Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

A Year of Jewish Ethics #15: Gossip (Lashon Ha-Ra)

How does Torah define gossip?

The dictionaries in English describe gossip as talking about people behind their backs, usually in an uncomplimentary way; or spreading rumors about people without knowing whether something is true; or sharing private details about someone without their permission. Gossip seems like a casual kind of talking, though of course the consequences can be serious in terms of relationships and embarrassment.

In Torah, the overarching term that’s related to gossip is lashon ha-ra, which means literally “harmful tongue.” As I noted in the first teaching in this series, the Torah begins with the power of words. With words the Divine creates the universe and each element within it. So naturally Judaism teaches that the ethics of speech is at the highest level of ethical significance; one statement even parallels lashon ha-ra with murder.

So how is lashon ha-ra defined specifically in Jewish law? Here is how Maimonides categorizes some different varieties.

Rechilut means talking about a third person, telling something they said or spreading a rumor about them, even when these things are true. It comes from a root-word meaning a traveling merchant, a peddler. Lashon hara is when you say something negative about a person, again even if it’s true.

Motzi shem ra means “bringing about a bad name or reputation”, and Maimonides defines it as spreading a lie about someone.

And Maimonides also describes what he calls avak lashon ha-ra, the “dust of lashon ha-ra”. Which includes innuendos, like saying “I don’t want to say anything about Ploni”, winking that actually you are thinking something juicy or negative and encouraging someone to ask you or to fill in the blanks on their own.

Or saying something gossip-y in a humorous way. Or even certain types of praise, which could provoke jealousy. If you comment on the nice party someone else threw, the person you’re with might be envious that you were invited but not them, or upset that you don’t think their own gatherings are as lovely.

All these types of speech back up the Jewish teaching that lashon ha-ra harms not only the one spoken about, but also the speaker and the listener.

If you go by this code strictly, you might wonder if you could ever say something about another person at all! Even if it’s praiseworthy or constructive. We need ways to confer about ethical matters that involve other people who aren’t around, and in fact there are other parts of the codes that address how to talk about public matters, for instance. Some sociologists even propose that there varieties of harmless talk rooted in good humor that help people bond even though they are within the lashon ha-ra framework.

I think it’s worth considering the extreme version laid out by Maimonides based on the Talmud, even as a way of monitoring one’s own speech and noticing just how many different ways we do talk about others and how our casual or light words might be harmful. It might help us hold back some, or challenge us to find things to say that are more germane to the people we are with rather than those who are somewhere else. We could all benefit from studying the teachings of lashon ha-ra and having our own code about gossip.

In the Torah, the mitzvah of not being a "peddler" of rumors is in Parashat Kedoshim, Leviticus 19:16. The laws relating the skin disease called tzara'at in Parashiyot Tazria-Metzora, Leviticus chapters 13-14, are taken as metaphors for the social processes and moral implications of lashon ha-ra.

For one of my own deeper dives, click here for my Rosh Hashanah sermon on the topic in 5773 (2012).

A Year of Jewish Ethics #14: Labor Justice, Part 1

The Jewish perspective on the responsibilities of employers reflects the story of our oppression in Egypt, shi’ibud mitzrayim. That oppression began as forced labor, and when the Torah teaches about wage workers, it often uses the same words that it uses to describe slavery. Jewish law recognizes the inherent dynamic between the one who pays and the one who waits to be paid, the power of the employer and the vulnerability of the employee. So the Torah not only demands a fair wage but emphasizes this particularly for those who most need the income. Employees hired for a day of work must be paid on that day, and their wages may not be held even just until the next morning. This law so that workers not experience even a night of exploitation, and also so that employers not experience a night like Pharoah, the who took our labor for nothing.

The treatment of workers goes beyond the money relationship. One midrash explores the Hebrew word perech or b’farech, which shows up both in the Egypt story and in the later Torah laws and is usually translated as “ruthlessness.” The midrash relates the word perech to the two words peh rach, which means “soft mouth” or “soft speech, gentle speech.” It imagines Pharaoh first inviting our ancestors to join him to work together on his building projects, even making bricks himself. Thinking this was a gesture of comradery, they came to build alongside him and worked with gusto as a strong and mighty and devoted people would. But when night fell, Pharaoh left them with overseers who were instructed to implement strict quotas on their production. The pose of solidarity and graciousness in the midrash is an injury on top of the material exploitation. So employers are charged to be careful how they speak and how they related to workers, not to mislead about intentions or insinuate promises or offers or relationships they do not intend to honor.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, one of our foremost teachers about Jewish labor law, reminds us of the Torah’s teaching that all of us are in fact servants – servants of the Divine (for instance Leviticus 25:42). She quotes the frequent Talmudic elaboration that we are not servants to other servants – v’lo avadim la’avadim.

That’s true regardless of economic status. So, many Jewish teachings emphasize that a laborer should never made even to appear lower status or slave-like. That applies to the nature of the work, the conditions, and the way employers and supervisors speak with employees.

Shabbat is of course the ultimate Jewish teaching about labor. The Torah teaches that no matter who we work for, we deserve to rest, and anyone who works for us is entitled to the same rest as we are. This is a matter of justice, again recalling the unceasing work imposed on us as slaves in Egypt. And we recognize that even the Divine is pictured as needing to stop working after creating the universe. We are not to become slaves to our work, even to worthwhile work as God’s surely was and is.

Work itself, whether self-directed or in someone else’s employ, is considered by the Torah to be a way we imitate God. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that the Torah’s command about Shabbat begins “six days shall you work” (Exodus 20:9, for instance) -– we are to be creators as the Divine is a creator. In treating our employees well, we are recognizing and honoring someone who through their labor for us is reflecting the Divine.

For a much deeper dive, see Rabbi Jill Jacobs' responsum, "Work, workers and the Jewish owner."

A Year of Jewish Ethics #13: Lost and Found

It is a mitzvah to return a lost object to its owner. That might seem like a fairly obvious thing to do, but what’s not so obvious is why Jewish law considers returning things to be such a major mitzvah. There are eight chapters devoted entirely to lost and found in the Mishneh Torah, the comprehensive code of Jewish law by the philosopher and Rabbi Moses Maimonides.

To start with the basics, the name for this mitzvah is hashavat aveidah. Hashavat means “returning of”, from the same word as teshuvah, changing ourselves by returning, and aveidah is something lost.

The first thing you’re supposed to do when you find an item is to figure out whether it has signs that it belongs to someone else or rather the kind of thing that is easily disregarded even by someone who might have owned it. This section of the laws is fairly common sense. Look for a name or some kind of identifier, obviously. But also it makes a difference if the item has indications that it was made or assembled by someone, even if you can’t tell who at first glance. The Mishnah gives the examples of a pouch of coins, or a stack of three coins, or a loaf of bread with coins inside it, or a loaf of bread with a distinctive shape different from the typical loaf sold in the market. These look like things someone cared about, put together with intention.

If an object looks like it might belong to someone, Jewish law says to hold onto it and make a public announcement. Anyone who claims the lost item would have to tell its identifying marks; otherwise you are not obligated to give it to the person.

And here’s where the mitzvah goes beyond the obvious. There is one view in the Mishnah that you have to wait for a cycle of the three annual pilgrimage festivals to be completed before giving up finding the owner. There is a tradition that in the Second Temple in Jerusalem there was actually a lost and found, known as the Claimer’s Stone, Even To’en, where people would announce lost objects and come to look for them on the festivals. After a time, if the owner doesn’t materialize, then the owner is considered to have given up hope of finding their lost object, and the finder can keep it.

Before that time is up, the person with a lost object is obligated to take care of it. If it’s a scroll, the Mishnah says, it should be unrolled and read from each month. There are responsibilities for another person’s lost animals – the finder has to take care of them. That’s how the Torah introduces this mitzvah, by talking about animals that have wandered off (Deuteronomy 22:1-3). As you can imagine, this is itself a complicated area of Hashavat Aveidah, because there are costs that go with taking care of an animal.

Where does the spiritual force behind Hashavat Aveidah come from? One is the general Jewish concept that possession does not come with unlimited rights. Possession as often comes with obligations and limits. It’s always a covenant between us and God, and that’s even when I do own outright the thing in my possession. We are in some sense always borrowers from the Divine, even when we are not holding onto someone else’s lost item.

But we can also zero in on the two words that label this mitzvah: Hashavat Aveidah Hashavat , the returning-of, comes from the root shuv, which means to go back or return both literally and spiritually. I’ve already taught in this series about teshuvah -- going back as the central spiritual practice of reviewing our deeds, going over them, and if we did wrong and find ourselves returning to a similar situation then choosing a different action.

Lost objects remind us of our own misplaced souls, which we are always seeking and which we depend on others to bring us back to.  Lost objects remind us that the world is full of good things that aren’t always where they belong. Ideas and ideals and purposes, when they are not actively being made real it’s not because they don’t exist, but just because they have wandered off, become detached from the people they belong to.

In the Torah the first avediah, the original lost item, is the Jewish people. We were lost in Egypt, away from our domain, the place where we did our essential work and were nourished. The Divine found us, cared for us in the wilderness while we were still lost, and returned us. Lost and found is the foundation of our story. The whole Exodus story is Hashavat Aveidah.  So every time we stop and notice a lost object, and try to return it, we are trying to imitate the Divine.

For a deeper dive into the spiritual significance of Hashavat Aveidah, and its relationship to teshuvah, click here to read or here to listen.

More From College

Most of the new things the past few days are from the history of Zionism course. Some things that struck me...

Given the gap in experience between Herzl and Eastern European Jews, I continue to be surprised how many showed up for the First Zionist Congress. Granted it was 1897, so the Chovevei Tzion groups were well-established, but it seems like Herzl didn't even have a basic understanding of what life was like for the Jews involved.

Herzl's own view of those Jews was fairly patronizing. He imagined the poor Jews of Eastern Europe moving to Palestine, where their lives would improve and they would establish the state, while more well-off Jews in other parts of Europe would stay put. I think his theory was that the Jewish state would help normalize the situation of the Jews of Europe, by removing most of the sources of anti-Semitism such as the presence of less integrated and "respectable" and productive Jews. Professor Bartal noted that the presence of lower class Jews in Europe made the more bourgeois Jews uncomfortable and embarrassed as well, as an internal factor.

In a sense, as I type that last paragraph, it occurs to me that a first cousin of this happened. Most of the Eastern European Jews ended up in the U.S., and improved their lives here, and achieved a great deal of social and political acceptance and equality (not complete) by the 1960s. Eventually the existence of the State of Israel also helped that process forward for the Jews of the U.S. Though of course right now, many Jews here see themselves in the same boat as the more Western Jews of Herzl's time. (I don't.) All right, more of a second cousin to Herzl's vision of what we would call an Israel-Diaspora dynamic.

I found it interesting that to the extent religious Jews became involved in Zionism, this involved differentiating between a worldly, material sphere where the issue was saving and improving lives, and a messianic layer that political Zionism had nothing to do with in their eyes. So the contradiction with traditional waiting could be pushed away or papered over. At least on the part of the Mizrachi leadership; many of the Chovevei Zion masses did in fact see Herzl's movement in somewhat messianic perspective.

Herzl's attempt to find political support for the Jewish state among the imperial powers went nowhere, so the debate in the Zionist Congress over whether to focus on diplomacy or on building settlements was moot, and the major thrust of the international Zionist movement became material and practical by the late oughts, a decade after the first congress.

The word "colony" was in use within Zionism, it's hard to untangle the meaning of the term then and now. I have some thoughts about it but as I started to write them, I realize I have to do some more reading to check my work and then I'll come back to that. It's obviously the hot bottom topic today, about which I hope I'll get something useful from my review of the course.

Another day of notes was about the Hebrew cultural revival. Over the course of a century or so, the Hebrew language part of the Haskala made its way across Europe somewhat west to east, waxing and waning every decade or two with journals starting up and fading. As the decades went along and as the center of gravity changed, from Germany to Bohemia to Ukraine, the political backdrop changed as well. So the Hebrew language went from being part of a more general Enlightenment reform of Jewish life to becoming part of the nationalist frame, which wasn't necessarily Zionist but included Jewish secular cultural revival in place in Russia and Ukraine. That process was interrupted by the Russian Revolution, which officially clamped down on Jewish expression including the use of Hebrew, so that in practice it was the Zionists who carried forth the Hebrew revival. But I think the point was that the Hebrew linguistic and cultural movement had a logic prior to and bigger than Zionism, at least until World War I.

A brief note about Gov 1170 -- notes about Italy. Italy had essentially two trends, one a weaker version of French development with a longer agricultural tail, and one a weaker version of German late industrialization. Unification occurred in a very strange way, with a much less formed state. Professor Hall noted that Italian political parties for a long time tended to be centered on notables. Though I'm not sure about cause and effect, in practice political organization couldn't do in Italy what it did in Britain, which was to become the central place where social conflict was mediated, or what it did in Germany, which at least helped to organize mass society into coherent social and ideological groups (which didn't help stem conflict or extremism).

In Lit and Arts there was a midterm exam, and it was pretty narrowly defined and easy (phew!).

Another Week Back in College

I'm catching up on the whole week, after preparing for and celebrating Purim.... The week's notes in Lit and Arts were a lot about the successors of Charlemagne, and the disjuncture between the disintegration of their authority and their realm, and their self-representation in Christian books and architecture as Christ's designated earthly power. As I wrote before, in trying to picture Europe from 1000 years ago, I am surprised to see how much awareness and connection there was by these kings in Aachen to Italy and Byzantium. They regarded their authority as tied to those places and the legitimacy they could gain by succession to them, claims to rule in Italy or support by the pope. How did that work, and how did that kind of political thinking flow down to peasants? During this time, Charlemagne's empire was not only divided by his successors, but also quite quickly fragmented into tiny principalities.

On the art side, and of course I'm just reading written notes and remembering bits of images vaguely, one thing that stands out is the combination of stylization with intense emotion. Spiritual commitment by the king was being represented, and moments in the Bible were being selected for their cosmic drama, and also the frontespieces and lettering identified the sovereign with not just stability in the face of the opposite politically in reality, but strong and intense rule. It's such a foreign visual language, not only to our times or the heyday of realism, but even to the Renaissance or the period just before then. I think I found those images in the Gospel manuscripts anything from disorienting to disturbing, really just because I couldn't parse them (not that I'm so great at understanding visual "language" anyway).

Gov was focused on Germany, to describe the trajectory of the 1800s and to use that to interrogate some theories of political modernization. The main thread was the Junkers, the artistocracy, and how they were able to maintain both their own position and a feudal organization of society for so long. They stood in the way of initial economic changes that would have weakened their social position, and they were stronger than any of the states vying for influence in German-speaking lands. Their military strength enabled them to crush developments in 1848 that might have led to some kind of liberal unified state, and then they were able to impose German unification 20-plus years later on their own terms, setting up institutions that they could dominate. Junker control of iron and railroads made sure that economic development did not create a separate strong bourgeoisie.

Professor Hall posed the question of whether institutional or cultural factors were at the root of the German path. Obviously it wasn't economics that dictated, since unlike Britain and France which commercialized and industrialized differently from each other but still found their way to democratic institutions in the late 1800s, Germany had arguably the most advanced economy by that time or the strongest one, but no democracy. 

I look at the notes and wonder about the contingent factors of personages like Metternich and Bismarck. Usually the "great man" theory is one to dismiss, and I generally do. Bismarck was responsible for a balancing act that squashed socialism and bought off the working class by a generous welfare state. He managed a tariff and industrial policy that benefited the Junkers and bought their support for his version of the state or at least its policies. He continued to make it impossible for other power centers to emerge. He played groups off of each other, made Catholics and socialist and Jews into enemies of the people and often each other.

In Germany, political parties emerged unlike in Britain as mass movements, which helped organize society and not just interest groups, yet none or no coalition emerged that was more moderate, or radical for that matter. In the end, says this week's notes, Bismarck's approach to the workers in particular would eventually backfire and take down the regime at the end of World War I, and leave no basis for even a French-Third-Republic-style regime to take over with any strength, thus paving the way quickly toward fascism, so Professor Hall said.

It was interesting to look at the Zionism notes against this same backdrop. Most of the action this week was just to the east, in Poland and Ukraine and Russia. Professor Bartal noted how much of traditional Jewish society and authority patterns had changed by the late 1800s. Already earlier, the rise of Chasidic sects and misnagdish yeshivot and Haskalah circles had weakened the sense of a unified, centrally led kehillah. Now, Chibat Zion chavrot were yet another kind of social form, along with mass political parties more on the German model of ideology, education, and social organization all in one.

Backing up a bit, Jews not only had frequently been left out of the nationalist movements; many were the contractors who built the railroads on behalf of the authorities or the aristocracy. This led to Jews being disproportionately urbanized all of a sudden, compared to many of the peasants (I think); at the same time, Jews became a pauperized proletariat as well. Russian regime policy lurched back and forth toward the Jews -- encouraging them to move to the cities, then blocking them from certain types of work in the cities, etc.

All of this opened the door to socialism as well. In the last couple decades of the 1800s, Jewish socialist theorists in Russia like Ber Borochov were trying to figure out a role for Jews in the Marxian scheme or to propose their own version of either utopian socialism or a Marxian-utopian hybrid. For example, since there was no Jewish polity, there might be a necessity to jump the Marxian process, to go straight from a lower class to a post-bourgeois order somehow, or to prototype that in Eretz Yisrael and advancing the local Arabs along in that process. Also among many Jews was a sense that the only answer to "the Jewish question" would come from the socialist transformation the world over. Some Jews would therefore throw in with the Russian socialists, and others would become socialist Zionists. The social debate in Russian became the dominant matrix for Zionist ideology, much more so than the Ahad Ha-Am school.

I'm obviously noticing the obvious, which is that up to here Zionism and Jewish history generally is being presented as mainly an Ashkenazi story centered in Europe, and there isn't much at the moment of the Jews already in Palestine or in Arab lands, and their influence on how Zionism developed. There had been some of these in the earlier weeks and I'm curious how they will return. I guess I'll see how that's told in the coming weeks.

I was also just tickled to see that there were socialist versions or take-offs on traditional Jewish texts. Like a piece of Marxist theory printed in the format of a Talmudic page, which could be hidden in a book during traditional study. Or a socialist take on Pirkei Avot, interpreting the famous "three things the world stands on" as science, work (avodah understood that way and not as spirituality), and charity to the workers. I had completely forgotten about that!