Language and Relationship
One of the more surprising things about lashon hara, evil speech, in Judaism, is that it refers to speech that is true. False speech, libel, or slander, are something else and fall under a different prohibition. Here is Maimonides, explaining the distinction:
There is a far greater sin that falls under this prohibition [of gossip]. It is the evil tongue, which refers to one who speaks disparagingly of his fellow, even though he speaks the truth. But whoever tells a lie is called “one who gives his fellow a bad name” [motsi shem ra]. However, the one who possesses an evil tongue is one who sits and says, “A certain individual did such and such. His ancestors were so and so. I heard such and such about him.” Scripture says of those who speak disparagingly of others, “May the Lord cut off all smooth lips, the tongue that speaks proud things.” (Ps. 12:4)1Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot 7:2.
This definition, though, is quite strange. Why should it be a sin to tell the truth, even if it casts a negative light over the one about whom you say it? Is truth always pleasant or positive? We all have failings. We all sin. Judaism accepts this. It has never idealised the human situation. Surely honesty requires that we tell the truth, however harsh it is.
This paradox suggests that Judaism has a different understanding of language than the one that prevails in the West and had its origins in ancient Greece. The philosophers, heirs to the Greeks, tended to think of language as conveying information. What matters is whether it is true or false. If the factual assertion contained within a sentence corresponds with the way things are, it is true. If not, it is false. We use language to share information. That is its role in the human situation. Hence the only thing that matters is truth.
Judaism sees things differently. One way of approaching this is through a discovery made by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. During the First World War, the young Malinowski was engaged in fieldwork among the Trobriand islanders of New Guinea. Attempting to enter into the lifeworld of the people he was studying, he developed an interest in how social structures answer to basic human needs.
One phenomenon that captured his attention was the fact that Trobriand islanders spent a great deal of their time conversing, but relatively little in exchanging information. The islanders did not talk in order to inform others of what they did not know. They did so just to be together, to cement their bonds of friendship. Malinowski concluded that their conversation “serves to establish bonds of personal union between people brought together by the mere need of companionship.”2Bronislaw Malinowski, “The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages,” in The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1923).
He called this “phatic communion,” and it is what we do, for example, when we say to someone, “How are you?” or “Have a good day.” The question is not a request for information; the wish is not a command. These are acts of communication whose content is almost irrelevant. They take place simply to affirm the social bond. Indeed, deep conversations between friends can sometimes involve an almost tangible sense of the presence of an other. We call communication “staying in touch” as if it were a kind of embrace.
Phatic communion is the connection formed when two people talk, regardless of what they say. It is the encounter of two persons in which each recognises in the other an answering presence. It says that someone else is there, attending to us, listening and responding to our being, confirming our existence. Speech is intimately related to the social, to our need to belong to something larger than the self.
The evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has gone further and argued that speech emerged among humans to fulfil the same function as grooming in primates.3Dunbar, op. cit.
All social animals need to find ways of keeping the group together, managing disputes, appeasing frayed emotions, helping individuals within the group recover their poise after a bruising encounter. Primates do this by grooming, stroking one another. But this degree of intimacy is possible only in a relatively small group. Humans, by using language as a substitute for embrace, can manage more relationships and thus build larger groups.
What Malinowski and Dunbar have done in their different ways is to remind us that language is not just about conveying information. Hence truth is not the only consideration. Conversation is about creating and sustaining relationships so that the group (the family, the village, the tribe, ultimately the nation as a whole) can function smoothly and cohesively without splitting apart whenever there is a conflict between two strong personalities.
If this is so, it explains why lashon hara is regarded so seriously by the sages. Jews have always been a nation of strong individuals. They stand out starkly in the pages of Tanakh and the debates that make up the Midrash and the Talmud. The Lord may be our shepherd, but no Jew was ever a sheep. Every Jew has his or her opinion. Every Jew needs to feel valued, important, significant in the scheme of things, listened to, heard.
In such a group, the maintenance of cohesion is difficult but essential. That is one reason why speech was seen in Judaism not simply as a means of conveying information, though it is that as well, but also and essentially as a means of holding the group together without coercive force. That is why a statement can still be lashon hara despite the fact that it is true. For what matters is not just the information it conveys but the effect it has on relationships within the group. If it divides the group, poisons relationships, and sets one person against another, then it is destructive of relationships and of the group itself.
We see this clearly in the Torah, most obviously in the case of Joseph and his brothers. We read at the beginning of the story that Joseph “brought an evil report” about some of his brothers to his father (Gen. 37:2). This and other factors led to a complete breakdown of communication between them: “When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him” (literally: “they could not speak him to peace,” 37:4). Eventually, they plotted to kill him and sold him as a slave. Where relationships are damaged by evil speech, communication breaks down, and violence is often waiting in the wings.
The most compelling literary illustration of motsi shem ra, slander, and lashon hara, evil speech, is Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello. Iago, a high-ranking soldier, is bitterly resentful of Othello, a Moorish general in the army of Venice. Othello has promoted a younger man, Cassio, over the more experienced Iago, who is determined to take revenge. He does so in a prolonged and vicious campaign, which involves, among other things, tricking Othello into the suspicion that his wife, Desdemona, is having an adulterous affair with Cassio. Othello asks Iago to kill Cassio, and he himself kills Desdemona, smothering her in her bed. Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s attendant, discovers her mistress dead and as Othello explains why he has killed her, realises the nature of her husband’s plot and exposes it. Othello, in guilt and grief, commits suicide, while Iago is arrested and taken to be tortured and possibly executed.
It is a play entirely about the evil of slander and suspicion, and portrays literally what the sages say figuratively, that “Evil speech kills three people: the one who says it, the one who listens to it, and the one about whom it is said.”4Arakhin 15b.
Shakespeare’s tragedy makes it painfully clear how much evil speech lives and thrives in the dark corners of suspicion. Had the others known what Iago was saying to stir up fear and distrust, the facts might have become known and the tragedy averted. As it was, he was able to mislead the various characters, playing on their emotional weaknesses and envy, getting each to believe the worst about one another. It ends in serial bloodshed and disaster.
The age of computers, smartphones, and social networking sites has added another dimension to the destructive possibilities of evil speech. To take one example from Britain: Hannah Smith was a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl living in Lutterworth, Leicestershire. Bright and outgoing, she enjoyed an active social life and seemed to have an exciting future ahead of her. On the morning of August 2, 2013, Hannah was found hanged in her bedroom. She had committed suicide.
Seeking to unravel what had happened, her family soon discovered that she had been the target of anonymous abusive posts on a social networking website. Hannah was a victim of the latest variant of the oldest story in human history: the use of words as weapons by those seeking to inflict pain. The new version is called cyberbullying.
Hannah was not the only victim. There have been many others. Another highly publicised case, this time in the United States, was that of fifteen-year-old Amanda Todd, who committed suicide on October 10, 2012, after being exploited, blackmailed, and subjected to a tormenting profile on a well-known social networking site. Michael Harris tells her story in his book on the impact of online relationships, The End of Absence.5Michael Harris, The End of Absence (New York: Current, 2014), 49–72.
Online abuse has become one of the great hazards of virtual relationships.
Cyberbullying is lashon hara for the twenty-first century. In general, the Internet has what is called a disinhibition effect.6John Suler, “The Online Disinhibition Effect,” CyberPsychology & Behavior 7(3), 2004: 321–326.
It allows people to say what they would not say under normal conventions of face-to-face encounter. Greek myth told the story of Gyges’ ring that had the magical property of making whoever wore it invisible, so that he or she could get away with anything.7See Plato, The Republic, book 2, 359a–360d.
Social media that enable people to post anonymous comments or adopt false identities are as near as anyone has yet come to inventing a Gyges’ ring. That is what is so dangerous about it.
Hence the renewed relevance of the idea implicit in the connection between evil speech and tzaraat, the condition that affected not only human beings but also garments and walls. Here is Maimonides’ account:
It [tzaraat] was a sign and wonder among the Israelites to warn them against slanderous speaking. For if a man uttered slander, the walls of his house would suffer a change. If he repented, the house would again become clean. But if he continued in his wickedness until the house was torn down, leather objects in his house on which he sat or lay would suffer a change. If he repented they would again become clean. But if he continued in his wickedness until they were burned, the garments which he wore would suffer a change. If he repented they would again become clean. But if he continued in his wickedness until they were burned, his skin would suffer a change and he would become infected by tzaraat and be set apart and alone until he no more engaged in the conversation of the wicked which is scoffing and slander.8Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Tumat Tzaraat 16:10.
Evil speech is subversive: it is a sin that seeks to conceal itself. People who speak badly about others do so in private, in hushed, conspiratorial tones, and often deny that they have done so. Iago keeps his intentions hidden. Social media gives people the opportunity to hide behind a cloak of anonymity or false identities. But the effect is deeply destructive. That is because speech is much more than the conveying of information. It is the substance of relationship, and when this is poisoned, trust and the social bond are undermined. We use the phrase “character assassination” precisely because some form of violence is being committed, even if it is verbal rather than physical.
That is why, as long as the condition of tzaraat existed, what had been done in private was broadcast in public, first by the walls of the offender’s house, then by his clothes, and finally by his skin. It was not just a punishment. It was a public shaming. There is poetic justice in this idea and though tzaraat no longer exists in its biblical form, still the moral remains.
The stories of victims of evil speech, from the fictitious Othello to the real-life tragedies of Hannah Smith and Amanda Todd, are a painful reminder of how right the sages are to reject the idea that “words can never harm me,” and insist to the contrary that evil speech kills. Free speech is not speech that costs nothing. It is speech that respects the freedom and dignity of others. Forget this and free speech becomes very expensive indeed.