Ask the Rabbis | Are We Living in a Golden Age of ‘Lashon Hara’?

Lashon hara, “evil speech,” in practice means gossip or the repeating of negative information, even if true, about another person. It’s a shape-shifting sin, and it seems never to go out of style, so we turned to the rabbis for elucidation. – Amy E. Schwartz

Yes. That’s an understatement. These days, our ears are plugged with wires hooked into the mesmerizing voices of fallen angels spewing forth their seductive venom through imagery, lyrics and propagandized pomposity. Thousands of years of civilizational, cultural and intellectual evolution have climaxed into little more than progressive barbarism and enlightened absurdity, now further amplified by the free-for-all bullhorn of social media, campus brouhaha and protest bandwagons propagating random slander and wanton falsehoods. We have succeeded only in creating better and more improved ways of making ourselves and one another miserable.

“Our life seems to be a confused jumble of spasmodic and disconnected events,” noted Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, “chaos camouflaged by civilization. A world that is full of grandeur has been converted into a carnival.” Prophetic words indeed. It’s more like the golden age of antithesis, an era of hating anything and anyone simply because it’s in vogue, sans any effort to clarify issues or verify claims. It takes only the push of a button on a keypad these days to ruin someone’s life or kindle a mob reaction. Our self-driving cars notwithstanding, we have yet to catch up with the Cro-Magnon.

The Greeks urged people not to speak ill of the dead. Our own sages were not always so restrained, sometimes even engaging in a little posthumous lashon hara. When asked to eulogize an undistinguished colleague, the Talmudic sage Rav Nachman bar Yitzhak replied, “Shall I say, alas, a basket full of books is lost to us?” In other words: The guy read a lot but understood nothing. It’s an ancient reminder that there are many kinds of lashon hara, none more biting than insults.

American leaders were no more restrained. John Adams famously called Alexander Hamilton “that bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.” Harry Truman called Richard Nixon “a no-good, lying bastard.” And that’s just the “b” word.

Human beings have a talent for creative cruelty, driven by the Yetzer Ha-Ra (evil inclination). If we are in a golden age of lashon hara, it’s because technology affords us an extraordinarily efficient delivery system. Online, anyone can anonymously humiliate a target—including someone who may even be lonely, ill or grieving—without regard for their humanity. Never before could so many spread so much venom so quickly.

But Jewish tradition insists the evil inclination is never the whole story. We also possess the Yetzer Ha-Tov (good inclination). Most people still choose kindness, restraint, empathy and compassion. If digital tools have brought about a dubious golden age of lashon hara, they also offer us a powerful opportunity. We can harness our Yetzer Ha-Tov to launch a golden age of lashon hatov.

A golden age indeed! In images, words, videos, podcasts and memes, we talk about one another and criticize each other shamelessly, stirring up envy, contempt, hostility, anger, shame and so much more. Just as our rabbis taught, lashon hara has three sets of victims: the speaker, the listener (or reader) and the third party who is spoken about. But in our day, the negative effects ripple outward to huge audiences, chipping away at common trust and empathy across society. People are often surprised to learn that the rules of lashon hara govern not just negative speech but positive speech as well. The results are on display on Facebook, where the more we brag and share our successes, the worse everyone reading about them feels. Avak lashon hara—the fine dust of lashon hara—spreads over everything.

Our rabbis considered words both holy and potentially dangerous. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” they taught (Proverbs 18:21). Embarrassing someone and causing their face to blanch was likened to drawing their blood. I am always amazed at the complete certainty with which many online writers, commenters and pundits convey their opinions. One of my favorite lines in the Talmud takes exactly the opposite approach, and I wish it were more widespread:“Teach your mouth to say, ‘I don’t know.’” Amen.

Jewish ethics of speech 101: Before each utterance, ask, “Is it true; is it necessary; is it kind?” These days, truth gets disrupted by deepfakes, perverted by politicians and slanted by social media. Judaism asks us to counter that culture by earnestly embracing emet (truth, not truthiness!)—in the words we choose to consume, as well as our own.

On necessity: Today one can drown in a sea of words. We should think twice before clicking “send” once. Speak more selectively and concisely. Stanch the proliferation of data centers by depending less on AI. Abraham Joshua Heschel warned long ago that “we will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.”

On kindness: The Jewish way is other-directed. Relationship and community remain ever primary. We must cultivate empathy and sensitivity, resist every urge to belittle, and zealously guard our tongue against anything unkind, unneeded or untrue. Alas, today’s world is indeed awash in lashon hara. But collectively we still have standards; and as individuals, we still have agency. So anytime we contemplate a word that’s not 100 percent true and necessary and kind, instead, let silence (shtikah) be golden.

Before the advent of social media, text messaging or even the telephone, our tradition warned against the dangers of gossip, falsehoods and slander. As the midrash teaches, “Lashon hara spoken in Rome may kill in Syria” (Bereshit Rabbah 98:19). Harmful speech injures all involved—the speaker, the listener and the one spoken about—and Jewish tradition considers it as destructive as murder or idolatry.

Given the profound harm gossip can inflict, we are not in a golden age but rather a dark age of lashon hara. Leaders and individuals with political and social influence use their platforms to spread falsehoods that damage lives. Technologies capable of producing and disseminating deepfakes further amplify this danger, fabricating statements people never made. These forces cultivate a culture of distrust, suspicion and baseless hate even toward what is factually and empirically true.

Our tradition also teaches that the ancient Temple in Jerusalem fell because of sinat chinam—baseless hatred fueled by behaviors such as pervasive lashon hara. Rather than resigning ourselves to these dark days, let us strive toward a golden age of ahavat chinam: unconditional love, respect and generosity toward one another and our ideas.

Human nature is human nature. Malicious speaking seems baked into the system (see Leviticus 19, where we are commanded “not to go about as talebearers”). The inclination to speak ill of one another comprises much of the Al Chet, the long confessional recited on Yom Kippur. As the Inuit are reputed to have 100 words for snow, we have as many for impure, foolish, dangerous, destructive, evil speech. The Al Chet, which dates to somewhere in the 3rd-6th century CE, was not written out of nowhere. The rabbis knew our proclivity for lashon hara.

So what has changed? Human nature has not, but our technology most assuredly has. The speed, scale and permanence of lashon hara makes it feel much worse today. In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron engaged in lashon hara as they criticized Moses for marrying a Cushite woman and claimed that Moses wasn’t the only leader of the Israelites and that they too spoke for God. What they thought was a private conversation was, of course, overheard by God, who laid out the punishment: Miriam, principally, paid the price with a skin affliction. But their cruel words were localized; there was no technology to broadcast their conversation. Today, it would be on every social media platform within minutes. Imagine the hurt and damage. Miriam would be canceled, Aaron stripped of his robes and Moses would suffer the public humiliation of the entire episode.

Not really. Lashon hara (evil speech) involves telling a truth about someone—a truth that reveals their evil behaviors or character but, crucially, reveals this bitter truth to people who have no need to know. Telling the truth is not a sin, but telling a negative truth to people who have no need to know it is. (This is unlike, say, telling a bride about her potential fiancé’s past abusive behavior, which is a mitzvah/good deed, since it allows her to protect herself.) Telling the truth to strangers or bystanders is a sin because all it does is degrade the subject and undermine their standing for the malicious pleasure of the reporter.

Much negative social media and the vast majority of conspiracy theories are not true. They constitute the sin of rechilut, i.e., spreading bad rumors that are nonfactual and outright falsehoods about people (such as the claim that Israel assassinated Charlie Kirk or that 9/11 was a false-flag operation by Israel’s Mossad).

This is the golden age of rechilut—particularly as social media and mass podcasts spread falsehoods without limit or check. The social media giants are failing their responsibility to regulate their platforms and assure they are not abused to blacken the reputation and threaten the safety of vulnerable millions. The golden age of rechilut threatens to plunge humanity into a dark age where untold numbers of innocents are terrorized or eliminated.

If the “golden” in the question is a reference to the Golden Calf, then without a doubt, yes! Lashon hara is about spreading information, false or true, in a way that is detrimental to the subject of that information. The digital age and the new information revolution have brought with them many blessings, but mutual respect, empathy and protecting other people’s rights are not among them. It is not a coincidence that we use the term “viral” to describe internet phenomena. They spread like a virus, indiscriminately affecting everything in their path, and while it is true that there are good viruses, their contribution is often overshadowed by the damage caused by the bad ones. Sadly, many wake up to this only when they are the victims of such viral lashon hara.

Absolutely. Though I would hardly use the word golden for something as negative as lashon hara, which literally means “evil tongue,” speaking badly about others without any constructive or positive purpose or value. In short, gossip. The Talmud tells us that when a person speaks lashon hara, it’s like killing three people: the person speaking, the person listening and the person spoken about. And with social media, it’s not just two people speaking. Everything is amplified exponentially.

Why speak negatively about another person? This type of behavior does not reflect well on human nature. If we analyze it psychologically, we will find many driving factors. For one, speaking about others is easier than speaking about yourself: It deflects. A form of schadenfreude is also at play, a perverse pleasure people take in the misfortune of others. We tend to be far harsher when judging others. Regardless of the cause, lashon hara brings out the worst in us, and it has no justification. And even if you think it’s innocuous to share a little gossip, saying something negative breeds negativity, and one thing leads to the next. It’s not hard to imagine how bad-mouthing others can spiral out of control and lead even to violence.

We were blessed with a mouth to speak. We should use it for lashon tov, speaking positively and constructively, motivating, inspiring, warming, illuminating. The same technology that can amplify the negative words we utter can also amplify the good ones. Imagine if all of us used our gift of speech and all our technological platforms as means to to communicate a message of love and kindness. So let us turn this into a golden age of lashon tov and build a world of harmony within diversity that we’re proud of.