Seven days of speech about favors and references

This holds, he says, even if he has heard nothing bad about the person. If he hides the reason, he transgresses "Do not put a stumbling block before the blind" (Vayikra, Leviticus, 19:14): he causes the other to speak, and such talk is permitted only when the speaker means it for someone's benefit. Hashem is the name used here for God. The one who answers must not exaggerate beyond what he knows for certain, and must keep further conditions, which are in Hilchot Rechilut (his laws of talebearing), chapter 9. For a real hire, partnership or match, ask your rav (rabbi).

This is from his longer note on the paragraph. He first answers the objection another way: even if asking openly would get you nothing, may a person hand a cup of wine to a nazir (someone who has vowed not to drink wine) in order to earn money? Then he says the objection is not even true, and gives these words. He adds that some people go further and begin by asking about other people, so that their interest will not be guessed, and so cause lashon hara about many people for no purpose.

That note ends with a different habit: a person who has moved to a new city, meets someone from the old one, and asks about everyone there, who is still learning Torah and who has stopped. For that kind of asking, he writes, none of these permissions applies.

This is from his first note on the paragraph. Such a person, he writes, is apt to lie outright or at least to exaggerate, out of hatred, and you have also led him into complete lashon hara. Even if he tells you that he only cannot bear to see you come to harm, in his heart, the Chafetz Chaim writes, it is not so. His second book on speech, Shmirat HaLashon, gives similar advice about ordinary conversation:

He ties both judging favorably and guarding the tongue to one mitzvah (commandment), "Love your fellow as yourself" (Vayikra, Leviticus, 19:18). The pairing of this passage with today's law is ours.

The Chafetz Chaim's paragraph has a second half. Even if you recently saw a person, in private, do something the law does not allow, in a matter between him and God, you may not disparage him for it to others, even when he is not there, except by the conditions he gives later in the chapter. For wrongs between people there are many distinctions, which he treats in chapter 10. A note adds that all this is said of an ordinary Jew, and points to chapter 8 for the exception.

In his own notes (the Be'er Mayim Chaim) he adds two things. It is forbidden even when the teller does not mean to shame the person. And the old wrong against another person that he means here is one where the person has nothing to repay with, or where repayment does not apply. If it was outright theft and he can repay and will not, the laws change, and he leaves them to chapter 10.

We add a Mishnah (the first written code of the Oral Torah) on speaking to the person himself: "If he was someone who had returned from sin, one may not say to him, Remember your earlier deeds" (Bava Metzia 4:10). The Chafetz Chaim's law here is about saying it to others.

He is quoting the Rambam, Hilchot Deot 7:5. For the grudge the partner will hold, he brings Yiftach's words to the elders who had driven him out: "Why have you come to me now, when you are in trouble?" (Shoftim, Judges, 11:7). The "three people" refers to the paragraph before. There he brings an opinion that something already said in front of three may be repeated, and rules that one may not rely on it in practice, above all when telling the person himself. The Rambam's next words are about that case: one of the three who repeats it has not spoken lashon hara, as long as he does not mean to spread it. The Chafetz Chaim (2:3) counts the Rambam among those who forbid it when he does.

In his own notes (the Be'er Mayim Chaim) he adds a rabbi who traveled to seek a position in another city and did not get it. The people there may not tell anyone from his own city, even if many have already heard, because his own community will resent him for it.

In the scene above, Dan also told you in confidence. The Chafetz Chaim rules separately (Rechilut 8:5) that a person must keep a secret his fellow told him privately, even where revealing it would not be rechilut.

In Shmirat HaLashon the Chafetz Chaim brings this from the Gemara (the Talmud, Arachin 16b), which asks why the metzora, the person struck with the skin affliction the Sages connect to lashon hara, must sit alone outside the camp. The pairing of this passage with today's law is ours.

The paragraph opens with the rule: just as one may not shame a person over matters between him and God, one may not shame him over matters between him and other people, even with nothing false mixed in. He then says this law has "many roots and branches" and often changes with the case, and leaves that to chapter 10, where telling for a real purpose is discussed. Here he gives one case that is forbidden beyond doubt. His own notes (the Be'er Mayim Chaim) draw the line: this is a case of withholding a kindness. Where someone actually did another person harm, the law is treated there, in chapter 10. The mitzvah to lend is Shemot (Exodus) 22:24.

The verse is "Do not take revenge and do not bear a grudge" (Vayikra, Leviticus, 19:18). The Gemara (the Talmud, Yoma 23a) defines the two. Revenge: he would not lend you his sickle, so the next day you will not lend him your axe. A grudge: he would not lend you his axe. The next day he asks for your shirt, and you say, "Here. I am not like you, who would not lend to me."

He calls the trait nirganut, always finding a grievance and counting every mistake as deliberate, and brings the verse about the generation of the wilderness: "You complained in your tents and said: because Hashem (God) hates us He took us out of Egypt" (Devarim, Deuteronomy, 1:27). A person with this trait, he writes, will not escape lashon hara (negative talk about someone), because whatever his fellow does or says looks to him as if it were aimed at him. The link between this trait and today's law is ours; the Chafetz Chaim does not make it.

The Chafetz Chaim's chapter opens (Rechilut 8:1) by saying that many things are forbidden as the "dust" of rechilut, and that he will give a few examples from which a thoughtful person can work out the rest. This is one of them. In his own notes (the Be'er Mayim Chaim) he says it follows from the law about praise that leads to loss, which is tomorrow's teaching. He adds there that it can be forbidden even without the words "he told me himself," when the one who did the favor will work out that it could only have come from the person he helped.

The source is the Gemara (the Talmud, Arachin 16a), where Rav Dimi explains the verse (Mishlei 27:14): a man is put up as a guest and well looked after, and the next day he sits in the market and says, "May the Merciful One bless So-and-so, who went to such trouble for me," and people hear it and go and press him hard. Rashi, the classic commentator, gives two readings: strong men hear that he is rich and seize his money, or guests keep coming to stay until his money is gone. The Chafetz Chaim takes his wording from Rabbeinu Yonah, a sage of the 1200s, in his book Shaarei Teshuvah (Gates of Repentance, 3:227), and adds "and use up his money," which matches Rashi's second reading. He adds the borrower as a case that can be learned from it.

The paragraph ends with a separate rule: a person must guard his mouth so that he is not suspected of speaking lashon hara, and if he brings that suspicion on himself, it is in the category of avak lashon hara. In his own notes (the Be'er Mayim Chaim) he says the wording is Rabbeinu Yonah's, and gives his case: telling that the law permits, where the listeners will still suspect it is not true, or will ask why he did not first take it up with the person himself. Praising a person in public has its own rule in the paragraph before this one (9:2, with his note), which was part of week 1.

He is explaining why Rabbi Yitzchak, in the Gemara (Chullin 89a), calls making oneself silent a person's "craft" in this world. One must learn the rules of speech, he says, in general and in detail, and then one will know how to practice that craft. The pairing of this passage with today's law is ours.

Hashem, he writes, gives out food to all His creatures, "He gives bread to all flesh" (Tehillim, Psalms, 136:25), and He is Israel's father: "You are children of Hashem your God" (Devarim, Deuteronomy, 14:1). He wants peace among them. So if someone cuts into another's business, is asked to stop and will not, and the other comes before Hashem and asks for another portion so that he need not quarrel, he will surely find favor for it.

That is how he states the lesson. The father's hatred belongs to the parable; of Hashem he says only that the quarreling is not pleasing to Him.

He brings two sayings from the Gemara (the Talmud). "Whoever puts his trust in the Holy One, blessed be He, has a shelter in this world and in the World to Come" (Menachot 29b). And, in his wording: on whom does the world endure? On one who holds his mouth closed at a time of quarrel. In the Gemara as we have it (Chullin 89a), Rabbi Ila'a says the world endures only for the sake of one who restrains himself at a time of quarrel.