At the end of this week’s Torah portion, (BeHa’Alotecha), an incident with Aaron and Miriam speaking ill of Moses draws our attention and returns to a topic dealt with on more than one occasion in the Torah – the harmful effects of lashon hara – gossip.

We all are guilty of doing it – which is precisely why classic Jewish sources devote so many pages of texts and have developed so many guidelines addressing the problem.

There is a joke, not from our classic texts, about a mother who calls her son and says, “I don’t want to say any lashon hara which is how these conversations usually begin and don’t tell anyone, but I heard your brother and his wife are having problems and are barely speaking to each other.” When her son asks, “Ma, Who told you that?”  she replies – “Everybody is talking about it… But don’t tell anyone I told you.”

It is so easy, tempting and, let’s face it – sometimes even gratifying to talk about another person, to spread a rumor, or repeat something juicy we heard about someone, without giving any consideration to whether the rumor is true or not, and not thinking about the harm it may do. Yet spreading lashon hara, even when true, is also frowned upon. In fact, Maimonides, in his classic work of Jewish law, Mishneh Torah, says that it is a sin to speak disparagingly of another person – even if what you say about them is true.

So, yes, Judaism has a great deal to teach us about speech and interpersonal relations.

But the problem of spreading false rumors goes beyond personal matters, for what is true in the micro system applies in the........

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