How Gossip Compares to Murder According to the Talmud - Rabbi Menachem Salasnik

Our sages in the Talmud tell us that there are three great transgressions, the three most important in Judaism: idolatry, illicit intimacy, and murder. And then the Talmud says: "And lashon hara, negative speech, negative gossip, is comparable to that." How can you compare lahon hara, negative speech, negative gossip, with murder? And the answer is, I think, this. If I were to take one individual case of murder and compare it to one individual case of negative speech, then murder is of course worse. But here lies the problem. Many of us do n't even realize that we are talking all the time. It is a constant, constant, constant stream of words , all the time. And if that is going on, and this person gets hit a little , and that person gets hit a little, then it builds up over time. You have that person whose engagement is being broken off . The person whose marriage is affected. That person who loses their job or cannot get a job. That person who walks around because people have mocked him, and who walks around depressed. Or they feel like they can't do something because the messages they received their whole lives were always: "You are not good enough, and you will never achieve anything. " And what happens is that each point might be one thin thread, but if you keep adding a thread, it eventually becomes a thick rope. So yes, perhaps one example of murder compared to one example of negative gossip, murder is much worse. But if we do not think about what comes out of our mouths within a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, then we have destroyed so many people. And you know what? Sometimes it actually leads to death. As King Solomon says: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." And sometimes that is really, very true.