Halpern’s Rule #5 – It Is All About the Words – is usually applied to the understanding of our Holy Scriptures. It is often too easy to gloss over the actual words of the text, see what we have been told to see, and accept that which everyone else accepts.
But there is another sense in which Words matter, and being unaware of this subtle difference can lead to rather large misunderstandings.
We are told the story of the 12 spies who Moses sent in order to spy out the Land of Canaan. Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, came back with a report of encouragement: “With God’s help, we will inhabit the land”. However, ten of the spies came back with a tale of woe and doom: “The land is inhabited by giants who live in fortified cities. Compared to them, we are like insects”.
The usual explanation of the negative report and what was so wrong about it is that these ten spies lacked faith in God. End of Story.
However, if we look more carefully at the story, we get a very different view. We are told not to put a stumbling block before the blind. If the spies believed that attempting to inhabit Canaan would lead to the death of Israel, they were obliged to warn the people.
The problem was not what they said, which was more or less factual, but how they said it. They turned factual words into Lashon Harah (literally, evil language, gossip) to scare the people. The spies’ report had nothing to do with God. Instead, it had to do with shaping Israel’s state of mind.
Move ahead to our current world. We have just witnessed Brexit in the United Kingdom and are in the midst of our own political season. Maybe I am an ancient relic, but I remember a time when truth really mattered, when Lashon Harah was to be avoided at all costs.
Oh, for the good old days when there was less Lashon Harah, and my grandfather could still get a good 5¢ cigar.
B’Shalom
Rabbi Stanley Halpern