Lesson #54: Public Acceptance
The process of applying to yeshiva can be very stressful, and a very sensitive topic. The schools cannot accept all applicants, and so some applicants will be rejected. It often happens in an eighth-grade class that a large group of boys all want to attend a certain high school, or two high schools, and there is some tension among them, as they know that some will be accepted and some will not.
Imagine an eighth-grade class comes into the classroom, and before the teacher arrives, one “wise guy” announces to the entire class that a certain kid in the class was rejected from the school they all wished to attend. He then makes up other stories about how this boy’s parents are frantically making phone calls to various Rabbis and other prominent figures in an attempt to pressure the school to accept their son. That child then walks in the room, and all eyes turn to him. The kids are all eager to know whether this is true, and so they start asking him about it.
The boy is, naturally, mortified. He denies everything, saying that he did not yet hear back from the high school, and that the other boy is just concocting stories. But the other boy, with his charisma, popularity, and sharp tongue, laughs at him, and gets the whole class to believe that the boy is falsely denying everything because he’s embarrassed about what is really happening. The boy is humiliated and devastated.
Then, a friend of the boy gets in front of the class to defend his humiliated classmate. “Hey everyone, this guy is known to make up stories. He always talks about people to make them look bad. I’ve seen him do it before. I wouldn’t believe a word of what he says. I’m sure there was no rejection letter, no phone calls to Rabbis, nothing. I’m sure it’s all a lie.”
Is this permissible? Is one allowed to speak Lashon Ha’ra about someone who has spoken Lashon Ha’ra in order to discredit him, so that the negative information he shared would not be believed? Can he publicly disgraced in order to save the honor of the person about whom he spoke?
Halacha indeed allows publicly disgracing the speaker of Lashon Ha’ra, as long as the person’s intention is purely for the purpose of defending the individual spoken of, and he tells only about that which he knows firsthand. In this instance, the boy who gets up has personally heard the speaker make up stories to make other boys look bad, and he speaks to the class not out of any personal interest, but purely for the sake of saving his classmate from disgrace and humiliation.
However, if the one who told about the boy’s rejection left the classroom before that boy came in, it is forbidden for the other kids to approach the boy and tell him what the other boy said about him. Halacha does not allow telling somebody that another person spoke Lashon Ha’ra about him, even if the intention is to defend his honor, or for the sake of justice, because this unnecessarily causes friction and hostility between the two people.
When it comes to the very sensitive subject of acceptance into schools, parents are best advised to work behind the scenes to advocate for their children and help them gain acceptance to the best schools, without any of the children being aware of their efforts. It is best to handle the situation with discretion, without anyone knowing, in order to protect the dignity and honor of each and every one of our precious children.