Better Than Your Grandmother’s Lashon Hora

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” may generally be sound advice, but it happily has been ignored in regard to classic Torah works. The last decades have seen a steady stream of improvements and enhancements of seforim whose utility no one doubted. Type was reset, errors corrected, indices added. More importantly, extensive notes were compiled, allowing easy access to discussion that most would otherwise not know about.

Still, there were some works which we imagined were so well done, that saying more than they did would be saying less. One of those was Sefer Chofetz Chaim.

For most of us, the Chofetz Chaim’s seforim have been the beginning and end of what we know halachically about lashon hora. Recognizing the need to address these orphaned areas of halachah took a combination of piety and vision; delivering a halachic work that knew no competitor took the special touch of a massive talmid chacham. No one had dealt with these issues before, and it was unlikely that anyone would have anything further to say. No one did it before, and no one did it better.

So goes the customary wisdom, which turns out to be entirely incorrect. The part about the greatness of the Chofetz Chaim of course is true, and even understated. But he was not the first to write extensively. Neither was he the last. Now there is a way to gain access to the wealth of supplemental material – in most cases building on the contribution of the Choftez Chaim – by way of a fascinating new sefer, False Facts and True Rumors, by Rabbi Daniel Feldman, a gifted young rosh yeshiva at YU, shul rov in Teaneck, and author of a number of other high-quality seforim on halachah.

The book’s subtitle, “Lashon HaRa in Contemporary Culture,” suggests that it will offer the reader insights into application of hilchos lashon hora to conditions and institutions that were not around in the time of the Chofetz Chaim, who died in 1933. Indeed it does, offering extensive treatment of issues relating to journalism in general, the internet, social media, political campaigning, and the therapeutic setting. Rabbi Feldman continues along a path he set for himself in his previous works, humbly avoiding stating his own conclusions in favor of marshalling written material from a breathtakingly comprehensive knowledge of what is available.

It turns out, though, that the front-burner topics are not the bulk of what makes the sefer “contemporary,” but two other contributions. The first of these can only be appreciated by noting its first recorded instance, which took place between Yaakov Avinu and his wives. Clued in by an angel that the time was ripe for a change in employment (Bereishis 31:12-13), Yaakov calls for a family council. They discuss the pros and cons of seeking a change of venue. Profitability has peaked. They’ve all been cut out of the will, so nothing is to be gained by hanging around and smiling at the relatives who hate them. Said relatives have recently been making warring noises in their direction. And – how could we forget? – G-d Himself suggests making the move, so why not comply?

Rav Eliyahu Lopian zt’l is puzzled by their moving a Divine directive to the bottom of the pile of considerations. Should it not have been the first – and only – factor worth considering?

Not really, he says. Of course, the bottom line is that we will eagerly listen to what He has to say. But wherever possible, he continues, we should endeavor to demonstrate to ourselves the wisdom of His directives. Yaakov and family were prepared to instantly respond to marching orders from on high. They first took the time, however, to note the advantages of Hashem’s plan for them, and to realize that were it not for His intervention, they would have stayed in an unsafe, unhealthy environment for too long. This, suggests R. Lopian, is something we all ought to do. We should stop to ponder the wisdom of the Torah’s guidance, and the beauty of the life style that it presents to us.

One huge contribution of this sefer is just such a consideration of the laws of lashon hora. Many people, including non-Jews, have spoken glowingly about a system of interpersonal laws that eschews character assassination, slander, and gossip, and paints a dismal picture of those who would talk about people, rather than ideas. Rabbi Feldman goes well beyond that. He examines the halachos of speech in all their nuance and complexity, and shows how decades of social research support not just the general thrust of halachah, but the specific components of the law as well. Why is lashon hora harmful? Whom does it harm – the target, the speaker, or society? Why does the Torah deal so severely with speech that is not defamatory, but entirely true?

His approach to the last question is both illustrative and intriguing. He notes that the prohibition of accepting lashon hora as true is sourced on a verse (Shemos 23:1) “You shall not bear a shav report.” Many understand shav as “unnecessary.” This is entirely consistent with the general view that uncomplimentary but true information should not be conveyed unless it is justifiably needed by the listener. At that point, it becomes “necessary.” A number of important commentators, however, see shav to mean “false,” seemingly at odds with what we were all taught (correctly) is accepted halachah. Is there some sort of fundamental dispute here?

Not really, says Rabbi Feldman. “If the speaker is stating the facts, is the listener actually hearing the truth?” he asks. He then answers his (rhetorical) question with an avalanche of opinions and studies. We learn about research – not armchair musings – about subjectivity, the fallibility of memory, overconfidence and assertiveness. We become familiar with the “fundamental attribution error,” or the demonstrated phenomenon of processing information differently in regard to others than we would about ourselves. We read about “availability bias,” the “devil effect,” “confirmation bias,” “anchoring,” “group polarization, “and disproportional impact.” All of them add to our understanding of why, in part, the Torah may have banned speech that is true. There may be less objective truth in its report than the Torah is comfortable with. “The lashon hara prohibition may be premised upon the assumption that even true information can create a false picture of an individual.”

In other words, we learn through modern social science that facts can be false. While we never need anything external to Torah to validate it (nor can the temporal and finite ever validate the timeless and infinite), doing what Yaakov did can get us to add increased luster to our perception of its brilliance. To get to this point, Rabbi Feldman combed through and absorbed a massive amount of reading, well beyond the reach of virtually all of his readers. This sefer is not a short-cut, a time-saver, to make it easier to quickly find material we would be able to do on our own. Rather, he opens up new vistas to his audience.

Had Rabbi Feldman not chosen to make secular knowledge the handmaiden of Torah in his work but skipped it altogether, he would still have produced an attractive work for the traditionalist, simply because he is a talmid chacham with great research skill. Therein, his second contribution: copious halachic material to augment that of the Chofetz Chaim. He cites scores of halachah journals, responsa literature (including the extensive work of R Nissim Karelitz, shlit”a), hashkafic material. Many of these sources are so hard to find that they are not even available on Otzar HaChochmah, the most substantial online repository out there. He makes us consider questions that we may or may not have thought of through several reviews of Sefer Chofetz Chaim – and would generally have been stymied had we decided to pursue them. Is it permissible to intentionally witness someone’s misdeed? Can one lie in order to avoid speaking lashon hora? Is lashon hora a deficiency in the character of the speaker, or a proscribed behavior? Is it both? Is lashon hora-for-cause (to’eles) permitted because the need outweighs the potential harm, or because if it is justified, it simply does not fall under the rubric of lashon hora? Is there a need-to-know about public figures? Are distributors culpable for lashon hora in newspapers?

There is sweet irony in this sefer. Some five hundred years ago, the Shulchan Aruch quickly positioned itself to become a kind of last word in practical halachah. Of course, despite its larger-than-life importance in the life of every observant Jew, it was not the last word. Much had to be fleshed out, defended, disputed. Many issues that were not included were addressed by literally thousands of authors in the following centuries. It took the work of a single gifted talmid chacham to take the work of centuries and integrate it with the text of the Shulchan Aruch. The utility of Shulchan Aruch – at least Orach Chaim, the quarter of it that deals with the daily and yearly cycles – was restored by none other than the Chofetz Chaim, when he wrote the Mishnah Berurah. Now Rabbi Feldman has performed the comparable service for the Chofetz Chaim’s own work on permissible and forbidden speech. He has not replaced it chas v’shalom, but expanded its usefulness to us by citing so much of what has been written by others, as well as by offering a modern appreciation of its tenets.

I suspect that the Chofetz Chaim himself is pleased, and there can be no better berachah to Rabbi Feldman than that!

You may also like...

5 Responses

  1. joel rich says:

    Might want to consider another term- cognitive dissonance- which can result when one accepts  “modern social science” when it is in agreement with what one already believes but rejects it when it does not (this is called confirmation bias)

    I haven’t read Rabbi Feldman’s sefer but have heard  him speak on the topic and am left with the same feeling as with many speakers on the topic – most questions require you to go to a poseik.  Of course this works in some specific situations but in day to day life ISTM we’re still trying to take an ethical/mida subjective topic best learned from role models and trying to force it into a Boolean halachic code model. The result too often may be people throwing up their hands and just doing whatever.

    KT

    [YA – People are free to throw up their hands at whatever, but the fact remains that much of halacha can (roughly) be described as taking role models in the gemara and turning principles extracted from them into a a Boolean halachic code. ]

    • Steve Brizel says:

      JR-R Feldman’s sefarim in style and sweep remind me of the sefarim of R S Y Zevin ZL-a great survey of the halachic issue at hand with many mareh mkomos for the reader interested in looking further than the detailed presentation of R Feldman

  2. joel rich says:

    R’YA,

    If so, it suggests  a broader discussion of what changed that up until the time of the Chofetz Chaim, codifiers seem to have felt that Lashon Hara did not lend itself to this level of codification.

    Here’s a link to a R’ Feldman shiur on the topic and my audioroundup summary:

    http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/845611/Rabbi_Daniel_Z_Feldman/Thanksgiving,_Lashon_Hara_and_the_Internet:_Real_Halakha_for_a_Digital_World_
    Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman  -Thanksgiving, Lashon Hara and the Internet: Real Halakha for a Digital World
    R’Feldman applies the rules of lashon hara (which he writes and speaks about frequently) to the internet.  The issues of disinhibition and the size of the megaphone come into play (as does the role of the host).  Implication seems to be that judgment is always required (which ISTM is true of lashon hara in general – but that’s another riff of mine).

     

    KT

    [YA – Almost from the starting gate, Rabbi Feldman does not shy away from that discussion in the book]

  3. Steve Brizel says:

    I highly recommend R Feldman’s latest book. It surveys and restates  the halachic underpinnings of Lashon Hara based on an extremely detailed analysis of the halachic literature which as R Adlerstein noted , includes sources not found on the best Halacha and TSBP search engines, and demonstrates the importance of the consequences thereof, based on contemporary academic literature the untoward effect of the same.There is simply no other work on this subject that contains an extremely comprehensive command of both the Halachic and secular literature on the issue of Lashon Harah today. R Feldman has shown in this book as well as in his others that what we assume is Musar and/or Midos Tovos has immense halachic underpinnings and consequences. The book also contains the halachic views of RHS and R M Willig on common questions in the area of shidduchim that callers receive as to a potential shidduch. This book, as are any of R Feldman’s many shiurim on YU Torah, is mandatory IMO if you are interested in a superb and thorough exploration of an area that is all too often reduced to drashos and sippurei chasidim.

  4. Tal Benschar says:

    There may be less objective truth in its report than the Torah is comfortable with. “The lashon hara prohibition may be premised upon the assumption that even true information can create a false picture of an individual.”

    Perhaps there is a simpler explanation.  There is a famous vort of the Kotzker on the Mishna in Avos that states Heve dan es kol ha adam le kaf zechus.  The Kotzker novel interpretation is that we are bidden to judge the entirety of a person — kol ha adam — simply focus on one fault.

    Perhaps this is the difference between lashon ha ra with and without a toeles.  Even if true, the faults of a person only give one an incomplete picture, and it is still harmful to him to spread true negative information.  The exception is if I have a need to know.  To illustrate, if Ploni is known to cheat in business, then that information is certainly important to someone considering a business partnership with Ploni.  To others, however, such information would tend to give a distorted picture, since human nature is to exaggerate the negative.

    Just a thought.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This