18 Amy Scheinerman
civilization. He was publicly proclaimed an"impure person” as a result of his evil speech.
One has the sense that eliminating lashon hara and rechilut are all but impossible; God therefore unleashes a drastic disease in a failed attempt to stop us from uttering what so naturally issues from our mouths. Lashon hara is likened to a progressive disease. Even Rambam , who rarely launches ino philosophical discussions in the Mishneh Torah , makes an exception here. He writes:
« and concerning this matter we are warned in the Torah : Remember that which the Lord your God did to Miriam on the road(Deuteronomy 24:9). The Torah is saying: contemplate what happened to the prophetess Miriam . She spoke about her younger brother whom she loved and helped raise. She had endangered her own life to save him from the Nile. She(furthermore) did not speak malicious evil about him. She just erred by equating his greatness to that of other prophets[who do not separate themselves from their wives]. And Moses was not bothered by any of her comments, as it is written, And the man Moses was extremely modest(Numbers 12:3). Nevertheless she was immediately punished with tzara’at. Kal va-chomer[how much the more so] how great a punishment will come to those wicked fools who frequently speak great and wondrous(criticisms).
Maimonides , following the traditional midrashic interpretation of the account of Miriam ’s speech and subsequent affliction with tzara’at in Numbers, chapter 122!, concludes that although Miriam ’s lashon hara is not malicious and causes no one injury, even well-intentioned talk about another is poisonous in the end.