Rabbi Zvi Aviner
Topics in Genesis – 10/
Evil Tongue, Leshon Harah
As part of our study of selected topics from the Book of Genesis, this time we will talk about defamation.
Where does the subject appear in the book? Of course, in the story of the sale of Joseph. Joseph brought his brother’s slander to their father.
There is a difference between the concept of slander and the Hebrew Leshon Hara, Evil Tonge.
The first deals with spreading lie about another person with the intention of discrediting him – this can be sued in a state court
The Hebrew Evil Tongue also includes telling bad truths about another person. It is usually not covered by the regular civil laws.
The name Evil Tongue suggests that speaking leshon Hara is evil in YHVH’s eyes, since in the Torah vocabulary, the term evil is always something seen as abomination in YHVH’s eyes, something that the Merciful Attribute hates or disgusted from.
Evil in YHVH eyes is cruelty, indifference to the agony of others, taking advantage oof the widows and the orphans and the poor.
This consideration sheds a light on how the Torah regards Leshon Hara.
On one hand i it is a sin that causes damage, which calls for repair under JUSTICE, yet on the other hands is evil and abomination in YHVH’s eyes.
What does location in the text teach us?
Note that here the concept of slander, Dibah, first appears in the Torah.
And we have a rule that wherever an important concept appears for the first time, there we will see what the Torah wants us to know about that concept. Like the terms ELKM, YHVH, Israel and more.
Therefore, we must read the passage and try to understand from it what the Torah wants us to know about it. This will give us an insight that we would otherwise have missed
The location indicates difficult consequences
The placement of slander at the end of the book of Genesis hints at its terrible consequences.
Indeed, the Talmud states that because of the striped gown Jacob gave Joseph, our ancestors descended to Egypt. In fact, it changed human history. Because of the brothers’ slander, there was the exile of Egypt, Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea, the Israelites walked in the desert for 40 years, etc.
The location also indicates a second consequence of defamation. From heron, on, the name of YHVH disappears from the story, except for three limited places.
Supposedly, the Shechinah fled them in disgust at the bad smell of slander. The rabbis say that anyone who speaks slander, the Divine presence escapes him.
And this is the opposite of Noah whose sacrifice smelled good in YHVH eyes.
The golden altar at the entrance to the Holy Hall, spread incense to neutralize the bad smell of Israel brought by Leshon Hara.
What happens when the Divine presence of YHVH escapes?
When YHVH comes out of a heavenly court, the stage remains for ELKM to immediately carry out the old decree He gave Abraham, that his descendants would be enslaved by Egypt. The story of the Exodus begins here.
The Sages saw a connection between the exile of the Shechinah and the exile of the people of Israel. When the Shechinah is in exile, the people of Israel are also in exile. And when the people of Israel live in the Land of Israel, the Shechinah is there too. Nowadays that Israel is returning to the Land of Israel, we may also see the returning of the Shechinah there.
Types of defamation
Before reading the passage carefully, let’s see what the Talmud says about types of slander. This will help us read the passage and find all these types in it. .
The Talmud defines several types of defamation (Rambam Halachot Da’ot) –
A slanderer – tells a lie about his friend and hurts him. Although the Torah forbids lying – from a false word go away. – here is added the evil component of the evil intention of the speaker.
- Slander narrator – tells bad things about another person. As stated, this is not recognized as an offense in civil law and cannot be sued for it. The Torah explicitly forbids this in verse “Cursed is whoever struck his neighbor secretly,”
(Deuteronomy 23:24).
C Gossiping – telling a person what person A had told about person B.
The Torah forbids this: “Thou shalt not gossip among thy people” (Leviticus 29:16)
- Slander dust – when it is done implicitly or indirectly – for example, by twisting your nose, or by says “I better not to talk about it.”
Another “dust” is whoever praise a person to his haters. It increases their hate.
The Talmud concludes by saying that slander kills three people – the narrator, the hearer, and the one who was spoken of. The worst is the listener who did not protest.
We will now read the passage and try to identify the different types of defamation
The importance of honoring
And Jacob lived in the land where his father lived – he wished to honor his father by living in his place – says Rashi.
This mitzvah of honoring our parents belongs to the mitzvah of Dinim -JUSTICE – the fifth of Noah and Adam – says Maimonides.
This fits our observation about the structure of Genesis.
As we’ve seen, all of Jacob’s stories revolve around the search for justice. Thus, he fought for his civil status as the first born, for his right to marry the woman he loved without her father deceiving him, for his right to be fairly compensated for his hard work as a shepherd. He also fought to live in a city without the mayor’s son kidnapping his daughter and raping her. All these are CIVIL ORDER issues – part of the Fifth Commandment of Adam.
Now again, defamation has an aspect of civil damage that calls for JUSTICE at the human court . The story of Joseph can be seen as a continuation o fall previous stories of Jacob that revolve around the Fifth Commandment of Adam.
Desecration of the name of heaven
And there is an aspect here. In addition, if it is known that the narrator is God-fearing and observant, then in his Lashon HaShon he slanders the Torah in the eyes of others – he desecrates the Heavenly Name, the Honor of HaSheM, , which is Adam’s sixth transgression.
Therefore, the place of the story in the Torah is significant – on the one hand it belongs to Dinim, Justice, Adam’s fifth commandment, and on the other hand it belongs to the sixth mitzvah of the prohibition to dishonor the name of Heaven .
This is the history of seventeen-year-old Jacob-Joseph. Why didn’t Reuven and Shimon open? Because he loved Joseph of all the brothers. The Talmud learns from this that he will never prefer one son over others,
Because Jacob discriminated among his sons, our ancestors went down to Egypt.
And he shook the sons of Bilha and the sons of Zalfa, the wives of his father,
And Joseph brought their evil slander to his father
Let us remember that Jacob had two wives, Rachel and Leah, and two mothers, whom he married, Zelpha and Bilha. From Rachel were born Joseph and Benjamin, Mella Reuven Shimon Levi and Yehuda, who were the most important of the sons, and from their mothers the rest of the sons were born.
The verse implies that there was no peace between them and that the sons of Leah belittled the sons of their mothers. Each group grazed elsewhere. Joseph chose to be with the sons of the mothers. Some say that his father ordered them to watch over him. Or it was of his own good will to identify with the weakest members of the family.
And he’s a boy-doing childhood deeds. Curling his hair (Rashi) and also bringing slander that he saw in the sons of the mothers who were with them.
And there are several options –
A – He brought lies to his father that he had supposedly seen in the sons of Zelfa and Bilha.
B – He brought to his father an evil slander – truth which they said about the sons of Leah.
What did they see?
Rashi says that they ate limbs torn from living animal – transgressing Noah’s seventh commandment, and that they lusted after the daughters of the land. That is, a hint of incest. Below we will see that Judah went to the woman who he thought to be a prostitute.
- – He Told his father their slander – what they said about the sons of Leah. i.e. they were gossiping.
- And now we will come to the fourth category – of defamation dust.
And Israel loved Joseph of all his sons because he had the youngest son, and made him a striped gown
Jacob did not rebuke Joseph – as he should have – but accepted his words, and as Maimonides says, the one who did not protest is the worst.
In addition, he showed Joseph great love by giving him an expensive striped robe in front of his brothers who hated him, thus pouring oil on the fire, and the brothers’ hatred grew so great that they could no longer greet him.
Jacob violated the prohibition of defamation dust – fourth category
And our sages say from here how dangerous it is to slander that even because of striped gowns, our ancestors descended to Egypt
We saw that it is possible to identify all types of defamation in the story, from the heaviest which is the false narrator – to the lower level of defamation dust that is indirectly
A few words about halacha
In the book Chofetz Chaim, the author goes over all the possibilities and grammars of the mitzvah and transgression and how to avoid them. There are cases where defamation should be told – for example, about politicians, for the public good, or before matchmaking, or before businesses where there is a fear that a person is about to lose.
What else can we learn from the special location of the story at the end of Genesis?
The structure of the book of Genesis according to Adam’s commandments
We see that the book is structured according to the six commandments given to Adam in Eden.
A creation story in chapter 1 – prohibiting idolatry, the first commandment of Adam
- The Story of Paradise – A person’s second commandment isincest,
- The stories of the generations from Cain and Abel to the flood and the covenant of the rainbow revolve around bloodshed, Adam’s third commandment
- Abraham’s Stories of Theft – Adam’s Fourth Mitzvah
The Jacob Stories – Around the Laws She Commanded on a Fifth Person
And now Joseph—around slander, blasphemy, which is Adam’s sixth commandment;
The commandments were given to Adam in Eden – but there they were only potentially because they could not be killed and stolen from Eden. It was possible to transgress idolatry by not listening to the voice of God, and to transgress incest if we accepted the interpretation that the woman spent with the serpent. Apart from these two – idolatry and incest, all the rest gave potential if they lived in Israel.
Indeed, when they were expelled from Aden to live in the land, they had to deal with the rest of the commandments one by one, from the bloodshed of Cain and Abel to the blasphemy of Heaven by selling Joseph. Thus, the book of Genesis goes over all the failures of mankind to keep the commandments of Adam.
Slander is weighed against all other sins
Fact. The slander that appears at the end of the book indicates its severity, which is equal to everything else. Indeed, Hazel said that transgressing slander is considered to have violated all human commandments. His smell is very bad in God’s eyes
Why? After all, even those who commit theft or bloodshed blaspheme there. Why did the Torah choose to teach blasphemy through slander?
.
There are a lot of answers. For us, this answer is good:
The last chapter of Genesis parallels and ends the first chapter.
There in the first chapter man is described as a creature. Into the great test of his life – the test of idolatry. This is evident from the verse that says we will become a man in our image and likeness. Who did he talk to? To everyone mentioned in the chapter. Among other things, he spoke to the angels. According to Rashi, the angels asked the Creator – our King. Aren’t you afraid that speaking in the plural opens the door for worshippers of idolatry to think that there is more than one Creator?
It follows that anyone whom the Creator reigned in the creation of man is a potential idol. Because he is allegedly complicit in the deeds of Genesis
The Almighty answered: I take the risk of idolatry and speak in the plural in order to teach man humility, that the great will be crushed by the small.
Hence, out of this the idols that will attract man to worship them, the pride instinct of our inflated ego is the main, the strongest, and the one that will continue to deceive us until the end of time
And it is this idol, the ego that we parked, that we pushed to speak slander.
How do you correct blasphemy?
The desecration of God must be corrected by kiddush Hashem. Indeed, all the chapters from then on show how the brothers repeatedly asked Joseph and Hashem for forgiveness and atonement for their actions. Of them all, Joseph and Judah grew in that he chose not to sin with his master’s wife despite the heavy price, and in this he sanctified heaven there. The name Hoya repeats in this passage seven times in a row. And Judah who confessed his sin was persevered – and the name of Hoya is repeated in his story three times.
It is possible to correct the sin of blasphemy, but the damage caused by defamation cannot be repaired.