Admit it - it's fun to gossip. As entertainment, gossip is still the choice of millions, because it's free, because it's easy, and because it's accessible. Besides, everyone does it, so a little harmless fun can't hurt anybody, can it?
Or can it? We live in a culture that doesn't value words. Fewer and fewer Americans read, and our literacy rate is dropping with each passing year. Our politicians offer abundant promises during their campaigns, and most public opinion polls show that Americans don't expect the politicians to fulfill their campaign promises (and don't think the politicians intended to either). After all, those promises are only words. We lie in large ways and small, we shade the truth, we exaggerate. The web of distortions and subterranean insults bind us in an ever-tightening grip. It becomes harder and harder to see the best in each other, and in ourselves. Words count.
Judaism knows that words matter. In permitting Adam to name the animals, the Torah acknowledges the power of words to identify and to mold character. Perhaps that's why God's name isn't really a word (it's all vowels, like breath itself). Perhaps that's also one reason why Jewish tradition has always placed such a strong emphasis on Sh'mirat ha-Lashon, on guarding our speech, and on preventing l'shon ha-ra, evil and malicious gossip.
This week's Torah portion, the very beginning of Sefer Va-Yikra, the book of Leviticus, deals with the sacrificial offerings made in the Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and later in King Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The parashah outlines each different type of sacrifice, who brings it, and how it is carried out. Yet even in the midst of this technical description of ancient Israelite worship, our Sages saw evidence of God's abiding insistence on using speech to heal and to nurture.
The very first verse of Va-Yikra says, "The Holy One called to Moses from the Tent of Meeting, saying..." Why, the rabbis wondered, is that extra "saying" there? What is God trying to teach us by using a superfluous word?
"We learn that if you said something to your neighbor, that neighbor must not spread the news without your consent," says the Talmud. We learn that act of derekh eretz (proper decorum) from our Torah verse. Even though it was quite clear that the reason God was transmitting this message to Moses so that Moses would pass it on to the Children of Israel, Moses still needed God's explicit verbal instruction before repeating God's words to the Jews. Later Jewish tradition incorporated this stringent concern with consent by insisting, in the words of the 13th Century Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, "If someone tells something to a friend, the friend is not allowed to tell others unless specifically instructed to tell these things to others."
In other words, we should train ourselves to see our conversations as private. Our general assumption is that people will feel free to repeat our private conversations unless we specify that they should not. Instead of having to assure ourselves that "this is just between us" following this Torah law would mean that when we didn't mind something being repeated, we would indicate our feelings to the person we were addressing. And if we didn't, then we could be sure that the conversation would go no further than that one special confidante.
As a rabbi, I am often involved in counseling people on very sensitive, painful issues. And I'm struck that they feel the need to tell me that I shouldn't repeat their conversation to anyone in the community. Even in the heart of a rabbi's study, people feel that their words aren't safe, that their most private revelations are about to become public domain. How sad! I imagine that this justified paranoia must keep a lot of painful secrets buried within, causing additional pain, shame, and damage as they fester and burn. I can feel their relief (and see their surprise) when I assure them that our conversation is their property, and they may do with it as they choose, but that I regard it as theirs, not mine.
If Moses needed God's explicit permission before repeating God's words -even though those words were about public matters and issued in the Tent of Meeting - than how much should we care about the words of God's creatures, uttered in confidence and to a solitary individual.
Ours is an age in which trust is a luxury that few can afford and even fewer deserve. Yet, without that trust, that emunah and bitahon, civilization crumbles and decency becomes a sham and a cover for viciousness and vindictiveness. If we hope to shine the healing light of Torah in a dark and dreary time, if we intend to live as God's ensigns in this war against pain and fear and despair, then we had best be prepared to wage that war on the front lines - in our own harsh words and careless chatter.
Sha, shtill. God is listening.
And Shabbat shalom.