Life and Death Is In the Power of the Tongue

December 8th, 2006
Rabbi Gary S Creditor

 

A long time ago someone set some verses from Psalms to a moving tune. It might have been Shlomo Carlebach because it is his type of music. While it only is sung to two verses, those are embedded in an entire unit which is the following:

Come, children, harken unto me:

I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

Who is the man that desires life, and loves many days, that he may see good?

Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.

Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace and pursue it. Psalm 34: 12-14

 

There is a term, that when pronounced in Hebrew as one meaning but when the same term is pronounced in Yiddish, it has another: lashon ha-rah as different from loshon horah. The latter, the most common, refers to gossip, rumor, innuendo which can usually be destructive. The former and original term means bad language, like the psalmist says, speaking evilly.

This sermon has been sitting on my computer since the election campaign. I didn't give it earlier because I did not want to give the perception, the ma'arit eyin, that I was using the back door to favor a candidate during the actual campaign. Yet the essence of the matter did not end with the election. I could not have dreamt how this issue would be elevated by a person whom I knew from a sitcom which I did not watch in its first run nor do I watch it in its rerun. The subject oflashon harah challenges us as we speak to our spouses, children, friends, telephone solicitors, cashiers and clerks, even to ourselves. Just because no one hears us doesn't make lashon harah any better.

Tonight I would like to share with you three sources from the Midrash literature. This is a vast sea of commentary on the Torah that can be both halachic, namely, legal, as well as aggadic, which is easiest to be called non-legal. There are many collections of midrash as well as there is much midrash included in the Talmud. As a term it means to dig deeply for meaning, to go beyond the surface level, to find new applications to the lessons of the verses. Two the sources are Leviticus Rabbah and the other is Midrash Tehilim – on the Book of Psalms.

Note for the first source:

The Rabbis perhaps did not have to deal with leprosy as described in the Torah. They used it as a point of departure based on the seeming similarity of the Hebrew for leper, metzorah to that for gossip, motzi shem rah.

Source 1 – Leviticus Rabbah 16:2

2. THIS SHALL BE THE LAW OF THE LEPER, etc. This is alluded to in what is written, Who is the man that desireth life (Ps. XXXIV, 13). This may be compared to the case of the peddler who used to go round the towns in the vicinity of Sepphoris, crying out: 'Who wishes to buy the elixir of life?' and drawing great crowds round him. R. Jannai was sitting and expounding in his room and heard him calling out: 'Who desires the elixir of life?' He said to him: 'Come here, and sell me it.' The peddler said: 'Neither you nor people like you require that [which I have to sell].' The Rabbi pressed him, and the peddler went up to him and brought out the Book of Psalms and showed him the passage, 'Who is the man that desireth life.'What is written [immediately] thereafter? - Keep thy tongue from evil, depart from evil and do good. R. Jannai said: Solomon, too, proclaims, Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles (Prov. XXI, 23). R. Jannai said: All my life have I been reading this passage, but did not know how it was to be explained, until this hawker came and made it clear, viz. 'Who is the man that desireth life. . . ? Keep thy tongue from evil, etc.' It is for the same reason that Moses addressed a warning to Israel, saying to them, THIS SHALL BE THE LAW OF THE MEZORA (LEPER), i.e. the law relating to one that gives currency to an evil report (mozi [shem] ra').

Source 2 – Leviticus Rabbah 33:1

R. Simeon b. Gamaliel said to Tabbai his servant: 'Go and buy me good food in the market.' He went and bought him tongue. He said to him: . Go and buy me bad food in the market.' He went and bought him tongue. Said he to him: . What is this? When I told you to get good food you bought me tongue, and when I told you to get bad food you also bought me tongue" He replied: 'Good comes from it and bad comes from it. When the tongue is good there is nothing better, and when it is bad there is nothing worse.' Rabbi made a feast for his disciples and placed before them tender tongues and hard tongues. They began selecting the tender ones, leaving the hard ones alone. Said he to them: Note what you are doing! As you select the tender and leave the hard, so let your tongues be tender to one another" Accordingly Moses admonishes Israel by saying: AND IF THOU SELL AUGHT. . . YE SHALL NOT WRONG ONE ANOTHER

Source 3 – Midrash Tehilim Psalm 39

How flexible is the tongue, and how great is its power! It is related of a Persian king that his physicians ordered him to drink the milk of a lioness, and one of his servants offered to procure the rare medicine. Taking with him some sheep with which to lure the beast, he actually succeeded in obtaining milk from a lioness.

On his journey homewards, being fatigued, he fell into a deep slumber, during which the various members of his body commenced disputing as to which of them had contributed most towards the success of their owner in obtaining so rare a thing as milk from a lioness.

Said the feet: 'There can be no doubt that we are the only factors in this successful undertaking. Without us, there could have been no setting out on this dangerous venture.' 'Not so,' said the hands, 'the facility you offered would have been of no avail had our power not been called into requisition; it is the service we rendered that enabled our owner to procure milk from the, lioness.' 'Neither of you could have rendered any service,' exclaimed the eyes, without the sight which we supplied.' 'And yet,' interrupted the heart, 'had not I inspired the idea, no steps would have been taken to bring any of your powers into exercise.' At last the tongue put in her claim, and was utterly ridiculed by the unani mous opinions of all the other contending members of the body.

'You,' they scornfully replied, 'you who have not the free power of action which is possessed by all and each of us, you who are imprisoned in the narrow space of the human mouth, - you dare to put in a claim to have contributed to this success!' In the midst of this contention, the man woke up, and prosecuted his journey home wards. Being brought before the king with the much desired milk, the man, by a slip of the tongue, said, 'Here I have brought your Majesty the dog's milk.' The savage king becoming incensed by this insulting remark, there and then ordered the man to be put to death. On the man's way to execution, all the members of his body, heart, eyes, feet, and hands trembled and were terribly afraid. ' Did I not tell you,' said the tongue, 'that my power is above all the united powers you possess? and you ridiculed me for my trouble. What think you of my power now? Are you now prepared to acknowledge my power to be greater than all yours?'

When all the members of the body consented to the tongue's proposition, the tongue requested and obtained a short reprieve, so that it could make a last appeal for the king's clemency. When the man was brought to the king his tongue started in all its eloquence. 'Is this the reward,' it began, 'great and just king, to be meted out to the only one of your majesty's servants who was glad of the opportunity to offer his life to fulfill his king's desire, who gladly carried his life in his hand to obtain for his august master what scarcely ever was obtained by mortal man ? ' 'But,' replied the king, 'your own statement was that you brought me dog's milk instead of the lioness' milk which you undertook to procure.' 'Not so, O gracious king,' replied the tongue, 'I brought the identical milk that your majesty required; it was merely by an unfortunate mistake in my speech that I changed the name; and in fact there is a similarity, as the word may mean either lioness or dog. My words will be verified if your majesty will condescend to make use of the milk I procured, for it will affect the cure your majesty desires.' The milk was submitted to the test, and was found to be that of a lioness; and so the tongue triumphantly demonstrated its great power for good or for evil. - Mid. Psalms 39

Everyone here knows that these remarks where initiated by the infamous episode of Senator Allen and his use of 'macaca.' Whatever it means and whatever he meant is irrelevant. It was clearly lashon harah. It doesn't matter if such language is used by a senator in the midst of a political campaign or by us in the privacy of our living room. It harms us all. I really thought that that would be my only current example. It was the beginning of the end of his quest for reelection and my point would be made. I could never have imagined that Michael Richards, Kramer of Seinfeld, would so blatantly and terribly use lashon harah as well. Both episodes illustrate our Biblical and Rabbinic wisdom and set of values. In the book of Ben Sira in the collection called the Apocrypha, there is an apocryphal statement: Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not as many as have fallen by the tongue. (28:18). If only these two people had that quotation prominently displayed in their dressing rooms they might still be in business. It will haunt them the rest of their lives.

We are challenged by the temptation of lashon harah just as we are challenged by the temptation of loshon horah. We have had to disavow the lashon harah in our terminology of African-Americans, of non-Jewish men and women married to Jews. We have had to cleanse the language we use about ourselves. The reverse of lashon harah is lashon nakii – clean language. That is the proper language. Instead of the model of these two recent episodes, let us follow the teaching of Proverbs (15:4): A soothing tongue is a tree of life.

Shabbat Shalom