Gossip and Lashon Hara
The Caricatures, the Misconceptions, and the Challenge
A Closer Look at Speaking about Others

The Caricatures
The word “gossip” often evokes a typecast caricature -- the town gossip. Yiddish writer Chaim Grade’s depicts Mariasha the gossip-monger, holding court at the chulent oven in Vilna on a Shabbos afternoon: “A good Shabbos to you, Vella -- Hatzkel the grocer went bankrupt.” She procedes to mimick and slander the grocer, the rag-picker, the goose-dealer, the butcher girl, the candy seller (who is listening from outside the window), and throws in a line to the baker (“You sell bread with nails in it. This Sabbath I found a piece of string in your hallah.”). During the week “. . . she is running from one neighbor’s house to the other, busily washing everyone’s dirty linen.” (Chaim Grade, My Mother’s Sabbath Days, pp. 115-122.)

Mariasha’s moral problems are transparent. Her own house and family are a shambles so she spends her time digging up others’ dirt. No one has any confusion about her case -- what she speaks is clearly lashon hara, she violates the Torah’s prohibition against speaking negatively about others.

Gossip columns bring a new dimension to gossip. The tabloids play on people’s fascination with the lives of famous people -- the rich, the politicians, television and movie stars. And that fascination does not limit itself to the positive aspects of their lives. The gossip columns allow for a strange combination of hero worship with hero destruction -- on the one hand, who went to which party with whom is considered newsworthy. on the other, an embarassing slip-up at the same party is considered a hot item. If not totally lashon hara, there’s certainly a good share of it.

The Misconceptions
Thank G-d, with very little effort one can avoid being a Mariasha. We must, however, make sure we do not fall into one of the common misconceptions about lashon hara -- “avoiding the caricatures of gossip is enough.”

The halakha teaches us that just making sure we are not Mariasha-style town gossips is not enough. True, Maimonides teaches us being a gossip is a much more negative level than just occasionally gossiping, but just avoiding that intense character identification is just the first step to speaking properly. All negative unproductive speech is prohibited.

The awareness that the Torah’s approach to speaking improperly about others is much more far-reaching than just not being a gossip often brings on the opposite reaction -- “Then I can’t say anything about anyone else.” This is also, at best, a misconception (it can also be a knee jerk adolescent reaction that wants to see moral issues in simplistic, black and white terms). We often must say negative things about others -- for instance, to save them or others physically or morally. The classic work on speech, Chafetz Chaim (by Rav Yisrael Meir Kagan), includes extensive guidelines for when and how to speak negatively about others when it is necessary.

The Challenge
The halakha presents us with a challenge to always use our faculty of speech positively and productively. The reality that many people occasionally gossip (a reality the Talmud acknowledges) does not detract from this obligation and challenge.

This challenge involves asking ourselves serious questions about our attitudes towards others. Are we looking at people with an eye towards their problematic sides (perhaps this is the Talmud’s “evil eye”) or do we see others’ positive sides? Do we give others the benefit of the doubt? Are we reaching out to help those we can when they have personality or behavior problems or just talking about them?

We are challenged by the halakha to be conscious of what we say. Guests come over to visit; what are our conversations about? Are we making cynical comments? How do we react when someone wrongs us or others -- does it become the subject of an unproductive conversation or do we only talk about it in a way that will help things?

Finally, the halakha challenges us to improve our speech. Like all habits, it might take time to change, but we are taught that it can be done. It involves learning, gaining awareness of what proper speech means. It involves the effort it takes to catch ourselves before we let a conversation get out of hand. Ideally it means redirecting our speech to more productive ends.

prepared by R. Eliezer Kwass