12 | MAY 4 • 2023 

RUSSIA IS NOT HEALTHY 
continued from page 10
PURELY COMMENTARY

I

’d like to talk a little bit 
about the power of words 
and kindness. 
We’ve all heard, and 
probably said, as children, 
“Sticks and stones may break 
my bones, but 
words can never 
hurt me.” How 
untrue! We all 
have seen the 
emotional harm 
that abusive 
speech can do 
to an individual. 
We’ve also seen 
the harm that hate speech 
can do to a group, that vic-
tims can experience negative 
emotional, mental and physi-
cal consequences. 
In its use of stereotypes 
and disinformation, hate 
speech can be used to nor-
malize discrimination. And, 
of course, hate speech can 
lead to hate crimes such as 
the one we witnessed in our 
own region at the Tree of 
Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh 
in 2018. 
Getting a little nearer to 
home, a close relative of hate 
speech, or abusive speech, 
is gossip, lashon hara, in 
Hebrew. I’m not throwing 
stones here because, unfor-
tunately, I live in that glass 
house. I’ve gossiped and still 
occasionally do, in spite of 
my best efforts. 
The sages considered 
lashon hara as bad as the 
three cardinal sins, murder, 
idolatry and incest. In the 
Torah, the punishment God 
inflicted on people who 
engaged in lashon hara was 
what today we would call 
leprosy — a pretty extreme 
punishment! 
So why is lashon hara so 
bad? It not only harms the 

subject of the gossip but 
also the person who gossips 
and the person who hears it. 
Gossiping about someone is 
like emptying a feather pillow 
into the wind: Once it’s done, 
there’s no way to take it back. 
It acquires a life of its own 
and lives on, sometimes in a 
distorted form, as it passes 
from person to person.
How do we combat lashon 
hara? What are its positive 
counterparts? I believe they 
are kindness and praise. 
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, 
former Chief Rabbi of the 
UK, z”l, wrote a beautiful 
essay about the power of 
praise. In it, he quotes a 
speech therapist whose tech-
nique for curing stammering 
involved altering family 
dynamics by requiring each 
family member to observe 
and praise an act of kind-
ness done by other family 
members during the day. The 
praise had to be daily, spe-
cific and sincere. The family 
had to learn to both give 
and receive praise, and this, 
said Rabbi Sacks, created 
an environment of “mutual 
self-respect and continuous 
positive reinforcement.” 
How easy this seems to 

do and what huge benefits 
result! 
Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of 
the Fathers), a compilation of 
ethical teachings and stories 
from the Rabbinic Jewish 
tradition, teaches us that the 
world stands on three things: 
Torah, the service of God 
and acts of loving kindness. 
My daughter and son-
in-law have a dinnertime 
ritual that involves asking 
my grandchildren, “What 
have you done today that was 
kind?” I’d like to suggest that 
we, in our Hadassah family, 
ask ourselves the same thing. 
In our dealings with each 
other every day, let us ask 
ourselves, “Have we done 
something kind? Have we 
praised someone for a kind-
ness that person did?” 
I’d like to close with a 
quote from the prayer for 
peace in the Conservative 
prayer book, Siddur Sim 
Shalom: “[W]e have not 
come into being to hate or to 
destroy, we have come into 
being to praise, to labor and 
to love.” 

 

Mandy Garver is president of 

Hadassah Greater Detroit.

Mandy 
Garver

guest column
How to Combat Lashon Hara: 
The Power of Words and Kindness

Russia, I began writing articles 
as one of my forms of advocacy, 
including in the Princeton High 
School student newspaper. 
People commented on my being 
a Jewish student at a particularly 
WASPy school, in a particularly 
wealthy community, writing 
about the imperative of freeing 
Jews from Russia. For most, it 
was the first exposure any of my 
fellow students knew about the 
antisemitic treachery of Soviet 
policies. 
Today, the imperative to do so 
has come full circle. Espionage 
was one of the trumped-up 
charges the Soviets would use 
against Jews in the past. It seems 
that it’s a play in Russia’s play 
book as well under Putin, a 
former KGB agent. 
As much as things have 
changed in the past decades, it’s 
astounding to see how much 
things have stayed the same. The 
pin and bumper sticker I still have 
from my Soviet Jewry activism 
days, “Russia is Not Healthy for 
Jews and Other Living Things,
” 
are more than just nostalgic 
collectors’ items, but still a sad 
truth. 
The Soviets then, and Russia 
today, need motivation to 
change. Optics matter. In the 
1980s, I initiated protests at the 
Russian Embassy in Washington, 
participated in other massive 
protests, and called Soviet 
embassies all over the world to 
make my protest heard in their 
offices, to frustrate and embarrass 
them, and make it no longer 
worthwhile to use Jews or others 
as pawns. The Russian Embassy 
in Washington, D.C., can be 
reached at (202) 298-5700. 

Jonathan Feldstein was born and educat-

ed in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 

2004. He has become a respected bridge 

between Jews and Christians leading the 

Genesis 123 Foundation (Genesis123.co). He 

writes regularly on major Christian web sites 

about Israel and shares experiences of liv-

ing as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He can be 

reached at FirstPersonIsrael@gmail.com.

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