Good morning again. Welcome back to Torah Tuesday, a series of online classes conducted throughout the day, every Tuesday when we can. Sometimes Tuesday is a holiday, but as long as we're allowed to use this electronic equipment here in front of me, we like to teach on Tuesday.
This session on proper speech has reached the point of Rechilut. Rechilut comes from the mitzvah (commandment), “Don't be a peddler of information amongst your people.” In other words, passing negative or harmful information or potentially harmful information from one person to another is called Rechilut. It's a form of Lashon Hara (evil speech), but it has different requirements before you're over.
We're going to talk about a case today where somebody does something, and that behavior causes an inconvenience or harm to another. The reaction of that other person to this person will determine whether he's over the laws of Rechilut or not. Sometimes, if the person who does something wrong is your rabbi, your boss at work, or someone you respect, you are prone to give the benefit of the doubt and maybe not even get upset. You say, “It must be,” and you make an excuse. With other people, immediately upon finding out what happened, you say, “How could they do that to me? How inconsiderate, how this, how that?”
Let's take an example. You're at a simcha (celebration), and you need a ride home. So let's say it's a wedding. You meet up with an old friend who lives near you in the neighborhood, and you say, “Listen, can I get a ride home tonight? My wife had to leave early. She took the car.” No problem. You arrange to meet at the end of the wedding. He's a late stayer, and you're a late stayer. At the end of the wedding, you're looking for the friendly, helpful person, but they're nowhere to be found. So you go over to somebody you know and say, “By the way, did you see so-and-so?” “So-and-so? He left.” “What do you mean he left?” “I saw him leave. I saw him put on his coat. I saw him waiting by the valet for his car.” What?
How you react to that depends on who that other person is. If the person is somebody you respect or somebody you fear, or somebody who would never do that to you intentionally, you might give the benefit of the doubt. You might say, “Well, he realized when he offered me the ride that he had too many people for the car, and when they loaded up the car, he left.” Or, “How can it be so inconsiderate not to tell me?” There could be a number of reasons why the person left without telling you. It could have been an emergency. Something happened to one of his children. He may have had to leave suddenly. There are many reasons why a person could leave you behind. He could have been forced to leave in a hurry, or maybe it's not so unusual. You had a simcha, maybe you had a little drink, you forgot. What? You went to him at a wedding, he said, “Can I get a ride home?” “Yeah, later, I'll see you later, I'll see you later, I'll see you later.”
So the Chafetz Chaim discusses a case where you've been told by someone that they would do something for you, and they forgot. That's the way you start the case. But the Chafetz Chaim discusses a case where you've been told that someone said something negative about you, or has done something that could be harmful to you. In other words, you heard Rechilut, and now you have confirmed that that person actually did say it. How do you react now? The Chafetz Chaim says this is not an option; you have an obligation to judge that person favorably: Dan et chavercha lekaf zechut, you have to judge and interpret what was done or said in a positive light. If you do not, you are guilty of accepting, “He said you did this. Who would ever do such a thing? How could you do such a thing?” You believed it; you accepted Rechilut.
So the Chafetz Chaim concludes that if you did in fact accept Rechilut, you accepted that somebody did something negative or something harmful to you, or said something negative or harmful about you, and you believed it. The person must work on himself to expel that belief, to purge it from his heart, so that he no longer believes it.
What? But he believes it already. If it's difficult for him to believe that the speaker who told him about it actually fabricated the story, he could say that maybe the speaker exaggerated a little bit, maybe added some details, or maybe left out something favorable. “I only heard it from somebody telling me about what somebody else did or said. How accurate is it?” Well, maybe the person did say it in a way that he could expect us, from the nuances of his speech, to interpret it positively.
Remember way back when, when we were learning about Lashon Hara, when there was an ambiguous statement. A guy comes to town, he's hungry. “I need something to eat.” He says, “Then go to Eli's house. Eli always has something on the stove.” That either means Eli's a chazir (pig) or Eli's a baal chesed (person of lovingkindness). What am I talking about? Which one is he? So I should judge favorably. So maybe over here the nuance was that he said something like, “Go to Eli's house. Eli's always got something on the stove. He has a salad, who knows, but he'll feed you.” It could be positive. And the way I say it may be the way you interpret it.
So the listener should take upon himself not to accept Lashon Hara or Rechilut from any Jew. That's the second part of teshuvah (repentance). One is to purge from his heart the belief that this thing was in fact a case of Rechilut. And second is to say, “I won't accept it anymore.” Chatati aviti pashati kibalti Rechilut (I sinned, I acted perversely, I transgressed; I accepted gossip). This all works if you can do it, but only so long as you have not passed the information on to somebody else. Because then you're a rochel (peddler) yourself. And instead of accepting Rechilut, you may have spoken Rechilut. And who knows, once you light a match, whether a piece of paper is going to burn down, or a whole building, or a whole neighborhood? It's a dangerous, dangerous statement if it could be negative or harmful to another person.
“Don't go as a peddler amongst your people” is a mitzvah, it's a Torah law, and of course there's... But the way we've described it today, something negative was said and you accepted it, you have to make teshuvah for that acceptance.