52 | APRIL 11 • 2024 
J
N

H

annah Smith was 
a 14-year-old 
schoolgirl living in 
Lutterworth, Leicestershire. 
Bright and outgoing, she 
enjoyed an 
active social life 
and seemed to 
have an exciting 
future ahead 
of her. On the 
morning of Aug. 
2, 2013, Hannah 
was found 
hanged in her bedroom. She 
had died by suicide.
Seeking to unravel what 
had happened, her family 
soon discovered that she 
had been the target of 
anonymous abusive posts 
on a social network website. 
Hannah was a victim of the 
latest variant of the oldest 
story in human history: the 
use of words as weapons by 
those seeking to inflict pain. 
The new version is called 
cyber-bullying.
The Jewish phrase for this 
kind of behavior is lashon 
hara, evil speech, speech 
about people that is negative 
and derogatory. It means, 

quite simply, speaking badly 
about people, and is a subset 
of the biblical prohibition 
against spreading gossip. 
Despite the fact that it 
is not singled out in the 
Torah for a prohibition in 
its own right, the Sages 
regarded it as one of the 
worst of all sins. They said, 
astonishingly, that it is as 
bad as the three cardinal 
sins — idolatry, murder and 
incest — combined. More 
significantly, in the context 
of Hannah Smith, they said 
it kills three people, the one 
who says it, the one he says 
it about and the one who 
listens in. 
The connection with 
this week’s parshah is 
straightforward. Tazria 
and Metzora are about a 
condition called tsara’at, 
sometimes translated as 
leprosy. The commentators 
were puzzled as to what 
this condition is and why 
it should be given such 
prominence in the Torah. 
They concluded that it was 
precisely because it was a 
punishment for lashon hara, 

derogatory speech.
Evidence for this is the 
story of Miriam (Numbers 
12:1), who spoke slightingly 
about her brother Moses 
“because of the Ethiopian 
wife he had taken.” God 
himself felt bound to defend 
Moses’ honor and, as a 
punishment, turned Miriam 
leprous. Moses prayed 
for God to heal her. God 
mitigated the punishment to 
seven days but did not annul 
it entirely.
Clearly, this was no minor 
matter, because Moses singles 
it out among the teachings 
he gives the next generation: 
“Remember what the Lord 
your God did to Miriam 
along the way after you came 
out of Egypt.” Deut. 24:9.
Oddly enough, Moses 
himself, according to the 
Sages, had been briefly 
guilty of the same offense. 
At the Burning Bush when 
God challenged him to lead 
the people, Moses replied, 
“They will not believe in 
me” (Ex. 4:1). God then gave 
Moses three signs: water that 
turned to blood, a staff that 

became a snake and his hand 
briefly turning leprous. We 
find reference later in the 
narrative to water turning to 
blood and a staff turning into 
a serpent, but none to a hand 
that turns leprous.
The Sages, ever alert to 
the nuances of the biblical 
text, said that the hand that 
turned leprous was not a sign 
but a punishment. Moses 
was being reprimanded for 
“casting doubts against the 
innocent” by saying that the 
Israelites would not believe 
in him. “They are believers, 
the children of believers,” 
said God according to the 
Talmud, “but in the end you 
will not believe.”

THE DANGERS OF 
LASHON HARA 
How dangerous lashon 
hara can be is illustrated by 
the story of Joseph and his 
brothers. The Torah says that 
he “brought an evil report” 
to his father about some of 
his brothers (Gen. 37:2). This 
was not the only provocation 
that led his brothers to plot 
to kill him and eventually sell 
him as a slave. There were 
several other factors. But his 
derogatory gossip did not 
endear him to his siblings.
No less disastrous was 
the “evil report” (dibah: the 
Torah uses the same word as 
it does in the case of Joseph) 
brought back by the spies 
about the land of Canaan and 
its inhabitants (Num. 13:32). 
Even after Moses’ prayers 
to God for forgiveness, the 
report delayed entry in the 
land by almost 40 years 
and condemned a whole 
generation to die in the 
wilderness.
Why is the Torah so severe 
about lashon hara, branding 
it as one of the worst of sins? 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

The Price 
 of Free Speech

PHOTO BY TAYLOR GROTE