The onus falls on the listener, as well as the
gossiper. Halachah (Jewish law) commands us
to rebuke those who engage in loshen hora.
"Do not wait until the other person finishes
speaking," the Chofetz Chaim advises. "Every
single word of loshon hora is a separate trans-
gression, and it is your obligation to stop the oth-
er person from sinning."
There's one exception. That is when, by lis-
tening, you can exonerate the person under fire.
Consider, for example, the fictitious law offices of
Cheatem, Billim and Tossemstein, where secre-
tary Dave kvetches to computer analyst Ida that
the boss has gone sour and seems snippy. If Ida,
after listening to Dave's diatribe, can remind him
that the boss hasn't been feeling well, the pun-
ishment for loshen hora won't come her way.
It's a tricky maneuver. Ida must first ascertain
that the response won't further inflame Dave,
who might, as a consequence of her attempt to
defend the boss, resent him even more.
Penalties for loshen hora vary according to the
seventy of the crime. Miriam got leprosy, but there
are other reprisals for gurus of reckless gab. They
include: losing all your friends and, in the world
to come, remaining estranged from God.
Why are rules of loshen hora so strict? Feel-
ings get hurt. Opportunities dashed. Futures can
be changed forever. In some cases, Jewish law
goes so far as to prohibit complimentary chats
about other people. For instance, a woman tells
a neighbor that her rabbi hosted a wonderful
Shabbat dinner last week, and isn't the
rabbi's wife a fabulous cook?
Though the woman's praise
could very well take root in
good intentions, it risks of-
fending her neighbor, who
might wonder why she
hadn't been invited to
the dinner, too.
Metro Detroit's Jew-
ish population numbers
a close-knit 96,000, and
word travels fast along
the lox-n-bagel circuit.
Prefacing a conversation
with "Shh! Don't tell any-
body, but ..." just doesn't cut
it when it comes to keeping se-
crets. The cat always seems to
jump out of the bag, the beans
always spill — in bushels —
as soon as more than one
person gets the scoop on,
you name it: her medical
board results, his job sta-
tus, her grandmother's
health, his wife's affair.
Robert Aronson, execu-
tive vice president of the
Jewish Federation of Metro-
politan Detroit, believes this
community has a problem with
gossip.
"I don't think it's just our community. I
think it's everywhere," he says. "But I'd say it's
particularly true of Jewish communities. There
are a lot of connections between Jews. In a sense,
we're an extended family. Just as a lot of talk goes
on in family circles, a lot of talk takes place in
close communities. I think we have to go out of
our way not to lend ourselves to loshen hora."
It doesn't seem to matter if yentas refer to their
subjects on a first-name-only basis. How many
Isaacs live in metro Detroit? How many just
broke up with their girlfriend, a starving artist
living in Chicago?

Sometimes, even a first name isn't necessary
for identifying the victimized soul behind the
slander. Context tells all. No one is going to
scratch his head too hard when he hears about
an "anonymous" so-and-so who attended a such-
and-such school, opened a gift stop on this-or-
that street and went bankrupt last month.
Sans identification, the name of Mr. "Bank-
rupt" isn't too tough to figure out.
"The big problem I have with gossip is that
people are so willing to believe anything," says
Bert Green, a young adult living in Farmington
Hills. "Tabloids sell. People have such voracious
appetites, and gossip is on the menu every day.
We eat it up.
"Hey, I'm admitting that I'm as guilty as any-
one else. We all do it. It's like gawking at an ac-

cident. You don't want to look, but it's hard to
look away."
Jewish day schools in metro Detroit introduce
lessons on loshen hora to children at a very young
age. At Akiva, the preschool curriculum includes
the message: If you don't have anything nice to
say about somebody, don't say anything at all.

Rabbi Bergman teaches the laws of loshen
hora to fourth-graders at Hillel Day School. "I
begin by telling them that the rabbis believed
the most dangerous part of the human body is
not the arm, not the leg, but the tongue. That's
why its the only part of the human body that God
built a cage around. That cage is the mouth,
which you can close," he says.
In the Midrash, there is a parable about loshen
hora. It discusses broom wood, used to make char-
coal. Like evil words, broom wood is nearly im-
possible to extinguish once lit. With wood, as with
words, the flames eventually die down, yet there
remains an internal fire that never completely
goes out.
The person slandered feels burned, and the
people who hear the slander never forget, though
they might someday come to acknowledge the
innocence of the accused. Consider O.J. Simpson
or Michael Jackson — or any celebrity whose sto-
ry has seared national headlines.

Even if proven clean and pure, their image will
remain somewhat streaked forever.
Dolores (not her real name) memorized play-
ground rhymes about loshen hora when she was
a child at a metro Detroit Hebrew day school al-

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