According to http://www.jewfaq.org, one of the gravest of sins is lashon ha-ra (literally, "the evil tongue"), which involves discrediting a person or saying negative things about a person, even if those negative things are true!
"It is forbidden to even imply or suggest negative things about a person. It is forbidden to say negative things about a person, even in jest. " This seems like a pretty hard standard for most Jews myself included. It almost seems like we are trained from birth to critique and find fault in ourselves and even those closest to us. I have often found myself falling into this trap of having nothing to say at a cocktail party and reverting to some sort of salacious comment about somebody. I was officially raised with the maxim" if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." But that always seemed to be a one-way street, children should only be nice and polite, but parents, aunts and uncles etc can say whatever comes in their head. The only person I have ever known who truly never had a bad thing to say about anyone even when I really, really tried to get her to, was my grandmother. She had been through so much, and yet she never complained, whether it be about the gardener or my parents or even us wayward grandchildren. There were certainly plenty of times we were deserving.
We recently had an uncomfortable episode among some of our Sisterhood ladies, all of whom I consider friends. Two women on a commitee met for lunch and the topic of involving a third woman came up. One of the women mentioned some concerns from past programs this woman was involved in, not staying on budget stuff like that. Later on this woman feels guilty about this conversation and wants to absolve her guilt, so she calls the third woman and shares the conversation to "clear the air." This resulted in an email to a bunch of us from the third woman whose feelings were deeply hurt. I really did not know how to respond, I wasn't there and was unclear on what had transpired. Other women stepped in and I guess the event has blown over. Still it was a lesson learned, and on several occasions since I have found myself with this woman whose feelings were hurt by the negative things said and before I know it a comment about someone else has slipped out, someone's ability to take minutes or stay on topic, all true, but it felt wrong because of the history, that just this type of conversation was responsible for hurting someone I care about. This is probably the very toughest mitzvah for me, my entire sense of humour, how I put folks at ease involves at some level tale-bearing. What will replace it? Silence? You might think positive comments, but apparently that is not really encouraged either as it might draw unwanted attention, or if it is not sincere then it is a form of deceit. What will I have to talk about? I don't enjoy hearing others slammed, so why be the person who does that. Still if there is news that is important to know, ie: someone is ill, then I would like to know. Intuitively I do know the difference and have felt the discomfort on many occasions as words came out of my mouth. My daughter says I always can find the positive in a situation, which may be true, but I am also quick to find fault when looking to balance out a perspective on something not going according to plan. So today's commitment, one week without LaShon HaRa...can it be done? We'll see.
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