I had wanted to write about this a few weeks ago when I heard an(other) incredible shiur from R' Ezriel Cziment, shlita on parasha M'tzorah regarding the mitvah to refrain from Lashon HaRah... but it was erev Shabbos and I was busy and I ran short of time and I was tired... I know, I know... excuses, excuses.
Let me try to redeem myself. This week's parasha (or part of it anyway), K'doshim T'hi'yu (pretty good transliteration, no?) contains, I discovered, the mitzvah itself! (I should have already known that, right? I agree... I'll just keep reading and reviewing till I finally get it!)
לֹֽא־תֵלֵ֤ךְ רָכִיל֙ בְּעַמֶּ֔יךָ ויקרא יט:טז/You shall not go around as a gossipmonger among your people
There is a well known medrash:
A peddler went through the streets shouting, “Who wishes to buy an elixir of life?” R' Yannai, who was engrossed in his Torah study, asked to see his wares. The peddler said to him, “For you, I have nothing.” Upon R' Yannai's insistence, the peddler took out a Book of Psalms and showed him the verse, “Who is the person who desires life and loves days that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from deceitful speech” (Psalms 34:13-14). R' Yannai then said, “All my life I have been reciting this psalm, but I never understood it until this peddler pointed it out to me” (Vayikra Rabbah 16:2).
Of course everyone deals with what exactly was new to R' Yannai in this exchange. R' Cziment had (as usual) a novel approach that really opened up the medrash. We all think of prohibitions as protecting us from damage, and that is precisely how R' Yannai had been learning that psalm. However, the peddler is asking who wants an elixir that gives life, not that prevents damage to an otherwise healthy life. R' Cziment brought in the Beis HaLevi that Klal Yisrael is the parchment of the Oral Law (see this TftD for more on that topic). Speaking Lashon HaRa doesn't damage an otherwise healthy life, it prevents that life from being built in the first place. Klal Yisrael is not a bunch of individuals, it has to be a cohesive network for the Oral Law -- which is the soul of Klal Yisrael -- to breathe and thrive.
I would like to add another aspect to this. The Chafeitz Chaim says that Lashon HaRah is the symptom of שנאת חינם/baseless hate. The life and vitality of Klal Yisrael is אהבת חינם/baseless love. That means that love is the underlying communication grid, if you will, of Klal Yisrael and our soul, the Oral Torah. As mentioned in that TftD, there are two kinds of love the Torah requires. It is interesting to look at each in the context in which they were written.
First, the mitzvah of ואהבת לרעך כמוך/Every Jew must love every other Jew comes after the prohibitions of taking revenge and even holding a grudge. The Torah calls refraining from doing a favor for another Jew because of something they did to you is revenge. If you do the favor, but mention that you are doing it in spite of their bad (sic) behavior, that's holding a grudge. Here's an example with which I am all too familiar. Suppose someone always puts the dishes away in the morning as a favor for his wife. (It has never taken more than five or six minutes, so it's pretty easy.) One evening he has a disagreement with his wife and in the morning decides not to put the dishes away because I was ... um, I mean, he is still ticked off a bit. Boom. Torah prohibition. Suppose I ... I mean he still puts the dishes away, but comes home and when she thanks him for putting the dishes away (which she always does, she is amazing, actually), he replies with, "You're welcome. Even though you were mean to me, I still was nice to you." Different boom, but still a Torah prohibition. Want a side of bacon with that?
The only way to live up to that expectation is to already have a strong bond of love. Why would I need ואהבת לרעך כמוך on top of that? In fact, the mitzvah to love every Jew as yourself is really an admonition to not overstep boundaries. You have to love yourself also. Love other Jews as much as you love yourself, but not more than yourself. You are, after all, also a Jew!
The mitzvah to love converts, one the other hand, comes after "because you were strangers in Mitzrayim". That is, the mitzvah to love converts is an expression of using whatever experiences you have endured to be sensitive to another's predicament. Remember/imagine how you felt and/or would have felt in that situation and use those feelings in reaching out.
Both mitzvohs are followed by, "I am HaShem." These are not about happenstance human emotions, they are about using our most powerful passions to build Klal Yisrael.
In the 60s, there was a song: "What the world needs now is love, sweet love." Even now, that song has more than 13 millions tracks! We don't need to hear it again, and -- honestly -- I don't know how the rest of the lyrics go. I do know, however, that HaShem very much wants us to heed those words.
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