Reply To: Lashon Hora: Our hardest tikkun?

http://www.aish.com/tp/i/gl/Insights-of-Rashi-Lashon-Hara.html

Shmot(Exodus 1:1-6:1)

The commentaries note a number of problems with this Midrash.2 The Chofetz Chaim focuses on the issue of why it was the sin of lashon hara in particular that brought about such severe suffering on the Jewish people; he points out that the Jewish people were guilty of idol worship and yet that was not the cause.3

The sin of lashon hara is different because it involves speech. Therefore, the Angel created by it receives the power of speech. This gives it the ability to verbally express the nature of the lashon hara that the person perpetrated; but the Chofetz Chaim goes further and says that this Angel also enumerates all the hitherto unmentioned sins that the person committed. Thus speaking lashon hara opens the floodgates for punishment of numerous other sins.

This explains why the fact that the Jewish people spoke lashon hara resulted in the tremendous suffering they endured in Egypt. Without this flaw they would have been spared punishment for their other sins such as idol worship, but once it became clear to Moshe that they stumbled in this area he understood the severity of this exile.

(more proof to come)