Good morning again. Torah Tuesday continues, 11.45 Eastern Time. On Tuesdays, when possible and not on holidays, etc., we meet every week in order to study some aspect of proper speech.
Very often, we’ve mentioned in this class what’s called to’elet. You have something negative to say, and that negative statement is Lashon Hara (negative statement), and yet there’s a heter—we call it a leniency—that allows me to speak Lashon Hara. Why? It’s for a proper constructive purpose. For example, someone is going to do business with a person who’s dishonest, and the sheep will be trapped by the fox, so I’m allowed to tell the sheep, “Dear Balak, be careful.” I’m preventing harm by telling something negative about another person.
Now there’s a catch. I just gave an example; it sounds very logical, sounds very good, and I can do that, I guess. No, you can’t. Well, can I do it or can’t I? Please explain, Rabbi. I’ll explain. You can, so long as you fulfill the seven prerequisites, the seven necessary steps before you can speak l’to’elet. The Chafetz Chayim outlines them very carefully, so here it goes, because the time is short.
First of all, one has to be absolutely certain that the information is accurate. How do you do that? Well, you saw it yourself, or you got a report and investigated and verified it. But if it’s second-hand negative information and he wants to tell it over for a constructive purpose, he has to be clear that his words are based on hearsay. So that’s number one. Number two, one must think the matter through to be sure that there has actually been a wrong committed. Sometimes what you think is wrong may in fact be permitted by halakha (Jewish law), so his information and his interpretation have to be correct before he can relate it.
Number three, if you know something is wrong, you know it really is true, and you know that it really happened, you’re supposed to approach the perpetrator. The wrongdoer comes first. And you have to try and persuade them to fix it. A storekeeper was seen cheating a customer. The first step was to speak to the storekeeper and try and persuade him to return the money. If this fails, then one can consider telling it over to the victim.
Fourth, one is not permitted to exaggerate in any way. Now, if somebody’s relating something and it has an emotional aspect to it, it’s very hard not to exaggerate. It’s very hard to tell it as the cold, hard facts, we call it. That’s why it’s called cold. You have to make sure that you’re not adding to, enhancing, or exaggerating the details of the story.
Number five, now remember: Number one, information accurate. Number two, make sure it’s wrong. Number three, approach the wrongdoer. Try and convince him. Number four, do not exaggerate. So those first four are hard enough, but there are three to go. Number five, it has to be with pure intent to help the victim. In other words, my feelings about the other person or my feelings about what went on and who did it cannot be interjected into the story. And if you do have ill feelings, you should try and get rid of them anyhow.
Let’s say a person wants to tell somebody to watch out about shopping in a particular store, and it happens to be his competitor’s store. It happens to be true, and he knows it, and the guy doesn’t know he’s going to get cheated. If he has constructive negative information, he has to be sure he’s telling it over not because it’s about his competitor, not because he has some ill feeling against the guy to begin with, the perpetrator, but because he really wants to protect the victim from any harm. He can’t have any personal interest in the Lashon Hara. That’s five.
Number six. It has to be the only way to make sure the constructive purpose can be achieved. In other words, if you can get the same result without the Lashon Hara, you have to use that option. If he wants to tell a friend or a neighbor not to go into a particular store because the storekeeper is dishonest, and yet there’s a way to convince him to go to a different store without talking about them, you say, “Look, I understand you shop every day in this store in the neighborhood. The other store, which is just as close—maybe it’s a block more—is much less expensive. If you’re going to spend $100 in this store, you’re going to spend $100. If you go to the next store, you’re going to spend $80, $85, and have $15 in your pocket for other needs.” If you can say that and he won’t go to the perpetrator’s store, you’ve accomplished the same goal. He’s not going to go in, he’s not going to get hurt, without telling him the other guy’s a crook. You have to do that. That’s number six.
Number seven, you’re not allowed to pass on the information if it will result in the subject of the conversation suffering a greater loss than the halakha allows in general. The loss is a sixth, one sixth of the price from the outside. It’s not good, but if he’s going to lose more than that, you can’t tell it. So you have seven different conditions that allow me to prevent harm to a victim, and that’s called to’elet, constructive purpose. But I have to fulfill all seven. This is not a list where you pick and choose. I have to fulfill all seven before I can speak the negative information.
Again, one has to be absolutely certain that it’s accurate. He has to be sure it’s wrong. He has to be sure that some wrong has been committed. Number three, he has to approach the wrongdoer first and try and persuade him to fix it. And he’s not permitted to exaggerate in any way. You have to tell it as it is, as it happened, as it really is. And then you have to speak solely for the purpose of helping the person who might be victimized. You can’t have any hard feelings or negative feelings about the guy that you’re talking about, because that may be motivated by something other than a constructive purpose. And next, number six, if you can get the same result without speaking Lashon (speech), like we used the example of convincing him there’s a better store or there’s a nicer apartment, or whatever it is that we can convince him not to do business and not to get close to this other person and be victimized, that’s better. Achshav (now). And the last one is: You can’t inflict a loss that’s so great that it goes beyond the limits of proper loss inflicted in order to protect the person. So those seven are the seven, and all seven must be adhered to. All seven must be clarified before somebody could speak negatively, even for a constructive purpose. We'll be back in three minutes.