against theft; and the prohibition against the disclosure of confidential information.”
4). The various forms of prohibited speech.”” The Torah (Leviticus 19:16— lo telekh rakhil) prohibits“tale-bearing,” which Rashi(ad loc.) and others define as an invasion of another’s private domain: the talebearer enters another’s home to spy” upon him, to collect information about him that can be spread in public. Several forms of speech are interdicted under this heading: hotza'at shem ra, or slander, the spreading of false and damaging information; /lashon hara, the dissemination of damaging information even if the information is true; and r'khilut,“gossip,” the dissemination of information about another person even if the details are true and even though the information does no damage to that person’s reputation.” Under this heading, too, we might place the various prohibitions against gilu’i sod, the revelation of secret or confidential information.”
Jewish law, therefore, does protect the individual against these four specific intrusions into what we might call his or her“private space.” As yet, we do not have evidence that the halakhah recognizes a general concept of“privacy” that extends beyond(let alone that exists prior to) these specific provisions. As I have noted, however, some scholars deduce the existence of such a concept. They accomplish this through an interpretive strategy a strategy quite similar to that of Warren and Brandeis , identifying the fundamental principle that unites these existing specific protections and lends them moral and theoretical coherence. Like Warren and Brandeis , these scholars make both a descriptive claim (the halakhah contains a concept of“privacy,” constructed on the basis of the existing provisions of the law) as well as a normative claim(it is legitimate to construct the existence of such a concept through the process of legal interpretation). I want to consider the work of Professor Nahum Rakover as the best example of these. I choose his work, first of all, because as a book-length monograph it is the more detailed and comprehensive than the others. In addition, his research was of practical legal significance, inasmuch