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.
