Life and Death Is In the Power of the Tongue
December 8th, 2006
Rabbi Gary S Creditor
A long time ago someone set some verses from Psalms to a moving
tune. It might have been Shlomo Carlebach because it is his type
of music. While it only is sung to two verses, those are embedded
in an entire unit which is the following:
Come, children, harken unto me:
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Who is the man that desires life, and loves many days, that he may
see good?
Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.
Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace and pursue it. Psalm 34:
12-14
There is a term, that when pronounced in Hebrew as one meaning but
when the same term is pronounced in Yiddish, it has another: lashon
ha-rah as different from loshon horah. The
latter, the most common, refers to gossip, rumor,
innuendo which can usually be destructive. The former and original term
means bad language, like the psalmist says, speaking
evilly.
This sermon has been sitting on my computer since the election campaign.
I didn’t give it earlier because I did not want to give the
perception, the ma’arit eyin, that I was using the back door
to favor a candidate during the actual campaign. Yet the essence
of the matter did not end with the election. I could not have dreamt
how this issue would be elevated by a person whom I knew from a sitcom
which I did not watch in its first run nor do I watch it in its rerun.
The subject of lashon harah challenges us as we
speak to our spouses, children, friends, telephone solicitors, cashiers
and clerks, even to ourselves. Just because no one hears us doesn’t
make lashon harah any better.
Tonight I would like to share with you three sources from the Midrash
literature. This is a vast sea of commentary on the Torah that can
be both halachic, namely, legal, as well as aggadic, which is easiest
to be called non-legal. There are many collections of midrash as
well as there is much midrash included in the Talmud. As a term it
means to dig deeply for meaning, to go beyond the surface
level, to find new applications to the lessons of the verses. Two
the sources are Leviticus Rabbah and the other is Midrash Tehilim – on
the Book of Psalms.
Note for the first source:
The Rabbis perhaps did not have to deal with leprosy as described
in the Torah. They used it as a point of departure based on the seeming
similarity of the Hebrew for leper, metzorah to that for gossip,
motzi shem rah.
Source 1 – Leviticus Rabbah 16:2
2. THIS SHALL BE THE LAW OF THE LEPER, etc. This is alluded to
in what is written, Who is the man that desireth life (Ps.
XXXIV, 13). This may be compared to the case of the peddler who used
to go round the towns in the vicinity of Sepphoris, crying out: 'Who
wishes to buy the elixir of life?' and drawing great crowds round
him. R. Jannai was sitting and expounding in his room and heard him
calling out: 'Who desires the elixir of life?' He said to him: 'Come
here, and sell me it.' The peddler said: 'Neither you nor people
like you require that [which I have to sell].' The Rabbi pressed
him, and the peddler went up to him and brought out the Book of Psalms
and showed him the passage, 'Who is the man that desireth life.' What
is written [immediately] thereafter? - Keep thy tongue from evil,
depart from evil and do good. R. Jannai said: Solomon, too,
proclaims, Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his
soul from troubles (Prov. XXI, 23). R. Jannai said: All
my life have I been reading this passage, but did not know how
it was to be explained, until this hawker came and made it clear,
viz. ‘Who
is the man that desireth life. . . ? Keep thy tongue from
evil, etc.' It is for the same reason that Moses addressed a
warning to Israel, saying to them, THIS SHALL BE THE LAW OF THE MEZORA
(LEPER), i.e. the law relating to one that gives currency to an evil
report (mozi [shem] ra').
Source 2 – Leviticus Rabbah 33:1
R. Simeon b. Gamaliel said to Tabbai his servant: ‘Go and
buy me good food in the market.' He went and bought him tongue. He
said to him: . Go and buy me bad food in the market.' He went and
bought him tongue. Said he to him: . What is this? When I told you
to get good food you bought me tongue, and when I told you to get
bad food you also bought me tongue" He replied: ‘Good
comes from it and bad comes from it. When the tongue is good there
is nothing better, and when it is bad there is nothing worse.' Rabbi
made a feast for his disciples and placed before them tender tongues
and hard tongues. They began selecting the tender ones, leaving the
hard ones alone. Said he to them: Note what you are doing! As you
select the tender and leave the hard, so let your tongues be tender
to one another" Accordingly Moses admonishes Israel by saying:
AND IF THOU SELL AUGHT. . . YE SHALL NOT WRONG ONE ANOTHER
Source 3 – Midrash Tehilim Psalm 39
How flexible is the tongue, and how great is its power! It is related
of a Persian king that his physicians ordered him to drink the milk
of a lioness, and one of his servants offered to procure the rare
medicine. Taking with him some sheep with which to lure the beast,
he actually succeeded in obtaining milk from a lioness.
On his journey homewards, being fatigued, he fell into a deep slumber,
during which the various members of his body commenced disputing
as to which of them had contributed most towards the success of their
owner in obtaining so rare a thing as milk from a lioness.
Said the feet: ‘There can be no doubt that we are the only
factors in this successful undertaking. Without us, there could have
been no setting out on this dangerous venture.' ‘Not so,' said
the hands, 'the facility you offered would have been of no avail
had our power not been called into requisition; it is the service
we rendered that enabled our owner to procure milk from the, lioness.'
'Neither of you could have rendered any service,' exclaimed the eyes,
without the sight which we supplied.' ‘And yet,' interrupted
the heart, ‘had not I inspired the idea, no steps would have
been taken to bring any of your powers into exercise.' At last the
tongue put in her claim, and was utterly ridiculed by the unanimous
opinions of all the other contending members of the body.
‘You,' they scornfully replied, 'you who have not the free
power of action which is possessed by all and each of us, you who
are imprisoned in the narrow space of the human mouth, - you dare
to put in a claim to have contributed to this success!' In the midst
of this contention, the man woke up, and prosecuted his journey homewards.
Being brought before the king with the much desired milk, the man,
by a slip of the tongue, said, ‘Here I have brought your
Majesty the dog's milk.' The savage king becoming incensed by
this insulting remark, there and then ordered the man to be put
to death. On the man's way to execution, all the members of his
body, heart, eyes, feet, and hands trembled and were terribly
afraid. ' Did I not tell you,' said the tongue, 'that my power
is above all the united powers you possess? and you ridiculed
me for my trouble. What think you of my power now? Are you now
prepared to acknowledge my power to be greater than all yours?'
When all the members of the body consented to the tongue's proposition,
the tongue requested and obtained a short reprieve, so that it
could make a last appeal for the king's clemency. When the man
was brought to the king his tongue started in all its eloquence.
'Is this the reward,' it began, 'great and just king, to be meted
out to the only one of your majesty's servants who was glad of
the opportunity to offer his life to fulfill his king's desire,
who gladly carried his life in his hand to obtain for his august
master what scarcely ever was obtained by mortal man ? ' 'But,'
replied the king, ‘your
own statement was that you brought me dog's milk instead of the lioness'
milk which you undertook to procure.' ‘Not so, O gracious king,'
replied the tongue, ‘I brought the identical milk that
your majesty required; it was merely by an unfortunate mistake
in my speech that I changed the name; and in fact there is a
similarity, as the word may mean either lioness or dog. My words
will be verified if your majesty will condescend to make use
of the milk I procured, for it will affect the cure your majesty
desires.' The milk was submitted to the test, and was found to
be that of a lioness; and so the tongue triumphantly demonstrated
its great power for good or for evil. - Mid. Psalms 39
Everyone here knows that these remarks where initiated by the infamous
episode of Senator Allen and his use of ‘macaca.’ Whatever
it means and whatever he meant is irrelevant. It was clearly lashon
harah. It doesn’t matter if such language is used
by a senator in the midst of a political campaign or by us in the
privacy of our living room. It harms us all. I really thought that
that would be my only current example. It was the beginning of the
end of his quest for reelection and my point would be made. I could
never have imagined that Michael Richards, Kramer of Seinfeld, would
so blatantly and terribly use lashon harah as well.
Both episodes illustrate our Biblical and Rabbinic wisdom and set
of values. In the book of Ben Sira in the collection called the Apocrypha,
there is an apocryphal statement: Many have fallen by the
edge of the sword, but not as many as have fallen by the tongue. (28:18).
If only these two people had that quotation prominently displayed
in their dressing rooms they might still be in business. It will
haunt them the rest of their lives.
We are challenged by the temptation of lashon harah just
as we are challenged by the temptation of loshon horah. We
have had to disavow the lashon harah in our terminology
of African-Americans, of non-Jewish men and women married to Jews.
We have had to cleanse the language we use about ourselves. The reverse
of lashon harah is lashon nakii – clean
language. That is the proper language. Instead of the model
of these two recent episodes, let us follow the teaching of Proverbs
(15:4): A soothing tongue is a tree of life.
Shabbat Shalom
