Lashon Hara Is Now Fast and Easy

(courtesy of http://www.blallen.com)

Lashon Hara is now fast and easy with new Verizon DSL. For just $39.99/mo. you can quadruple the amount of people to hear your gossip and destroy and defame Yidden ten times faster. The Internet and Blogging is just anything else in the material world. It can be used for the utmost good as well as the utmost evil. Lately I have seen a pattern of Jewish Blogs posting nothing but negative aspect of Judaism.

I'm not speaking about blogs like Failed Messiah, Xyre or, Circus Tent. These blogs are another category. They had their feelings hurt buy groups they tried so hard to be accepted by and once rejected were unable to cope with the fact that Hashem had other plans for them. Instead they dedicate hours upon hours exposing the most negative, distorting the truth, and praying (well at least they pray for something) for the destruction of the people they are out for.

The Internet has made this much easier as these people would not have even a third of the success they feel they have gained if they led such a campaign in the real world. You know, face to face to the people you slander. No, because that would end in either a pummeled face (G-d forbid) or being out debated, as without google.com open, the knowledge base must shift to brain-only mode. Still these site gets thousands of hits and people keep coming back because people just love to read the kind of negative filth these sites host.

Is it Lashon Hara that i speak about these blogs and the horrible things they say? Some might say yes, but still criticizing a blog, isn't criticizing a person. I don't know the people who write these blogs, and for the most part they try to stay anonymous for fear of retaliation against them. Apparently getting your blog hacked is not as scary as a group of displeased people at your front door.

My focus of this blog is on Blogs that I consider quality blogs writing Lashon Hara. Blogs I support, avidly read, that sometimes go in the wrong direction when they are short on material. There is this concept in the Blogosphere, specifically the Frum one, that it is OK to expose the negative aspects of Haredi Society on the Internet because people deserve to know the truth. There are many problems with this. Firstly Who deserves to know the truth? Haredi people or people that stumble upon a blog and form an opinion that Haredi Society is all negative. Still, the negativity should not be ignored and it should be documented, but it should also be based on fact and not opinion, or not on the word of three or four people.

My issue is when there are blogs that write articles about specific people. This is without question Lashon Hara, and the usual response is that Lashon Hara is just an excuse to keep the truth from being known. Well my question is, who are you to "expose the truth"? You are a Jew with a blog account and nothing more. This goes for me as well, and if my blogs are a reflection of my position on this issue, I can say that if I do write a blog about a person, their idenity is unknown to anyone but me, and possibly them if they read the article.

I have thrown around the idea of posting the blog and its article that spurred this posting, but that will not solve the problem. I enjoy reading the blog and have learned interesting things about Haredi Society and how I functions at least from this blogger's point of view. The article really set me off and I argued back in forth but to no avail did the blogger shift their opinion on the subject.

In short the article is about a few Rabbi's and their method of fundraising. The blogger goes off on them equating them to thievery, fraud, and deception. My problem is what evidence was this hateful blog based on? 100% opinion, yet it is presented as if its well known fact. If you don't agree with how this Rabbi works, then he is not the Rabbi to you. Unless you are his accountant, or the Israeli IRS how do you know what goes on? You asked a couple people (who also happen to dislike this Rabbi as much as you) and this is your evidence.

Lashon hara (or Loshon hora) (Hebrew לשון הרע; "evil tongue") is the prohibition in Jewish Law of telling gossip – negative disparaging but truthful remarks about a person or party who is not present.

However you want to justify an article targeting a specific person, this is the Halacha. You can chose to ignore it, like you can chose to ignore any halacha.

Frum Blogs should be used to make the Internet holy and break the klippot that the Internet has encrusted around its users. Yes, all aspects of Judaism should be documented, but there is plenty of Positive going on, and its a shame that is ignored for the more juicy stories. If that is your goal, then you should work for a goyish mainstream publication like People Magazine.

There will be a separate follow up to this blog but the end result is the same.

If we spent the same amount of type Gossiping and putting Jews down as we did in our Torah study, Moshiach would have come during the time of the 1st Temple.

The Vilna Goan repented one Rosh Hashanah on his time wasted in not learning Torah during the year. He carefully calculated that it was 7 minutes for the whole year!!! If we only spend 7 minutes a day or even a week extra learning Torah, think of our benefit.