Welcome to Torah Tuesday. This is our session on Shemirat HaLashon, which means guarding our speech. The Chafetz Chaim basically wrote the book that codified the laws of proper speech. It stresses that, within the confines of the family, a person is required to exercise his influence on the members of his own family and household so that they will avoid the sin of Lashon Hara (evil speech), just as he is required to avoid it. So the lesson of “guard your tongue” is not limited exclusively to a person guarding himself. A person is also required to create an environment, create a family that avoids any of the pitfalls of the tongue, and create a family that speaks with Shemirat HaLashon, with guarding of the tongue.
The Vilna Gaon says that good speech is a character trait, as the Chafetz Chaim quotes him. It’s a midah. Now, what does that mean? Isn’t it a law? Yes, it is a law that tells us you’re not allowed to speak negatively or say words that will cause harm about or to another Jew. Okay. Singular, group, et cetera. But that sounds like a law, like I can’t eat a certain food or drink a certain liquid or do a certain thing on Shabbat. It’s a law. You don’t tell me that if I don’t carry in the Reshut HaRabim (public domain) on Shabbat, I don’t have good midot (character trait). It means I made a mistake in action. If I eat something that a Jew isn’t permitted to eat, something forbidden for a Jew to consume, you don’t say I have bad midot. Yet when it comes to the trait of guarding your tongue, the Chafetz Chaim, following the words of the Vilna Gaon, calls it a character trait.
Like all character traits, it requires practice. You don’t just become patient through one action. You have to practice patience. You have to practice patience in aggravating situations to develop the trait of being a patient person. I remember hearing Rabbi Frand once say that a good way to practice patience is to take it upon yourself—and in Brooklyn, this is very difficult in these days and times. If somebody throws something on the street, the street is dirty, and people are prone to throw more dirt on the street and not care. Whereas if you go to a really spotless place and throw one piece of paper on the floor, you get nervous because you say, “Wait a minute, I’m the one dirtying it. I’m the one responsible.”
Well, in Brooklyn, honking the horn is common today. In fact, it’s rude today. It’s to the point of being unbelievable today. Rabbi Frand, not referring to Brooklyn specifically, said, “Why don’t you take upon yourself the trait, or the practice of a trait, of not using your horn—not banging on that thing in the middle of your steering wheel—except for safety?” So if somebody is at a red light and you are one or two cars behind them, you know the definition of an instant second is how long it takes for somebody to honk. But let’s ignore that for a moment and say we’re talking about a situation where the light changes and you don’t honk the horn, even to the point where you may miss the light. And yes, you are in a hurry. What right does that person have to delay your arrival at your destination? You have things to do, just like he has things to text, and it’s so rude of him. But it’s rude to honk as well, and you gain by not honking the horn. If you don’t honk the horn one, two, three, four times, you realize you’re developing a trait called patience. You put up with other people’s foibles, their weaknesses, or even just their lack of regard for others, but you yourself gain by developing patience.
The Vilna Gaon says proper speech requires thought and training. The Chafetz Chaim maintains that in his day and age, in his time, the reason Lashon Hara was so rampant was that people had become accustomed to saying whatever they felt like, doing whatever they felt like, and saying whatever came to mind, no matter how they phrased it, from a young age. Therefore, when they got older, they continued with the training they had received as youths. So they didn’t even consider the possibility that their words involved a sin. “I’m just talking, not doing anything. I’m not eating anything. I’m not harming anybody.” But yes, you are. In order to avoid that transgression, you must train yourself.
But that’s not my point today. In this section, the Chafetz Chaim stresses that if the people of his day—if the adults that we share life with today—were trained as children to guard their tongues, watch what they say, and say things in the best way possible, not the worst or harmful way, that basic training would have developed them into people who speak Lashon Hara less often as adults. They would learn how to avoid lying. They would learn how to avoid cheating. They would learn how to avoid what we call inflicting pain on somebody through bullying or words that are harsh, insulting, or hurtful.
When does that start? Well, you have a Bar Mitzvah (son of commandment) boy coming up. You don’t buy tefillin (phylacteries) on the day of the Bar Mitzvah, when he becomes 13, and tell him, “Okay, put them on.” You go out and buy them a month or two before. You let him start putting them on weeks before the afternoon. That’s the actual date. He becomes accustomed to putting on tefillin in the proper way within several moments, rather than taking forever and repeatedly measuring to see that they’re right, as he does the first couple of days. Training how to put on tefillin is the same as training how to speak. The motivation to educate our children is to understand that whatever they learn, whatever they learn at home, whatever they learn in their youth will be very hard to change later in life, but is much, much easier when you have the raw material called a young child.
I was having a discussion with somebody, probably just yesterday or the day before—I think it was yesterday—about the use of words when that person was growing up. They never used the word “hate” in this person’s home. That’s the way the parents set down the law: “We don’t say hate.” How do you stop a child from saying “hate”? “I hate—I hate spinach. I hate her. She always does this.” How do you stop a child? How do you stop yourself? Good question. Answer: alternate ways of saying things. Develop alternate ways of expressing the same idea. Somebody says, “Would you like some of this?” You don’t say, “I hate that.” You say, “I would prefer to have the other item.” Amazing. What would you say? “I would prefer.” The person now understands you don’t want what they’re offering, and they don’t have to know how much you dislike it, to the point that you want to use the word “hate.” There are many words like that—tough, strong words—where choosing a less brutal form of expression would produce the same result. But it takes training.
I put out a book in English called One Minute With Yourself. It’s a guide to self-improvement on a day-to-day basis. At the very beginning of the book—I know it’s number one, two, three or four minute—I have a piece called Spies. Spies tells the adult that they live in a home where they don’t have to worry about security cameras that we have today. Forget people filming you on their phone. There are spies in your home from before there were even electronics. Those spies are your children. They watch how you speak. They watch how you act. They watch how you eat. They watch how you dress. They watch how you sit on a couch. They watch. They absorb. They admire their parent. They assume that their parent is 100%. 100% right. It’s a shock when they find out we’re not perfect. And they start to mimic. When you say, “Don’t do that,” or, “Do as I say, not as I do,” you’re undermining your own training of the child.
So the suggestion today is to understand that Lashon Hara is a group speak. Lashon Hara is a group behavior. You need a speaker, you need a listener, you need a subject. It’s not an individual. And therefore, you can develop the midah of patience. You could have the midah of generosity. You can have many midot, character traits. Among them could be proper speech, proper tone of voice, and proper choice of words. When you work on yourself, realize there’s a side effect and a benefit. You’re also passing that midah to the ones who watch you most and admire you most: your children and grandchildren. How you are is how they probably will be. What you say will not matter if that’s not how you are, in fact, and how you behave in reality.
So the lesson today is that proper speech requires basic training to develop in yourself. And what you do, what you develop in yourself, you’ll be able to pass on to the next generation. We’ll continue with a thought on Chanukah (Dedication).