Lesson 52: Actions Speak Louder
Right after Tefila one morning, a man goes over to speak to the Rabbi before he leaves.
“Rabbi,” he says, “I’m very uncomfortable telling you this, but something happened just now – before Alenu, so-and-so picked up his phone and started having a conversation, while we were still in the middle of Tefila. Can you imagine? You and I both know that he’s a G-d-fearing Jew. But this is terrible – having a conversation on his phone in shul during the davening!”
Let us assume that all the conditions were met for this man to be permitted to share this information with the Rabbi – he spoke with sincere intentions, so that the Rabbi would speak to the fellow and correct his behavior; he saw the man with his own eyes, and did not just hear about what he did; and he did not exaggerate at all, but rather reported precisely what he saw and no more. Nevertheless, relating this incident to the Rabbi is still forbidden, if this fellow is guilty of the same offense. If this fellow who reported to the Rabbi had spoken on his phone in shul the previous week, then he has no right to report to the Rabbi that the other fellow was doing the same.
As the expression goes, actions speak louder than words. If a person tells a Rabbi about somebody else’s wrongdoing of which he himself is guilty, then his intentions are clearly not pure and genuine. This fellow cannot claim that his intention is to preserve the sanctity of the synagogue if he himself desecrates the sanctity of the synagogue by having conversations on his phone during the Tefila. One who is guilty of the same offense as the one he reports cannot wave the flag of innocence and claim pristinely sincere motives. There must be some vested personal interest involved.
This is a classic example of how a person’s intentions determine the permissibility of relaying negative information about his fellow. The same words can be permissible in one circumstance but forbidden in another, depending on the speaker’s intention.
Actions speak louder than words – if a person speaks of someone acting wrongly, and he himself is guilty of that same behavior, then his intentions cannot possibly be entirely sincere, and thus relaying this information constitutes forbidden Lashon Ha’ra.