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Suppose you heard a juicy tidbit about someone from a source you thought was 100% trustworthy, that you thought you should pass on to someone else l’Toeles (who might have passed it on to others). Later you find out that what you passed on wasnt 100% accurate. You might have s e r i o u s l y harmed someone’s reputation.
What would you do? Can you undo the harm?
How much would it bother you? How long would you think about it?
L’toeles….the word that almost wiped me off the map.
Please allow me to answer all 4 queries.
1.DO EVERY SINGLE THING IN YOUR HUMAN POWER TO REVERSE IT.I use the word reverse,because a mistake that doesn’t cause damage just needs to be CORRECTED,no harm done.A mistake that caused many people to think/speak badly of someone must be REVERSED to undo at least some of the damage.
2.YES!You can telephone and personally visit the people you told and beg them to try and remember who they spoke to,as far down the line as it can go.
3.I think it would bother me a lot.I also RESPECT YOU FOR POSTING ABOUT IT.
4.THINK ABOUT IT NON-STOP UNTIL YOU KNOW IN YOUR HEART OF HEARTS THAT YOU DID WHATEVER YOU HUMANLY COULD.
I feel this strongly because of how motzi shem ra affected me,and I guess this is what I would say if anyone ever asked me to forgive them.
1) Someone who hurt us on the assumption “I can hurt him/her, they’ll forgive me anyhow”.
2) Someone who was motzie shem rah on us.
Here it seems you did it without any malicious intent. In fact you meant good. We still have to do all we can to undo the harm.
If we do all we can to undo the harm and seek forgiveness (if it wont make things worse), things can work out. Someone showed me an article, I think from the yated, a couple of months ago, about a person who was insensitive to a collector on the way to her daughters wedding.. After her daughter was unfortunately suffering with fertility, s/t prompted her to think how she may have hurt anyone.. She thought and thought until she fell asleep. Eventually she remembered the story.
She resolved to ask forgiveness, but had no clue how to find her. Went to hall after hall every night to look at the collectors, no where to be seen. Out of no-where she spotted her in the airport when she (uncharacteristically) took her daughter there on way for treatment.
Asked forgiveness, got the news that— her daughter was expectant..!
Rarely is anything done l’toeles! People just convince themselves that the loshon horah they are spreading or the reason they are butting into someone else’s business is l’toeles. Rarely is someone in a position to really help someone make a true tikun in their lives. Rarely is someone kind, generous and knowledgeable enough to know how to give mussar or be metaken someone so that they take it the right way and want to make that change. If you try to be metaken someone and the way you do it will not have a good affect on them, then you have no business minding their business. If you know they will not listen to you then it is asser for you to approach them because you are making the situation worse. So again, as I said, rarely is any of this l”h or busybody business l’toeles.
So the first thing you would need to do is OWN up to your responsibility and be accountable for your “MISTAKE” and learn from it big time. Then do whatever you can to correct it by first apologizing to the person that you hurt. Then speaking to everyone and anyone who heard this rumor and letting them know that YOU were the source of the rumor and you were 100 percent mistaken and that you take full responsibility for speaking Loshon Horah and saying things that turned out to be untrue. You should also let them know what a huge lesson you learned from this experience.
Truth be told-Wow! What a great ending to the story!! Truly amazing!!
Ctrl+Z
Ctrl+Z
Ha ha!
Hummingbird: Yeah pretty amazing. I’m sure she wishes she could of ctrl+z on the years in the interim. I assume that child is extra special though
Are you related to me or the facts just similar by chance?
L’toeles can only be to prevent harm to another person. This is why L”H and MSh”R are such serious aveiros. Sometimes one cannot be forgiven for this, because the harm is irreparable. I would be sick with grief if I did this to someone, and never be able to forgive myself. The person involved needs to do EVERYTHING in his/her power to rectify the egregious wrong that was done, knowing they may not be forgiven for it. And let that be a lesson for us all.
first of all- there is a big lesson we can learn from this- do NOT pass on info. unless u r 100% sure its TRUE and LETOELES
second of all- u should go ask forgivness from the person whom u where talking about, and then correct ur qaction, by telling the person u first told the truth, that he/she should pass it on to the person he/she passed it on to and so on and so far…
behazlach!!
And now for those of you who are approached for forgiveness…..
A story tells that two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand:
They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:
The other friend replied:
LEARN TO WRITE YOUR HURTS IN THE SAND AND TO CARVE YOUR BLESSINGS IN STONE.
Beautiful!!
[Just as an aside the “hurt” by me almost made me LOSE my “blessings”]
Thankfully,HASHEM runs the world,b”h,and is in charge of damage control!
mytake, that is the most beautiful thing I ever heard. Thank you!
This OP is really a reminder as to one of the reasons the Halachos of LH l’toeles are so specific and detailed. Among the 7 prerequisite conditions for being allowed to speak l’toeles is that one must have FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE of what one is speaking about. Hearsay, even from a very reliable source cannot be repeated, even l’toeles. (of course for questions l’maasah, consult your LOR).
Just as a reminder, the other 6 conditions are:
1)you were dan lkaf zchust the person in your own mind
2)you made every attempt to solve the problem by going to the person directly rather than involving someone else
3)you do not exaggerate or offer your opinion, but simply repeat the information with 100 % accuracy
4)your intention in repeating the LH is only l’toeles, with no other ulterior motives
5)there is no other way to accomplish the same goal without saying the LH
6)no undeserved harm will come to the person you are speaking about
This is just an outline — it is a good practice to always ask a shailah if one feels there may be a need to repeat negative information about someone.
If you really want to get at the “heart” of the problem it’s this.
Gossip in the “frum” community is the replacement for television and outside media.
When everyone in a frum community is living pretty much the same lives and in close proximity to one another, any variation from the norm (no matter how small) becomes an item to be discussed and disected with little regard for how the information warps and spreads.
Throw in the added element of believing you are doing the right thing by talking about people behind their back and all of the sudden the rules of Loshon Hara go out the window.
If people just focused on their own lives and stopped looking at others for their “entertainment” maybe the problem would no longer exist.
cleverjewishpun: Gossip in the “frum” community is the replacement for television and outside media.
Many many halochos can be violated with every nighttime TV show. We should though, be able to mind our own buisness. You’re right.
cleverjewishpun – Maybe it shouldn’t have become so taboo in the community having an outlet like TV, internet, etc…
Maybe it’s better for the avg. person to do these things instead of constantly speaking LH. Obviously people who can control everything about themselves, not speaking LH, watching TV, etc., should. But I don’t think the avg. person can be holding in that “madreiga”.
@Truthbetold; you are correct, as can two bored housewives gossiping about their neighboor during an afternoon.
@Health; no one can ever come out in “favor” of tv but if enough people realized that owning one doesnt mean that they are ready to sacrifice their children to molech it might become slightly less taboo.
My problem is also with the gigantic mixed message it sends..it’s somehow ok to talk about every detail of a 3rd parties personal life but it’s not ok to watch a sitcom on network tv for 22 minutes..I know it’s two different averiahs but I guess it’s better to hurt other people (with loshon hora) then to do some internal damage (tv) At least it’s more acceptable in the frum community
1.THANK YOU FOR POINTING OUT THE MOST POPULAR CULPRIT OF ALL,
“THE RELIABLE SOURCE!!”
2.Ask your L.O.R…..WHO ALSO HAS TAKEN SIDES JUST HIS OPINION IS NOW DAAS TORAH.
NO!!
ASK YOUR NOT-I REPEAT NOT!-LOCAL RABBI–ONE WHO IS 100% OUT OF THE PICTURE!
sorry i know u all hate “CAPS”…
eclipse: A friend once got a call from a person who introduced himself as a rabbi, to resolve a dispute the guy was involved in. He told him only he can resolve it (and no other Rav can) since he’s “kulo l’shem shomayim”. My friend wanted to know if this “rabbi’s” name was shomayim
l’toeles MISPLACED and l’shem shomayim MISPLACED = frum JIHAD
We live in a time when all avieros have been done by frum looking people, not just LH. But for some reason, a lot of people think that TV, movies, internet, etc., is the worst thing in our generation.
cleverjewishpun:
Are you choosing this lifestyle and all the halochos it violates on the baseless assumption it will aleviate gossip???
cleverjewishpun:
Excuse me, please. What type of content is there on TV? What do all the studies indicate are the result of watching TV? Less gossip? Or, much more gossip, much more crime, and just an overall decayance of academia and a pervasiveness of immorality.
Forget about new studies. Just read the studies done about Sesame Street back in the 70’s and 80’s. It’ll forever turn a parent away from using these “educational’ methods.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two wrights made an airplane
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