Side by side were Samuel Heilman’s Synagogue Life: A Study In Symbolic Interaction, which was a ground-breaking, in-depth study of an Orthodox community written in 1976, and Robin Dunbar’s Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, written a mere 30 years later.
These two tomes ended up together because, despite Judaism’s strong opposition to gossip, that very gossip is the major currency of Jewish life. That the books were together was no coincidence, because there are no coincidences, and because they both address the important role gossip plays in melding a community together.
Participate in the communal gossip mill, and you are part of the community – you are an insider. Abstain from gossip as Judaism requires, and you are the outsider, more apt to be gossiped about than to be invited to join in the communal language.
Yet Judaism condemns gossip as the road to the destruction of the Jewish people.
By tradition, the Temple was destroyed because of gossip. The Talmud equates gossip with murder, because gossip destroys a person’s reputation, and once destroyed, it can never be regained. Gossip destroys one’s life – a form of death. Yet, as both of these books demonstrate, gossip is the basic exchange of society and should be removed from our thought.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks suggests that speech therapist Lena Rustin had the solution to not just gossip, but to family and interpersonal relationships, as well. Rustin taught that there is one, and only one, ritual that can change how we relate to one other in a positive way: the anti-gossip.
Once a Day–Every Day–Each Person Must Praise the Other, and the Other Must Accept the Praise.
It matters not the size of the act –a word, a gesture that was kind or generous – the praise must be focused on one act and one act only, not something in general. And the other person must accept the praise.
Gossip focuses on the negative, on what is wrong with an individual, with the intent and purpose of destruction. “I am better because I am not them – I am worthy; they are not.” We can choose to gossip, or we can choose to praise. The choice is ours. And the outcome is ours.
B’Shalom
Rabbi Stanley Halpern