On One Foot
RABBI MARK DRATCH, “LET THEM TALK: THE MITZVAH TO SPEAK LASHON HARA ” (2006) Victims of abuse need to speak out, for all kinds of personal reasons, in order to help themselves. Their supporters need to speak out in order to help them. And the community needs to speak out in order to hold the perpetrators responsible and in order to protect other innocents from potential harm. All must be diligent in meeting the conditions required for such speech, including knowledge of or verifi- cation of the facts, proper motivation, the curbing of personal animosities, no exaggeration, and the like. Allowances must be made for persistent rumors and circumstantial evidence when their credibility meets halakhic standards. And each of us needs to recommit ourselves to protecting the physical and spiritual welfare of women, children, and men; safeguarding the integrity of the social fabric of the Jew- ish community; and securing the honor of Torah and God’s very Name. According to rabbinic tradition, it is the capacity of speech that distinguishes humans from the an- imals and from all other parts of Creation. The Torah demands of us to use that divine gift of speech wisely and carefully in order to protect the humanness of victims of abuse, as well as the humane-ness of every member of our society. 4
4 THE #METOO MOVEMENT was a driv- ing force for change in the Jewish com- munity. Before that era, many victims of Jew- ish abusers were silenced when they tried to speak out about their experiences. One con- cern was that it might be damaging to the community (for example, in the case of Mi- chael Steinhardt, the co-founder of Birthright and donor to many Jewish institutions, who had been credibly accused of abuse by wom- en who were told to keep quiet because of his status and contributions). Another was that the laws of lashon hara prohibited the victim from speaking publicly about abuse (as in sit- uations involving Malka Leifer, an Orthodox school principal in Australia; Chaim Walder, a popular haredi author in Israel; and Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, the founder of the Israeli res- cue and recovery organization ZAKA — all had rabbis using lashon hara as a cudgel to warn against victims speaking up). This passage is from the coda to a much longer halakhic ar- ticle that amply demonstrates how, if one fol- lows some good general guidelines, concerns about lashon hara should never be used to silence victims of abuse.
SILVIA FEDERICI, “HOW THE DEMONIZATION OF ‘GOSSIP’ IS USED TO BREAK WOMEN’S SOLIDARITY, ” IN THESE TIMES (2019) It is women who ‘gossip,’ presumably having nothing better to do and having less access to real knowledge and information and a struc- tural inability to construct factually based, rational dis- courses. Thus, gossip is an integral part of the devalua- tion of women’s personality and work, especially domes- tic work, reputedly the ideal terrain on which this practice flourishes.
This conception of ‘gossip,’ as we have seen, emerged in a particular historical context. Viewed from the perspec- tive of other cultural tradi- tions, this ‘idle women’s talk’ would actually appear quite different. In many parts of the world, women have histori- cally been seen as the weav- ers of memory—those who keep alive the voices of the past and the histories of the communities, who transmit them to the future genera- tions and, in so doing, cre- ate a collective identity and profound sense of cohesion. They are also those who hand down acquired knowledges and wisdoms—concerning medical remedies, the prob-
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