Jewish Community News

News: September 2008

Remember the Jewish prohibition of lashon hara, evil speech

When Stephen Glass, a young writer for the New Republic, was discovered in 1998 to have been “cooking the books” in over half of the articles he had written, there was mass outrage. His fabrication of details, quotes, and entire stories violated the covenant of trust between journalists and their readers. His lack of honesty disrupted the social contract on which we all depend.   As I watched the movie “Shattered Glass” made about his story, my thoughts turned to contemporary issues of honesty and personal responsibility.
    Glass wrote for a well respected magazine with editors and fact-checkers. Nonetheless, and despite criticism of his articles from outsiders, it took 18 months from the first accusation of inaccuracy by the Center for Science in the Public Interest until he was removed in 1998. The benefit of the doubt and his engaging personality protected him from the incredulity of some. It took a while for his editor to wake up to what was happening and to come to what, in retrospect, seems the obvious conclusion.
    Today, through the Internet, each of us is a sort of editor, as we send off our own little journals in the form of emails that we forward to our friends and associates. I would urge that we become more aggressive fact checkers in our editorial role, lest we, in passing on false or exaggerated information, violate our own personal code of ethics and the Jewish prohibition of lashon hara, evil speech.
     Passing on misinformation is a violation on many levels. It stands in opposition to Biblical commandment and to rabbinic halachah. Since we would not want to be the recipient of false or misleading information, or to have that information passed around about us, passing on such information violates the Biblical commmand, “to love one’s neighbor as one’s self,” and Hillel’s restatement, “what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.” It violates the Kantian mandate that we act in ways that would sustain society if everyone adopted them. By passing on emails about whose veracity we cannot be sure, we commit the two more serious levels of lashon harah. We engage in hotzaat diba, passing on lies, false and exaggerated information, and in motzi shem rah, making purposely untrue remarks to defame another person’s character. When these false emails deal with matters of public concern, we also violate our responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.
    On Yom Kippur afternoon liberal Jewish communities around the world will read from the Holiness Code in Leviticus 19. There we find a restatement of the Ten Commandments, with a focus on creating a holy community. At the center of this text, which stands at the center of the Torah, is the commandment “do not go about as a talebearer among your people.” In that many of the misleading emails that circulate today are specifically directed to the Jewish community, the final words of this verse, usually overlooked, take on a special meaning. In our tradition, words are considered to have great power. As we prepare for the Days of Awe, let us consider the power of all our words, those spoken, those written on paper, and those that travel in cyberspace way beyond our even knowing who they will reach.