Festivals | Tishrei

Ethics in Everyday Life Situations

Gossip

Situation

I am very aware of the dangers of gossip. I always reprimand my friends for indulging in gossip, but they continue to speak and listen to it nevertheless.
While I myself do not talk gossip, I do find I listen to what others say.

Is it...

1. Wrong only to tell over gossip?
2. Also wrong to listen to gossip?
3. Wrong both to tell over and to speak gossip?

Sources

Popular Halacha, Ch.9

• 1. An person's honor is much to him, for all of the trust that people place in him and his entire livelihood depend on the good name which he has acquired in society, and the person who impugns his honor and his good name deprives him of this trust and ruins his livelihood; his customers will abandon him, and will not order wares from him. Nor will they involve him in business dealings, and he will become destitute.
• 2. Slandering a colleague behind his back is a greater sin than embarrassing him in public, for at least in public, a person is able to properly make attempts to defend himself.

  The prohibition against slander applies even if the negative report one spreads about a colleague is true. Leviticus 19:16 states:

  "Do not go around as a talebearer among your people. Do not stand over your brother's blood,"

  thus equating gossip with bloodshed.

• 3. Our Sages (ibid) declared:

  "There are three sins for which a person is granted atonement neither in this world nor in the World to Come: idolatry, murder and incestuous or adulterous relations....Slander is more severe than all of them....Three are hurt by slander: the person slandered, the one who slanders and the listener."

• 4. Often, a person inadvertently slanders a colleague in the course of conversation. Similarly, a joke at someone else's expense may damage that person's reputation.

  Therefore, Psalms 34:14-5 states:

  "Who is the man who desires life, who loves long life [wherein] to see goodness? Guard your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceitfully."

  And finally, Proverbs 21:23 comments:

  "One who guards his mouth and tongue protects his soul from mishap."

  Rambam (Moses Maimonides)
• 9. (...)And the Sages also said:

  "when anyone engages in slander, it is as if he was denying the Existence of God, as it says in the Bible: "Who have said: Our tongue will we make mighty; Our lips are with us: who is lord over us?" (Psalms 12, 5)."