik who might already be in big trouble because you may have trashed the Aseh of judge your fellow Jew charitably. 

And that’s before you even opened your mouth. 

So it all comes down to this:

If you really want to control your tongue you have to first learn to control your mind because if you’re not already thinking about something that shouldn’t be there then it’s impossible that you should be speaking about it.