On One Foot
Rabbi Tzvi Sytner SENIOR RABBI OF THE VILLAGE SHUL (TORONTO) AND FOUNDER OF CLEAN SPEECH TORONTO
As a practical matter, I think there’s a difference between talking about someone and talking to someone. When we’re talking about lashon hara , and saying that things said for a constructive purpose are permitted, what does that look like when we’re talking about people? If we’re really looking for constructive dialogue and for some type of pro- ductive outcome, then we [have] to talk to them. I remember when I was working as a therapist, there was this thing called, “Nothing about me without me,” which was another way of saying: if you want to be produc- tive, don’t talk about me, include me in the conversation instead. And so I think that’s where we see more productive things coming out. But for everyone to banter on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, on X, and just to banter about other groups, I can’t say that that’s productive. WE NEED LOOK no further than the litany of sins that we confess on Yom Kippur, the Al Chet prayer, to see the extent that our tradition views language as being a high- stakes affair: eight of the 44 sins listed are all directly related to speech. As we beat our chests and seek repentance, we can easily come up with many examples from our own lives and our own social media feeds that are clear violations. This can be paralyzing—making it seem that the entire project of managing your speech is futile: the point of the parable, after all, is that so many feathers can never be re- captured. But our tradition does not seek to silence us or to shame us. We can and should make better choices—even if not perfect ones—about what we say online, and Jewish thought gives us a clear way to think about how to do so.
that when it comes to our words in general, our words are so powerful. We say God created the world using words. He’s God. He doesn’t need words. God doesn’t have a mouth. God doesn’t speak. It’s really not about God and words. It’s about us learning the power of words. I think that wherever there’s conversation, we have to be engaged in the conversation. We just have to be the ones to bring light to it. As a people, we can use social media for the positive.
LASHON HARA is one example of how the 3,300-year-old, seeming- ly antiquated Judaism is becoming more and more relevant over time. All of a sudden, this idea of gossip is such a big deal: we see how, with things like teen suicides or cyberbullying, online forums have really amplified the im- pact of lashon hara . You have just one person making one comment, and then it’s a matter of a couple of clicks before it’s viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. We’ve seen peo- ple’s lives be totally destroyed. I think
lems of the heart, and the un- derstanding of human behav- ior, starting with that of men. Labeling all this production of knowledge ‘gossip’ is part of the degradation of wom- en—it is a continuation of the demonologists’ construction of the stereotypical woman as prone to malignity, envi- ous of other people’s wealth and power, and ready to lend an ear to the Devil. It is in this way that women have been si- lenced and to this day exclud- ed from many places where decisions are taken, deprived of the possibility of defining their own experience, and forced to cope with men’s misogynous or idealized por- traits of them. 5
5 THOUGH THE definition of gos- sip is inherently neutral about the identity of the gossiper, his- torically the sin has been associ- ated with — and used to vilify — women in particular. The stereotype persists to this day, despite research showing that men gossip just as much as women. That research also explores gossip’s usefulness in cre- ating friendships and communities. One of the main takeaways of academic explorations of gossip? Differentiating between negative, neutral, and positive gossip. In all types, the speaker is communicat- ing about other people when those people aren’t present. Women tend to engage in neutral and positive gossip, while men tend toward the negative. We might even say that the idea that women are gossips is itself a classic case of lashon hara.
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