Lashon Hara Just a Click Away 19
community, and the integrity of the broader society. Talmud abounds with exhortations to guard our tongues, going so far as to declare, Whoever engages in lashon hara, God says of him:“He and I cannot inhabit the same world.””*A similarly hyperbolic passage in Midrash Tanhuma serves as an emotional summary and exhortation:
If a person involves himself in lashon hara, he makes himself worthy of death, because lashon hara is as serious as murder, for one who murders only takes one life, while the bearer of lashon hara kills three: the one who says it, the one who listens to it, and the one about whom it is said.”
This hyper-sensitivity to how our communication effects others, and how our role in listening to, and disseminating, the communication of others, forms the strong Jewish moral aversion to gossip and talebearing even as we recognize it is the sin all of us commit the most often, and most egregiously’ Moreover, atonement for the hurt and damage of lashon hara can never be complete. Words, like feathers, loosed into the world have a life and trajectory that cannot be controlled. All the more so, lashon hara disseminated via the Internet.
Maimonides ’ formulation of the laws of lashon hara and rechilut in the Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot, chapter 7 forms the backbone of the Jewish approach to whether, when, and how we may speak about others(see Appendix A). Rabbi Israel Salanter , founder of the Musar Movement made a significant contribution to the discussion, as well. The most extensive writings on the subject are those of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan , the Chofetz Chaim , in his landmark work, Sh’'mirat haLashon. With each reformulation, the requirements for avoiding lashon hara and rechilut are considerably heightened until, after reading Sh'mirat haLashon, the well-meaning Jew isn’t sure if he can safely open his mouth at all. Perhaps the strategy of our Sages and teachers was to view lashon hara and rechilut as a zero-sum game: because our natural proclivities are likely to bring us so low morally,