Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: My Resolution for the New Year -- To Be More Careful with Lashon HaRa, I am Starting by Being Less Irritable

Sefer Shmiras HaLashon says there are seven main terrible midos that bring a person to say לשון הרע, and they can be remembered with the simple and pithy acronym: כל גיהנם/All Hell. Let's take them one at a time.

The first three -- כעס/Anger, ליצנות/Derision/Mocking, and גאווה/Pride and Arrogance -- don't really need any elucidation. They are the triumvirate of bad midos, so you can just add לשון הרע to the list of despicable crimes that they encourage.

Next on the list and basically two sides of the same coin are ייאוש/Despair and הפקר/Neglected. Both of these lead one to remove any thought of constraining one's speech. One side of the coin is, "There are so many ways to get caught in the trap of speaking לשון הרע, I just know that I won't be able to avoid it; so why even try?" The other side says, "I really don't see anyone at all being careful with there speech. It must be one of those extra credit, super-frum things! That certainly isn't me!" The answer to both can be answered with a simple משל/thought experiment -- You picked an apple from a tree and after the first bite found the apple was full of little worms. Are you now going to eat the rest of the apple just because you already ate some worms in the first bite?! Aren't you going to be careful with the next apple, even though everyone around you is eating them without checking?

[Aside: Maybe you should find a different group to hang  out with. Just saying.]

Let's skip to the last one:  מותר/Defamation with extreme prejudice. There are times when it is not only permissible, but even the fulfillment of a positive commandment from the Torah to say לשון הרע about someone. Unfortunately, though, people are very quick on the draw to convince themselves that the person about whom they want to gossip certainly falls into that category. "That dude? Totally permissible -- even a mitzvah -- to say Lashon HaRa about him!" As R' Fuerst has said, people do call him about the permissibility of saying Lashon HaRa regarding shiduchim, but never while having coffee with a neighbor.

Now... regarding first three -- כעס/Anger, ליצנות/Derision/Mocking, and גאווה/Pride and Arrogance -- I know, I know... I am working on them. Regarding the last three -- ייאוש/Despair, הפקר/Neglected, and מותר/Defamation with extreme prejudice -- I am actually making good and steady progress.

What's the נ in כל גיהנם -- what's that? נרגנות/Irritability. What? That's it? How did that one even get in the list. I mean, yeah, when I am irritable and something doesn't go exactly my way, sure I get my feathers ruffled. Sure, I start complaining about the situation. Sure, I come to thinking about the person who caused this. Sure I start to complain about that person... ohhh.... oops. What do you know; irritability really can lead to saying lashon hara. On the other hand, being less irritable is really something I may be able to achieve. Certainly a stretch goal, but just as certainly in the realm of possibility!

So that's how I decided to make my resolution for the new year. I will work diligently to be more careful with lashon hara. How? I will be less irritable, בעזרת השם.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: אוושא מילתא Debases Yours Shabbos

My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class.  It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner.  I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her.  She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver.  When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find.  (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every  relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it.  Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא.  It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aruch HaRav that referred to the noise of תקתוק
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: Love in the Time of Corona Virus/Anxiously Awaiting the Mashiach

Two scenarios: Scenario I: A young boy awakened in the middle of the night, placed in the back of vehicle, told not to make any noise, and the vehicle speeds off down the highway. Scenario II: Young boy playing in park goes to see firetruck, turns around to see scary man in angry pursuit, poised to attack. I experienced and lived through both of those scenarios. Terrifying, no? Actually, no; and my picture was never on a milk carton. Here's the context: Scenario I: We addressed both set of our grandparents as "grandma" and "grandpa". How did we distinguish? One set lived less than a half hour's drive; those were there "close grandma and grandpa". The other set lived five hour drive away; they were the "way far away grandma and grandpa". To make the trip the most pleasant for all of us, Dad would wake up my brother and I at 4:00AM, we'd groggily -- but with excitement! -- wander out and down to the garage where we'd crawl
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: What Category of Muktzeh are Our Candles?

As discussed in a recent TftD , a p'sak halacha quite surprising to many, that one may -- even לכתחילה -- decorate a birthday cake with (unlit, obviously) birthday candles on Shabbos. That p'sak is predicated on another p'sak halacha; namely, that our candles are muktzeh because they are a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור and not  מוקצה מחמת גופו/intrinsically set aside from any use on Shabbos. They point there was that using the candle as a decoration qualifies as a need that allows one to utilize a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור. Today we will discuss the issue of concluding that our candles are , in fact, a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור and not מוקצה מחמת גופו. Along the way we'll also (again) how important it is to have personal relationship with your rav/posek, the importance of precision in vocabulary, and how to interpret the Mishna Brura.  Buckle up. After reviewing siman 308 and the Mishna Brura there, I concluded that it should be permissible to use birthday candles to decorate a cake on Shabbo
Post a Comment
Read more