Torah as an Antidote for Lashon Hara by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

okay let's uh let's start we this is the second of a series of three Wednesday mornings uh yes last week we dealt with the Torah and its connections toila to prayer and we focused almost completely upon the closer to me okay okay that's better now okay the um we focused last week almost entirely upon the works of RF cook uh especially his um one section of his introduction to his sidor RAF cook was published an available R Cook's two volume commentary on the sidor and the M all the all the trilos for regular days and for special days and it's called the initials of rabi Abraham kakain cook um and and we saw there some basic fundamentals about Torah needs and needs Torah um I shared with you some Recollections of a talk that I heard long long ago when I was very young from marar and Cutler about the zal about the the connections between the importance of studying Torah in order to make one's fos uh what should I say more um uh more penetrating and more successful um today we'll look again at Torah and we look at Torah as an antidote for lashan lashan malicious gossip you might translate that into English um although in general English translations for many many of our Concepts inesh and biblical and tamic Hebrew just don't translate well into English B is not a blessing and Kos does not mean holy right both both words these are words we use in D every day and and and kados but they mean something much more than what the English word Holiness um communicates and um and it doesn't mean blessing it means much more than blessing something very qualitatively different than blessing as it's defined in web's dictionary and so too F I mean literally it's the bad language or the evil tongue or um but I think malicious gossip comes closer to what it means and we'll study a little bit about the nature of Lan but espe especially the connection between Torah studying Torah and the tendency we all have to one degree or another of malicious gossip of speaking ill of another person in front of yet still other people okay um so one place to begin really is with the parua that we completed last this past chabas uh which ended pretty much with this story of Miriam having uh slandered in a certain way her brother Moshe to some extent it's all blamed on Miriam Aon seemed to also have had some type of a part in it um and together they both spoke maliciously about um about their brother mosha and and Miriam was punished uh she attracted to this disease called SAS which is the the the punishment for speaking too much l um and the replied responded to her and to Aon saying how can you people speak about Moshe Moshe is and then the Torah goes on for several Pim about the nature of God's relationship to Moshe which was unique and special and he was the unov M that phrase rais the most humble of men um uh and he was pelo God says I spoke to him mouth to mouth directly I had a relationship with him that I had I never had with anyone before and since Moshe is very special and then um the Jews kind of mourned Miriam's illness and she recovered and the rest of the story so that's the story of Miriam in the in in in the midbar and the lon that she spoke and um since then we kind of look at uh Miriam as being almost the the anti-hero of the of malicious gossip of when you were in the midbar remember Miriam because she had like we all have our fault she had her fault too and remember her faults we assume that uh she took advantage of the various um antidotes that we'll uh survey uh this morning but that's background when one speaks about lanar since the earliest early 20th century which is relatively recent in Jewish history uh it's very difficult to speak about loan Hara without mentioning the works mayag who wrote the which says if you want to follow the proper paths then guard your tongue if you want life who doesn't want life the way to get life is um by guarding your tongue and so you mayen who passed away in the mid 1930s uh so that's relatively recent not even a 100 years since he's gone uh barely so and um he's known by the name of his seot many for him very many for him is so we've talked about the because he was that was his major work and this masterpiece and it's an entire work devoted to the a of wrote severals for him about related topics which are less well known um he wrote about the importance of speaking the truth as opposed to Sher as opposed to to lies um there's also a sin of the tongue to some extent um and uh about various other things related to the theme of his major work the one that's probably the best introduction to the topic if a person is beginning to study this topic or beginning to study the works of the is his smaller work and kind of less dense in terms of the details he gets into is a saer which is known as watching or being careful to guard your tongue that safer is more inspirational than the is more what are you allowed to say what are you not allowed to say suppose someone asks you about somebody about a sh or someone if you want to think of employing somebody so you ask somebody hey is this guy a good worker is he honest Etc can you or can you not speak negatively about this person in such circumstances and these kinds of H details dos and don'ts which are important and very extensive that's the say for the is much more down to earth personally okay guys and girls you know here's what you should be doing and here's how to to protect against it all of the above is not for one lecture but I want to expose you to or introduce you to um some of his thinking and some of his thinking sometimes is very insistent uh in his ability to disagree being a late 19th century early 20th century Rabbi to disagree with Reon him to disagree with earlier rabbis going back hundreds of years before him felt that um sometimes they were too short too brief too vague um not forceful enough and they're writing about lanara and he corrects them we'll see one interesting example of that in a moment um so I'll be begin with a quote from the it was difficult for me to arrange to get the actual text printed so I have you for you have in front of you have an outline with the references and exactly where they are so that you can look him up and there are English translations and Spanish translations of these Works uh for those who are more comfortable with the translation but among his many many virtues the had a very clear uh way of writing so he sometimes attacks complex topics but of puts them out like a like a you know like a a set table where you got you can know what exactly how to follow so I'm I'm going to just read to you the words where he says a basic basic rule about lashan which many people are not aware of uh and this is at the beginning his first opening comment to CLA Bay the saer is is divided into kalim into different categories um is introductory material clown Bas is where he really gets into um defining exactly what L is so he writes as follows right away he tries to disabuse us of uh of what many people think many people people think I can talk about the other guy uh negatively critically and um if it's true it's not lanara you know the guy is a thief you know what am I going to say that's not Lush and Har I'm just telling you the truth so his opening statement is it's Lush and even if it's the truth lashar is not affected by whether what you're saying in conversation to another person is uh true or false it's false is even worse but either way it's malicious gossip um even if you're not speaking publicly some people think well if I talk to a crowd of people or if I send an email out to a million people that's Lush and horror but if I'm just talking you know conversation with somebody you know or in a car together so I'll tell you some things about barel or sharel and and that's the way we'll spend the time oneon-one that's not that's no excuse either and certainly if you're speaking to to a group of people or to many many people uh that's certainly L and the really felt that this sin the whole sin of verbal misuse of the god-given ability to speak to write and to communicate which is god-given Sim you know is part of that tellim is that we can communicate with each other through language um so he sometimes think that uh that's not the main thing in the Torah that's that our main problem felt that in his generation which meant like from 1880 to 1930 the the sin of the generation that all the Jewish people have to really focus on this correcting this sin that's the sin and this was before emails before before uh uh you know websites before electronic communication even before maybe they had a telephone already in this time but that's about it but had he been alive today and would know how easy it is to communicate and how many people you can reach by communicating by pressing a button in a split second and how um irretrievable that is once it goes out you know if I call you a nasty name in front of you I can apologize Etc but if I call you a nasty name and put it on the website and um and now it's it's it's in your you're you know anybody can go and look it up online you can't retract that ever ever it's it's there forever see you can't even correct it if you wanted to and you could reach millions billions of people with one press of the button and you can't retract it so he would really feel that everything I'm I'm writing I'm writing is very very important it's the sin of the generation and one could easily argue that nowadays that's the sin of the world you know lies and slander and false communication and misinformation and uh name calling of other people Etc it's it's rif so um he goes further somehow anticipating when he wrote this almost 100 years ago or so maybe more than 100 years ago but he writes even if you're speaking to one person certainly if you're speaking to a group The More The Wider your audience is so if your audience is 25 people or whatever how many people are here right now that's one thing but if you go online and you could reach immediately a whole mailing list of people hundreds thousands millions the more listeners hear your evil message your malicious message the greater the sin more people who are affected by your communication of this negative information about another person the worse it is in terms of the the degree the extent of of the [Music] sin in other words he's saying this if I you know tell you about something nasty about you the another person so you know about it the other person can figure ah you know so Zev knows about it that's not the end of the world but if he finds out that the whole class knows about the nasty thing I said about him that hurts him much more oh he told everybody he told this one you told that one Ah that's it really hurts uh and then imagine if you tell a 100 people a thousand people a million people so as as writes the other person feels more affected he feels the gai more he's more ashamed he's more upset it hurts much more the more people know about it it's very difficult to dismiss uh an accusation against yourself about your bad reputation or whatever and the whole world knows about it it's it's it's really hurts that's something to be very aware of at least if you're going to speak lashan Hara speak it one onone right and don't get don't have a tape recorder with you because then it can be spread all over the world yeah yeah so discusses those kinds of scenarios and there happens all the time in everyday life where you know something about somebody that if the other person finds out about it the other person is going to suffer you're looking to hire somebody or go into business with somebody and you know that the person is a fraud or a cheat under under those conditions has a whole section where he says when you can disclose the information you know because the other person will be hurt maybe this is a consultation about a shid or about an employee or about a business partner or whatever or whether you should hire this Rabbi or that Rabbi people speak Lush and horror about the rabbi because they think it's going to benefit the people they know that the rabbi is whatever things like that and but also now we're not going to cover that today at all will give you some guidelines about how to say it what to say it how certain you have to be about this bad information that you know about this potential partner in business or whatever these are the complexities of um of Lan har but here he wors dealing with the essential inion of L har it's even even if the information is true still you speaketh even to one person it's l the the the greater the number of people who you expose to your malicious gossip the worse is the sin because that because that hurts much more the the victim of the lanara speaks is feels much more pained is more but he uses the word Misan he feels more more sulled more more insulted more mind than uh if you just spoke to one or two people about it but besides that that's one thing you're hurting someone by speaking lashan Hara and the more people who know about it the worse is lashan har because the more the more the victim the target feels but then there's another thing and that is when you tell another person and he or she listens to you the person who has m is also sinning what you should do if someone starts to talk L is to say to him whoops don't go further with that I don't want to hear it but if you don't then you figure I'll hear it I'm only listening I'm not going to believe it that's that's that's the Sha's um sin so the more people you spoke to the more people you are being so here you have whole classroom full of people and if I would speak negatively about schmear or barrel uh so I'm I'm causing all of you to sin so that's a bigger sin on my on my shoulders um and then he often prints at the end of a paragraph if he says things that here people can argue no no no if you speak to only one person it's not so bit or whatever or if you tell the truth it's okay telling the truth you know I'm saving the world by telling the truth about how nasty this guy is and there's no benefit really so but people predecessors before the some say this and some say that he puts in parenthesis at the end of par paragraph what his source is so here he said his sources are hamat hkim right all the pokim unanimously agree with that I just said don't bother arguing with me this is it now in the way the saer is is set up he begins with a paragraph which is clear succinct like I just read to you then he has like notes which expand upon all these comments that he made at some length so if one is studying there's at least two ways of studying the safer one is to just study those paragraphs the dos the don'ts the basics and not get into all the the scholarly uh commentary uh but if you want to learn it you know from lha standpoint you want to goarn into greater depth and know more about it you can go into What's called the The Well of which all this Torah comes up and then even to go further even deeper is then there are comments and footnotes on the so it goes to deeper so let's go a little deeper into the second footnote in the which is a lengthier discussion of the paragraph that I just read to you the paragraph is in um uh cl cl 2 CL B is the opening paragraph and I just put in parentheses to see there referring to the maharal inos so the second um footnote in the in the uh in the in the notes um is this comment in which he refers to it with great honor and deference but with absolutely rejecting a position of the maharal M prag maharam prag lived well into the 1600s Maham prag was blessed with a long long life um and the r of Prague which in those years hundreds of years ago was a one of the major if not the major Jewish centers in the entire world certainly in the ashkenazic world and um and moral of course the ironic thing about the moral is when you people say to most people even to Gentiles about the maharal they know about the gum right the the gum the gum is a legend there's no record of mahel dabbling in you know creating Frankenstein monsters or good Frankenstein monsters um but that Legend is an ancient legend goes back I don't know way back in history way before the 17th century and for somehow they that Legend is attached to the marami pra several times I've LED lead groups to Eastern Europe and we we go to the the alt no shul in in Prague and you can see the lad and the back wall of the sh supposedly the uh uh would climb up and down that ladder cuz that's where we hit out in the attic and we once I once went to let a a group and we had a wait online to go into that Sho because there was a group of Japanese tourists so what did they know about the maral they were muttering in Japanese about the Golem the Golem the Golem and in front of the Sho there was some guy who was selling Golems if he wanted to buy a golum and I bought two Golems yeah well it was very cheap it were like 13 cents I think in American money so we bought two golems and when we came back to the States this was many many years ago um one of the GMS is broken in half because the um you know the the authorities at the airport see these little you know Clay uh clay statues and there were Hollow so he thought we must be hiding something in the hollow maybe diamonds or who knows what was smuggling out so he broke it in half and looked inside convinced himself that there was nothing inside the gum just like there's really nothing to the legend of the go just a legend I I just said people look at me like wow how can you deny that it's like you know you know it's like right it's a terrible thing it's like blasphemy it's not to believe in the gum but that's the truth anyway moral But the irony is that he was famous for that when the maral should have been famous for the fact that probably in the history of Jewish thought he ranks up there with the rambam from the time of the rambam in the 12th century until maharal in the late 16th early 17th century there was no one who wrote as me as much and as deeply in philosophical terms as the Maha Mah pra wrote numerous numerous for he was a prolific writer one of his Forum was called n PS of the world and uh in there he has a a whole PA speaking about which the references in his notes tells you exactly where to look for this statement and the says writes I really kind of can't accept what he said what the marel said which you say Polly you really have to research what he said very much because he's saying something that I is May are living hundreds of years after the Mahal can't possibly agree with um because maharal writes that if you say in the face of the person you're spoking talking about you know I go over to to you and I say you are a liar right and I can prove it because yesterday you said this and this and I say it to you with or without other witnesses there that's not lash says the maharal if you say it to the person himself that's not lash and the maharal writes a phrase why because if to the person in front of you you you could have hit him attacked him physically well you could have shot him you could have killed him so if you speak lash to him I understand what the mar is saying is that this doesn't fit in the category of L this fits into the category of personal attack personal attack is something different from malicious gossip malicious gossip and maral is saying is about something else about speaking to someone else about someone maligning another person um ruining him because of ruining his reputation Etc that is lash har but cursing out a person to in his face is the same thing as striking him or or shooting him you're directly injuring him so it's it it it falls into the book of personal injury not into the book of malicious gossip that's what he's saying not that it's permissible to do that in fact quite the contrary whether it's so it's we're talking about direct insult to a person's face is the worst thing of all it's Way Beyond the category of lash that's how I understand the um the maral but the to have understood him to say that if you say it to the person it's not so Bard not so Bard person hears what you have to say maybe because the person has ability to respond person knows what you're saying about him so he can defend himself he can send out an email countering your email or whatever perhaps but says that it can't be it can't be true if you say Lan to a person's face that's also L that's also malicious gods of whether or not another the person is present and the words of the on this um this point about the Mahal in Theos and it's just fascinating to me that someone like the will take on as an opponent in this this disagreement someone as authoritative as the maral he felt no this is wrong and he politely disagreed um and his proof is from the story of Miram when Miriam insulted Moshe you know and it's Etc um did she say it to his face to moshe's face or did she say it behind his back if you look in the Kish it's hard to say it's hard to Aram was around was mosha also around but but this is the now with his past knowledge so whether it's true or false okay that we know [Music] already and as far as what theal is saying what how would the maral respond to the D of Rab in the the is a so it's it's equal to a gamor it's a commentary onid however it's properly pronounced and in the on the story of Miram and the the that she spoke against Moshe the S says quote could look it up exactly in B midbar chapter 12 paragraph 2 in the he says that she said said it to moshe's face she didn't hide it from him she said it to his face right everybody knows Miriam was guilty of L mosha was guilty of certain sins Aram was guilty of certain sins Tori doesn't hide the sins of the ofos mo so even though you would think Miriam you know she she's commanded when she did important things you know she raised Moshe she stood by the by the by the Nile and watched his basket when he was a baby etc etc and she defended she she was either one of the she was the one of the nursemaids or the uh the um midwives who would rescue the infant baby boys so she had many Zim but she had a fault and we sure K learns from her fault but she did it moshe's face so this is um would would refute what the maral says in doing it in the face of the victim of the Lash is no excuse that's no reason it's still lash it's still and it deserves to be up there in the you know the top seven sins or whatever okay so that's um what one section in the which is um the number two in the outline that I have in front of you which you can you can look up number three is something very important and it relates back to Miriam uh especially if if the SRE is correct that she did it in the presence of Moshe she said this uh these accusations in front of her dear brother Moshe and um so for that I want to introduce you to another concept closely related to lash which is also W we're all widely guilty of this as well and this is the in CL six so it's major chapter six paragraphs depending upon the addition 7 uh to 8 7 to9 so this is what he says and it's an important thing and this takes takes us to we learn inos that the principle appears widely in Shas but it's most famous to most people from payos always judge another person favorably that when you're just meeting someone Etc always judge that person favorably this is not talking about communicating to another person this is yourself you yourself when you meet someone new or hear about someone new judge them favorably even if you see him doing something or people say this guy is a fraud or this or that don't believe it but judge them favorably Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps and there are various stories nmar I won't go into them about various people including rabi aiva who once went to work for a for for Farmer and he did all sorts of work for this Farmer and the farmer cheated him didn't pay him etc etc etc um Anda was constantly judging him with well he didn't pay me a time maybe because his money was tied up in an investment you know he didn't give me the proper change with when he dismissed me on payday you well maybe he didn't have change always was thinking of him so addresses this important issue of being done because it's obviously related to malicious gossip you're not going to gossip maliciously about somebody if you judge that person favorably so he he talks about some of the parameters about this so he writes as follows the Torah says don't believe the negative stuff that you hear about someone else don't believe it this is true you know that this guy is a fraud that this guy eats his breakfast every morning in McDonald's and has a hamburger cheeseburger all right him and cheeseburger so it's a lot of different Heros there all right and you know it's true you know you see him every day he Parks his car in front of McDonald's and he walks right past the kosher Dunkin Donuts etet and he walks into the McDonald's all right so you know maybe he's going into McDonald's because they ran out of Coca-Cola in the in the in the kosher store so he went to the McDonald's to buy a well maybe remember phone booths right so maybe the nearest phone Booth was in the McDonald's who knows oh right right the restroom in the McDonald's is much cleaner than Yan's Delhi okay so you went to the restroom there that's the that's the that's what it means have judge him favorably you know who knows maybe he took his own Sim which GL kosher Etc and walked into McDonald because he had an appointment with his Irish boss and an Irish boss was going to eat the cheeseburger and he was going to eat the Hur you know who knows but but maybe you can kind of judge him this way or that way Etc and then he says this is not only M Oran but this is theor according to many the root in the Torah for this prohibition or this Mitzvah of always judging the other person favorably is it's in Pas kosim bet you have to judge your fellow or colleague or friend or whatever beted so that P usually is seen literally in the context of a mitzvah for the judge a judge should always judge fairly but says clearly refers to all of us we're all judges every time we meet someone we we immediately begin iead know judging the person is this person this or that or what whatever depending upon the person's dress or the person's language second and um whatever no but uh so that that's also true and if you do if you misjudge a person in front of another person that's lash right telling him your judgment of the person and interestingly enough I'm not going to go into ra has a whole approach to to this where he said where we he applies it to to what Miriam's sin was he says Miriam's sin was not so much lash it was more Dan if mosha rabenu separated himself from his wife for a period of time you have to judge that favorably it's not because he was a terrible husband or he was neglecting his wife or anything like that it's because he had a a higher purpose at times of his life where would what I'm sorry he had a direct command from or he had a direct command from Hashem you know actually the gor says that he he he Moshe decided on his own and agreed so it wasn't like a direct command but we had the consent of but whatever he he had a relationship with Reish that gave him a basis what for what he was doing and she was not Don know she was not and that's the that's the type of of um of Z that's that's to put us on guard against um against misjudging a person rather than just maligning a person maligning a person is a separate thing maybe you know she had a very limited audience you know she had her brothers and that's it you know and maybe they were quick to forgive her maybe Moshe was quick to forgive her well this is speculative but what she definitely did do is misjudge a person and to make worse to misjudge mosu to misjudge a leader to misjudge someone who's a and and you think you know better so you misjudge him you know people have their reasons and sometimes they're good reasons for doing these things which we don't understand or we don't know about so misjudging another people another person so that he elaborates this more on this on in that number three on your your handout CL 6 7 to9 okay yeah so we're talking about right yeah yeah yeah tshb right right also I always the of that's that's one way of looking at it that's one way of looking at it but the doubt is a loaded word right in in in in the theological discussions that is a I was once um introduced by a very famous person Dennis Prager I met the we were both on on the same panel and I was wise enough not to follow him because he's a tough act to follow so I spoke before him and he got up and I used the term in my talk that here I was riddled with doubt that's what I said I use that phrase riddled with out so he got up right after me and he said did you just hear what the rabbi wup said doubt he's an orthodox Rabbi and he used the word doubt now Orthodox rabis are not supposed to doubt okay okay well I I agree with you but uh not everybody would agree with us there are some Educational Systems and unfortunately they're still thriving who discourage questions who disc coverage questions oh yes oh yeah a bunch of oh yes oh yes if you're buuy and you went to a school which encouraged questioning that's a different story and and and that's a proper thing to do you can't open up a daar and not find someone qu asking a question right you just it's just you won't find it you won't find it questions in every line questions answers Etc okay let's look at the the the a little bit at four and five four and five is okay we're talking about various aspects and it's a big topic l misjudging a person not giving them the benefit of the doubt Etc but how do you correct it how do is it possible to correct it is it possible all right you said here we go it's already almost T and after it's already of and after of is so is around the corner and then so we should already be thinking about those terms so you realize the past few weeks and months was critical of this one that one and uh spoke nastily about this person that person I'd like to do Chua is there a Tak is there a way to repair it there's a passage in the gar Ina world it's called the proper pronunciation isim which means values literally monetary values in most cases anyway that's and in 15b that's the reference which you can look up on your own a fascinating paragraph and I like to just read you the paragraph and it's what's an interesting thing here you talk about questions here you're going to have two people are assume that they were brothers you'll see why in a moment and they're arguing with each other about something so basic as C does lush andura have is it reparable can you repair it somehow yeah you could do Tru to God but what about repairing the damage you did there's already an email out there to three million people who that that this person is a this and that and how do you take it back you know so let's get through who his name was that's a common name Babylonian Jews the son of what what what rectification what what repair is available to a person who tells um so he says depend if the person who spoke is a because we know that also sometimes I'm speak so what what Tak do they have they have the following Tak she should he should study Torah he knows how to study Torah she take out he should learn Torah where do you get what's the basis for that CH have a and this P I did put down for you in it's in it's in full the Mish um per P three or PK four depending upon the addition the PK reads you hear to have words in front of you Ines the original so what does this mean means this is how he interprets it the cure for Lon is a what's the Torah which we sing and say often but it's also a so person who falls into the Trap of of speaking L this is the opposite of marp from the word Ro he who wants to cleanse hison but if a person is he deviously continues to speak it's a spiritual wound the spiritual wound which you can interpret it various ways but what um does is look at the first of the you want to cure your tongue you spoke 10 times in the P year only 10 times and then go right to the Torah often on the on the you'll see something else okay that's good too but this is what says but suppose he's not he's means a common person not the he can't he can't take he can't um benefit from sitting down with a gamor and and so he should become more humble he should lower his you know be less arrogant less arrogant that's how he interprets the second here for the if a person deviously fell into speaking too much what he should do is he should break his Spirit he should become more humble Rashi and the gor there explaining what this means sh which literally seems to mean a wound in the spirit which might refer to the victim and ra is saying that it refers to the speaker of lashar he should be M his or her Ru so Rashi says there the person who is Con instantly Swept Away by the desire to speak and he wants to remove this fault that he has he wants to do some chuva he want to do some selfimprovement so this brief and clear he wants move to improve his character shal um shal to D they shouldn't speak anymore should stop being so so blown up all right so full of wind right he should break his Spirit a little bit he should be more modest more humble you know come off your high horse don't think so much of yourself that's available to anyone you know you know don't always look for the headlines don't always go around boasting you know cool it be more humble be a little bit broken Spirit brokenhearted that's how R sees it so he sees it as an antidote to undo somehow the past right because he starts off by saying how can he repair it so obviously thinks it's possible to repair it you did the damage but if you study Torah or if you become more humble you'll repair the past it's hard to that how do I repair well but but that's not what he says right he talks about a Tak so along comes another Amora listen to his name RAB you suppose it's Rab's brother could be could be what does he say it would seem to be read what I'm about to read to you would seem to be yeah he he heard what his brother um said that it's possible to do with Tak study Torah or become more contrite become more modest so and means brother right so maybe that's why he was called no well is his name maybe he was a younger brother so he got a nickname brother you know bro my bro you know but I I'm speculating maybe he another who had the son but it's hardly likely because here's said what I just taught you and now responds you can't bring it back forget about it damage is done you can't you can do chuva not do it anymore in the future you can correct your ways but once it's done it's done now the M gives and maybe some earlier Source imagine a pillow full of feathers and it's a windy day and you slice open the pillows and the feathers go blowing all over the town you know and you want to bring all those feathers back you can't bring them back you know some of them are going to get away in the wind so says it sounds like two brothers disagreeing with each other one brother says the other one says no once it's done it's done what can he have that he will no longer come into the hands of for that if you're a learn Torah take out the here it is and study it you know every day before instead of studying something else something wonderful take and this way you'll be and you won't do it anymore or if you're not up to that know it's too much for you I got something else which probably is harder than learning Torah and that is to becoming a little more humble a little more modest but work on your modesty and and and then you won't do it anymore um in the future so obviously it's a m between two is it is it an antidote or is it kind of a self-improvement for the future can't take that well it's done it's done that's what about going to yeah so like yeah usually whenever you learn a piece of gamar and you have two different points of view someone in the audience likes one opinion someone goes for the other opinion but you're siding with r you can't you can't bring it back what about someone a joural yeah says it's a big problem the big problem writes in another one of his letters the discussions or maybe it's a quote of someone that once asked him a similar question he says there are certain jobs certain certain professions vocations in life you know that the real way for a Jewish person to deal with it is to find another job you know find another job find another job um the first shil maybe some of the people who were back in Baltimore in the early years of my Rabin there so um there was one fellow there who had a position I think it was Ron mnik who made Aliyah some time ago and I'm pretty sure it was him now maybe with someone else but he was in um some scientific field and the field necessitated that he go for a period of time to uh to Greenland or to someplace like that to the far north where you have all these questions about when isia when is sunset when is shab when it's time for because sometimes it's daylight for days on end or weeks or months on end all daylight and then it's all how do you deal with that so you know he asked me this question um when I was just starting in the rabet you know so I started thinking about it look in various form and everything else so I spoke to a wise old Rabbi who was my parents neighbor and and I asked him so he said tell him to change his job CU how are you going to answer this question you know it's it's in it's addressed but you realize that there's no firm basis for judging something because anyone who in all the they assume the sun rises and the sun sets that's one thing you can bet on right but you can't bet on that in Greenland uh so or Iceland or wherever he was in North Pole so get another job you know okay um that that that's a that's that's an answer to things anyway um I I want to just share with you in closing we have about two minutes that even though these two brothers if they were brothers have this debate they're both agreeing in one thing they're both agreeing that the way to understand this is you want to cure your your Lar study Torah one says to correct the past to be the P one says to be yourself for the future and if you're not a you're not going to learn Tor is not available to you so cool it cool your arrogance that's how they both that's the one thing they both agree on however that it does need that does not seem to be the simple in The Bu all right CU a fellow I know very well um his name is Rabbi wreb who translated the safer of mishle for the Coran translation of tanak which is published now about two or three years ago and I was asked to to to translate two one was saahu and one was sa Mish I'm not sure why I chose those two because they're very difficult to translate each for its own reasons but the the definition of um the translation of this P according to the classic MIM radak I'll quote to you in a moment froma and the other English translations is something along these lines um a healing tongue okay Mar doesn't mean according to the simple translation a cure for Lon it means a Lon which is full of Rua a healing tongue see the basic difference in the translation Mar the tongue which is healing if you speak nicely to people you encourage people you compliment people that kind of a person that's a so that's that's a not that's an that's a live tree a fruitful tree you're bringing fruit you're bringing color you're bringing hope and help into the World Health into the world world so that's uh a healing tongue is a tree of life but C if a person is always critical of everybody that's all he does is is criticize people he's a bit has a bitter tongue or some translated a devious tongue so you're always giving people little you know criticisms and devious ways oh I wasn't I was just kidding around you know that kind of stuff that breaks the spirit of other people breaks the spirit of other people so that's how they read it and this is the um this will conclude this is the commentary of the ranona that's how he understands it in his in imitable words those of you who know me well know that he's one of my heroes reona he was also a big Bal Chua you know the story of reona the GU Legend but it's out there in the history books or benona was among the people who was uh part of the conspiracy against rambam and who helped burn some of the rambam's books and then he saw that the go got the message oh the Jews can burn their fellow Jews books so we can burn all the Jewish books and that woke renona up to what he did and he spent the rest of his life dedicated to undoing to doing chuva and that's what he wrote which probably is one of the master works on the subject of chuva sh chuva R and that was part of his kapora his way of achieving forgiveness but put that on the side for a moment here on this P he says the the ability to speak in a healing way a healing tongue can be a wonderful thing because other cures this is something that you know maybe psychotherapists want to hear with therapists in general or people who help people in general they're they're act acting therapeutically they're acting as a cure as a healing person so that type of healing which comes from a tongue which comes from speaking to a person in a complimentary fashion one that can heal that person's trauma NE we're all traumatized now and some of us in in terrible ways the Cure is not drugs and not exercise and not whatever else it's a good word a good word right right all the other cures and medicines that are out there to cure things sometimes they'll work and sometimes they won't help right a good word can harm and it's not possible it won't help a little bit won't help a little bit you give somebody give a lecture you have to would you come over and say one word terrific right let's answer some of the question I think this person here was first and then iive is a you know um one thing I learned a long time ago is that you can hardly ever judge a person based on your perceptions you know very difficult to do that you can see a person who looks like I don't know what and you're you're way off and you can see a humble person and you don't know how great he is you know across the street Street in in there's a man who speaks before Mar shabas his name is ravaria if he would walk in now he has a little Straw Hat you know wearing a little gray suit he's a short fellow very quiet and everything else you look at him you'll think all right he nice fellow okay fine then you listen to him speak one minute I'm not exaggerating one minute when he speaks out loud for very small crowd that appreciates him I try to get there almost every Mo toward Mo shabas they give 20 minutes those 20 minutes you change your whole perception it's very very you can't R rush to judgment have to give the person the benefit of the doubt you you never know used always say you never know you never know there's a a video going around now an October 7th video um of a fellow who who is not wearing a Kad and not wearing tiit like he's only wearing an undershirt he's driving his car on the way to the Nova Massacre to the to the music festival and he's driving there in the car and someone's taking a picture of him as he's singing and he's singing a tune I don't know if it's his tune or it's out there as a tune to right and you see singing this way so if you would look at this person and he wouldn't see him singing wouldn't hear him singing you would think he's probably singing some rap song you know he's driving to this music festival on probably on chabas whatever before and he was killed there on his way on his way to the on his way I don't know who took the picture and everything but this is out there on the YouTube I see it all over you just have to listen to him he's singing it with such fire and kav and perception you know if I would judge perceptions you know some some kid off the D he's looking like a young fellow by my standards he's a kid for sure and he's going to a Nova Massacre and you know there's all kinds of ways I could perceive him but you hear him sing you know if you just hear how he sings it's going to touch you it's if it doesn't touch you you got work to do and especially when he sings and the sh knows to be you're going to take away my and you can and within hours of that he was killed in that Massacre he's one of the victims of the October 7th it's mindblowing but I'm just saying it as an example of you can't go by perceptions you can't go by perceptions that's my my answer your question okay Z will have to stop know based on everything I have it's it's it's a big issue it's a big issue and and I mean deals with it I mean it deals with it because the examples he gives the examples he could give shim isim is you know I had both of you know as you know I have several careers but in in two of my careers I was faced with this almost daily a psychotherapist in a from Community you know someone comes over to me and says you know my daughter is going with this guy and I'm treating this guy or I'm treating this the kala and the's family comes and you know first of all as far as professionally I can't say anything and actually in there is a about confidentiality all right MOS the first of mos that Moshe couldn't talk until bam gave him permission to talk because maybe God's having a confidential discussion with me I can't go and tell the other people so Etc confidentiality is a Jewish value which I hate to say it it's not which is Lan horor maybe itself but there are people who can improve their people in positions of leadership who are not sufficiently confidential about things which they don't have the right to talk about and you see it all the time in the newspapers there's a leak about this and a leak about that and a leak about this you know you have something confidential certain meetings are confidential proceedings of a of a of a war cabinet should be confidential etc etc so so you're limited and yet sometimes it's a you know um you have the the P in the Torah that says that you have to stick up for the guy Lov you have to make sure the other person doesn't uh is a big problem you know are you going I'm going to let this guy marry this girl this girl marry this guy when I know so many things about what can I do about it it's it's it's very very difficult to assess does deal with these kind of situations or a business partner or or whatever it happens to be um what I personally was able to do at least up to from years ago now is that RAB P Ra was known in his time our time he thoughted I don't know 15 years ago whatever it was uh he was known as the of our time he was really into the and I had a relationship with him where I was able to consult him on these kind of issues and um so he would refer me to a passage iner or simil for him and then he would discuss the issues and sometimes very frankly um he would say something that I was shocked that he said I was treating a a person male and um he was pretty sick right and he was interested in a certain sh and they asked me about the sh and I asked rap about this thing soam said to me um this person He he'll be okay he'll be okay you know so I I was conflicted do I follow his advice or not and I followed his advice it's now many years later this guy's okay he married the woman gu Ra was right so my answer your question is you have to discuss it with someone else you're not the smartest person on earth the other people to talk to kick it around Etc and you know look at the s but like every area of every sensitive area of you can't just go by your understanding the you are or any any no matter what level has to discuss it with somebody else look at all the sh literature you know so G is would ask other G Isel they have if you go to the um Holocaust Museum in nearad what's it called sh so they have letters in the Holocaust from rabim of one town of the ghetto of L to Rabon who were in the ghetto of V of w so the L of rabet as the Shila of RA zba who was in the war ghetto how on Earth they were able to get Communications from ludge ghetto of ludge under the Nazis to I don't know but if you go to sholam you will see they show this to you the letter the letters back and forth they have the letters in a booklet which is called protol which is a play on the word protocol prot but what they call me it's the minutes of the Von of the Rabat ofto L was a major city talking about tens of thousands of Jews and they were taking men Nazis and sending them out to forced labor and then many of them came back from Forced labor and many didn't and there was a whole question what are we going to do we going to have a a whole ghetto full of aote husbands who didn't come back from the labor we'll never know what happened to them Nazis could have burned them chopped them thr into rivers who knows or that may be somewhere so what do we do so they wanted to make a takona that everybody who go goes out to work should write a a a get alai a conditional get a conditional divorce to his wife and saying if I don't come back in 30 days or six months or whatever you you're divorced retroactively there is such a procedure discussed the but the V the RAB of of of L which was settled by a ra Pearl pearlmutter was his name and other Rabon him who maybe not as famous as mothers but they were the rabad of LGE they weren't you know kindergartens they said we we can't deal with right such a thing get alai we're we're not qualified to do that we got to go higher up and believe me they could have opened up all the Forum available to them they could have come up with OBS and they were the Rabin of gudge they weren't a bunch of third graders so they said we have to ask Z zba was like especially in that that preh Holocaust Poland the godor had he lived a few 10 20 more Years everybody would know his name unfortunately he was shot in the killed in the war so ghetto but this is obviously a little bit before that tragedy so they sent him this letter what should we do he sent back a a letter to them which is essentially in our language a checklist all right what you got to do first is this you know make sure you identify this person exactly who she is the wife exactly who he was we shouldn't confus you know s s s Goldberg with s Goldman or whatever uh you know so that's step number one step number two you do this step number three step check check check check check so they could do it anyone could do it just follow that checklist I'm following Z's checklist and in the end you last the checkl is last thing on the check checklist is that your that your is all right that's his last thing signed all right they have that document there I'm just bringing up to answer your question these were who could have decided on their own and they didn't have to maybe they risk someone's life to get this letter to to I don't know what the how they got it there and how he got it back to them you know but they did that because you can't take certain responsibilities on your own you have to consult someone else no matter how expert you are there someone more expert or someone knows is whatever it's a very important thing consult with someone else you know that's that's the importance of seeking Asos from others seing well in this kind of a situation if I give this situation let's say where I'm I'm stuck as a as a rabbi psychologist whatever with someone else so I know who the someone else is I'm doing at L toet you know that's a key factor here sometimes sometimes is permissible but there this qualify as toet on the face of it I would say it sure does you know you're talking about this poor girl's rest of her life you know so that's the toet if I if I say something on the other hand it's not the toet know and I discussed it with him maybe had some other knowledge that I wasn't I don't know what I don't know what but obviously if you knew him at all knew his reputation he was the kind of person you you could assume that he would be lto ell by the way the end of that story that's also in the protocol because the protocol says okay we got the directions from now who's going to how are we going to do it so I thought it over and someone said if we do this that all the work all the people who are sent out every you know first of every month they gather up together 100 healthy bodies of men and send him out to work whatever that meant to work it could have meant to be shot or it could have meant to to to work in some Factory who knows uh if we do that and require all these hundred men to write a get a divorce to their loving wife who stuck in the ghetto with her six little babies or children or whatever and it's half starved Etc it will kill the morale of the whole I use the word morale it will call and you know spelled out morale the morale of the whole of the whole ghetto people would be so discouraged and disillusioned and and despair and that would make that that much worse so we can't Institute this thing not not for hak reasons that's how a leader has to think it's not a matter of sometimes there's an answer to itally but if you if you in this dire situation if you do this the these are kind of questions now before October 7th we didn't think of these questions but this is this question with the hostage is in the ceasefire you know I don't want to get into politics and things like that but there are H considerations here but but there are other considerations military um you know World politics you know repercussions political military repercussions that are be beyond the Hal Anda could say right so if you rescue one hostage it's and the consequences because doesn't tell you can't even anticipate the the the the possible ramifications and consequences it's a military decision or military political geopolitical decision there only many kind of things to way in M there's a p which repeats itself twice in Misha salvation comes with a lot of seeking advice consultation discussion Etc T let's hope for Yeshua and we hope that the Yim should be wise men who are gifted [Music] withes okay thank you and next week we turn on to the connection between Torah and