Teens "sexting" nude photos. Threads of blog comments filled with nasty insults. Facebook posts cutting others to the quick. There's more vile and hurtful stuff circulating, with greater access, than ever before.
I was delighted to see an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal today against gossip. Jews call it "lushon ha ra," literally in Hebrew "evil language," but really, speaking negatively about people, even if true. ("motzi shem ra" is a term for slander, ie talk that's not true.) Educators, parents and pastors are popularizing three questions to consider before speaking--"Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?"
Columnist Jeffrey Zaslow described the backlash against verbal cruelty that's now made easy by texting and the internet--and the long-term consequences of mean messages when they enter the cloudy googles-sphere where posts and pokes never die. He tells of advocacy groups, mentioning WordsCanHeal.org, that offers a free-to-download handbook coauthored by Aish ha Torah's Irwin Katsoff, endorsed by Joe Lieberman, John McCain, John Kerry, Charles Schumer and even Tom Cruise and Goldie Hawn. Movingly, Zaslow described a letter from a reader whose catty remarks to her mom about a nerdy date brought the mom's sage reply: "...this boy you find ugly and weird is some mother's pride and joy....when he came home, she saw his face, she knew someone hurt him, and it broke her heart..." The reader, who learned her lesson, posted in her dorm room, "Treat everyone the way your mother would want everyone to treat you."
Also today, coincidentally, my fave talk show host covered a new law in France that would make spousal lash-outs a crime. Even cohabitants could call the cops for "psychological violence" which, according Britain's "Daily Mail," encompasses "every kind of insult including repeated rude remarks about a partner's appearance, false allegations of infidelity and threats of physical violence." While verbal abuse can certainly demoralize a weaker partner, enforcing civility on a he-said, she-said spat is likely too great a burden for overtaxed police.
Still, it shows that concern for the outcomes of verbal interchange is escalating.
Here in America, by adding laws about "hate speech," we've already increased sensitivity about saying nearly everything about a person--except gossip about behavior. A growing number of groups representing various statuses and characteristics is demanding respect. "A fat American no longer owns their (sic) own body, it (sic) is a commodity to be ridiculed, marginalized, a cost to be cut," laments the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. "An American citizen is more than a BMI!"
Words--insulting, hateful or not--are constitutionally no concern of secular law, per the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech..." But they're the subject of plentiful Jewish laws, as famously detailed by Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, known as the Chofetz Chaim. Just today, my teacher, Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz, was describing how commandments on "Lushon ha ra" would in many circumstances bar giving a poor recommendation to an unworthy student, though the inquirer would likely get the message when his request was declined.
The power of speech was harnessed close to home, as well. When a classmate in my daughter's Jewish high school class sadly developed cancer, the students pledged to banish their personal lushon ha ra, to improve the world in the merit of their friend.
It's not just the world, or the blogosphere, or the text-mail ether that gets uplifted when "kind-true-necessary" questions result in restraint. Clearly, the greatest benefit is to those who become more aware of their own thought processes; more cognizant of possible outcomes and consequences. We Jews are taught that words are more than means of communication; they're the very stuff from which God formed the world. God could have gone "zap," and everything would have appeared. But God said "let there be..." and only after the words came the reality.
Words are also what separates man from animal, what makes us, to large extent, in God's image. God created with words; we do, too. I sometimes wonder what, say, a pet dog, thinks of a master who sits at a computer for hours on end, tapping on a plastic box, or staring at a Kindle or newspaper. The dog has no concept of reading, of conveying truths, images, facts via the intangibles of words. Similarly, I consider we humans to be clueless about the reality of God--we observe the physical world, occasionally glimpse Providence in retrospect, but can't grasp the intangible, non-material existence that lies beyond.
We connect to God's creativity via words, which makes gossip and everything we speak far more weighty than the ease and brevity with which it's said.
Zaslow in his WSJ piece tries to be journalistic by quoting critics of "kind, true, necessary," saying such filters "may be naive and limiting," and might even be a tool to "help" workers conform to a norm. Weber State University professor Susan Hafen thinks "it would be a boring world if we always had to tiptoe around being kind. For one thing, we wouldn't be able to tell any jokes." Ha ha.
Does negativity make life more interesting? There's no drama without a conflict, but conflict doesn't have to center on dissing. And who wants a real life of drama? Even the couple who regularly fights and then has a heavenly reuniting makes an impact on its children. There's one supplementary question to the basic three I find pivotal: "will it improve on the silence?"
And that, perhaps is the entire goal of the anti-gossip crusade--improving the quality of discourse, the quality of relationships, and the quality of our internal debates.
It's almost Rosh Hashana, the birthday of the world, or at least the birthday of the world with written language. This is the traditional time of self-evaluation, and repentance, with the hope that when God judges us, we will be granted another year, and a good, sweet one at that. In that vein, many people, myself included, use this pre-holiday time for reflection. And one of the things I noticed in my daily prayers is the emphasis on speech.
We recognize God in P'zukei d'Zimra, a section of praise in the morning prayers, as "He who spoke, and the world came into being...He who speaks and Who does...He Who decrees, and fulfills." Words, then, aren't just a means of communication, but the vehicle through which the world was created, and is maintained. It is through God's words that the world came into being--remember, "And the Lord said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light." Why didn't the bible just tell us that God created light? Why did He have to say it? Who was He speaking to? The Angels? Why should they be notified of what their Boss is going to do?
And then, later in our morning prayer, we humans respond to God's words creating us in kind, as "praised and glorified by the tongue of His devout ones and His servants." We then say how we're going to use our tongues--"We shall laud You...with praises and songs; we shall exalt You, praise You, glorify You, mention Your name and proclaim Your reign..."
Why should we do all this verbiage? God is certainly aware of His own grandeur. He knows very well that He's keeping us all going.
So, in my humble reflections, I remembered that saying the words creates the thing in the world (Rabbi Akiva Tatz has a great tape on this). And indeed, the Hebrew word for "word" (devar) also does mean "thing." By verbalizing our praise, God is given honor. By just thinking the idea, without forming speech, the actual "thing" of honoring God remains abstract, intangible, deniable. Without speaking the words, their message, their concepts just don't exist.
OK, so why is all this esoteric stuff relevant? Because in these Days of Awe, this is the way we both repent--and clear ourselves from our misdeeds--and create for ourselves a good year ahead. By spending those interminable hours in synagogue praying--creating via words--we are weaving ourselves a much better chance for the nod from God.
We ask for forgiveness (in words) from those we've wronged. We confess (in slichot and viduy) what we've done wrong--and the list of stuff that needs forgiveness is awfully heavy on verbal sins. With those sins, we created negativity for ourselves and others in this world. By specifically using words in our sincere repentance, we hope to erase or undo the bad stuff we created and with our words bring positive energy into our force-fields. We repeat a list of God's merciful characteristics, with the hope that verbalizing these will actualize them.
That's why it's so important that in my own New Year rehabilitation, I work on lushon ha ra (literally, "evil tongue"--saying negative things). I need to focus on speaking carefully, uplifting the content of what I say. I have to remember that with my words I'm creating--such power!!
We are made in God's image, meaning we have the ability to create, not just architecture and artworks and novels, but to create futures and relationships in this world--with our words. By praising God we are creating for ourselves a closeness to Him--the more you give to someone (eg parent to child), the more you're attached. God, as the ongoing giver of everything, is completely connected to us. We, on the other hand, have our words as a means to be connected to God-- by being like Him, using words to create.
So, those are a few of the things I've been thinking about as we enter into this intense and indeed awesome time. May 5768 be a healthy, safe, fulfilling and sweet year for you and your family!
So occasionally I find a part of the newspaper in the, uh, throne room, and a headline catches my eye, like this one from the Wall street Journal (June 4, 2007) did: "Gossip: So Much Fun People Once Tried to Make it Illegal."
The author, Cynthia Crossen, writes about quaint people in the distant past (early parts of the 20th Century) who actually thought that gossip was negative and should be curtailed. She mentions Mary Hoppe, of New York City, who in 1816 founded "Don't Gossip" clubs with chapters "in every town in the US. Its motto: 'The tongue is an unruly evil full of deadly poison.'"
Well yes, the concept of controlling one's speech does seem rather antiquated when your slogan conjures images of people's mouths popping and rolling with an "unruly" venomous snake! A Tennessee lawmaker in 1927 proposed that gossip be a misdemeanor, but it fell under the arguments that the law would be unenforcible, and the start of a slippery slope: "After a while we'll have laws making it illegal to eat peas with a knife."
Wisconsin and Kentucky were less sophisticated, passing "statues" against gossip that brought the Kentucky conviction of Maude Basham, who muttered that the local constabulary were "50-50 with the bootleggers." Concludes writer Crossen, "But as the rest of the 20th century demonstrates, no force of man or nature can stop people from tittle-tattling about others. It's just too much fun."
OK, so I read this pointless piece in the latrine and carried it out in incredulity not because of what it said, but because of what it didn't. It didn't mention that lushon ha ra, passing along gossip that is true (as opposed to motzi sheym ra, gossip that isn't) is one of the foremost personal battles Jews who take the Torah seriously face--every day. It didn't mention that the life's work, and books by the Chofetz Chaim (Rabbi Israel Meir HaCohen Kagan, 1838-1933), like the little two-volume A Lesson a Day adaptation on my shelf, are studied by Jews in an effort to improve their observance of the crucial commandment to guard one's tongue--and that success with this task can hasten the coming of the Messiah. It surely didn't mention that words are SO elemental and powerful that God created the world using words, and the instructions for living adopted by countless millions--the Ten Commandments--are better translated as "The Ten Statements." Words are not just sounds in the Hebrew language, words are things, as the same Hebrew word means both.
OK, enough basic Judaism--everybody knows all this, except, it seems, Cynthia Crossen, who suggests we throw up our hands and open our unruly mouths because it's just so much fun! That's like saying we should, pardon me, give up on monogamy, since everybody ignores it, and promiscuity is just so much fun!
On a personal level, great. But as I tell my 14-year-old son, one of the things that allowed the Jews to last so long (contrary to nations in this week's parsha--like the Jebusites, the Hittites, the Amorites) was and is our ability to defer gratification. What feels good now, might be "poison" to you later, as well as to the larger community and society. Once you've got people airing negative opinions, you've soon got suspicion and competition and jealousy. Which lead to dishonesty, sabotage, and conflict. Too quickly, you've got New York before Mayor Giuliani. Some might say Sodom before the brimstone.
I found Teen People magazine in my daughter's room. I wasn't snooping; it was left right out there. Reminded me that before that rag existed, Hollywood stars felt it important to project a wholesome image. They hid their flaws, and even more, their misdeeds. Now, the brightest badge of accomplishment is to enter rehab. That tells the world you're not ashamed of your addiction, and, by the way, you're not responsible for your actions, because a medical condition--like cancer or the flu--made you do whatever horrid thing made Teen People last week.
So, with Teen People in my house, a spouse steeped in media, and the Wall Street Journal insisting "no force of man or nature" can combat this inbred inclination, why not at least go with the flow? Well, as my media-soaked spouse often says, the only religions that are gaining adherents are the ones who demand a lot of their members.
I think we're hardwired to require a project, something to do, something to strive toward. We want to work on something that can produce a desirable outcome. We take jobs to bring in money, yes, but many of us go beyond that, eschewing big bucks to earn a more meaningful reward. In that vein, working to refine our speech, to focus on the ethereal rather than the earthly, is a project with an intellectual and grander payoff. And it's invigoratingly challenging, in this billboard-crammed culture where you can't buy a bell pepper without the Enquirer feeding the "minds who want to know." It gives us something to do, with the kicker of a historical and traditional context. And it's a battle, with its accompanying potential for the reward of success, that's staring us in the face, every time we answer the phone or purchase our parsley.
If we just give up and legitimize the use of words for "too much fun," we drop a rung on the long ladder between earth and heaven.
Come to think of it, it's time to clear the old newspaper out of the bathroom.
Columnist Jeffrey Zaslow described the backlash against verbal cruelty that's now made easy by texting and the internet--and the long-term consequences of mean messages when they enter the cloudy googles-sphere where posts and pokes never die. He tells of advocacy groups, mentioning WordsCanHeal.org, that offers a free-to-download handbook coauthored by Aish ha Torah's Irwin Katsoff, endorsed by Joe Lieberman, John McCain, John Kerry, Charles Schumer and even Tom Cruise and Goldie Hawn. Movingly, Zaslow described a letter from a reader whose catty remarks to her mom about a nerdy date brought the mom's sage reply: "...this boy you find ugly and weird is some mother's pride and joy....when he came home, she saw his face, she knew someone hurt him, and it broke her heart..." The reader, who learned her lesson, posted in her dorm room, "Treat everyone the way your mother would want everyone to treat you."
