Jewish Inspiration Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.

And now my dear friends, we continue on the top of page 770, day number 138, in the Treasure for Life edition of the Yor haSedikim, the Ways of the Righteous. We're in middle of the Gate of Slander, and we've previously spoken about the four of the six different dimensions of Lashon Haram. The fifth, HaChamishi, If someone is a Balchuvah, what is a Balchuvah? Someone who repents, a penitent,
someone who comes back, who's been a wayward, lived a wayward life, and now comes back to God. And now someone reminds him of his old sins. You remember when you did this? You remember when you went there? B'zeh yesh lo onesh gad, or such a person who brings up the past sins of a penitent, is grave, very, very terrible sin. Ki hashov me'avonosav afilu avonos sh'lo nasim kiskuyos. You know why? Because we know that Hashem loves us so much. Hashem, we said that a mitzvah,
a mitzvah brings us closer to God. A sin distances us from God. So imagine someone their whole life is distancing, distancing, doing one sin after another sin, after another sin, after another sin. Suddenly they're like, oh my goodness, what did I do? How did I do so many sins? I desecrated the Shabbos, I didn't eat kosher, I did things that were inappropriate, I acted in a way that was inappropriate. Hashem, please forgive me, please forgive me. And now they do Teshuvah,
and they go in the righteous way, all of their sins become mitzvahs. Why? Because they were a vehicle that brought a person closer. Their downward motion was only a tool and a force for the upward motion. So now the sins became a mitzvah. And now you're laughing and mocking about his sins that aren't sins anymore because he did Teshuvah, they're all mitzvahs. So you're mocking his mitzvahs. It's an amazing thing. You're mocking him for his sins that are no longer sins, now they're righteous mitzvahs.
Also, you could be tempting this person, he embarrassed me in public, I'm going to embarrass him back. And then they start arguing, they start fighting back. And perhaps he gets so mad and so angry that he loses his great status of mitzvahs that he earned. And the people who hear the story about this penitent, oh, did you know all these things that he did before he became? And then they won't do Teshuvah. No, he'll not Teshuvah. So this is a terrible thing.
This person, by speaking slander against a penitent, is doing terrible damage to himself, to the listeners and to the subject that he's speaking about. If you see someone who sins in private, and you share that to the public, there's a terrible sin for this. Maybe the sinner already did Teshuvah. How do you know? Maybe he did Teshuvah. And so what should he have done? He saw someone sin privately. I'll give you an example. It's nobody's business, but imagine you're walking in Manhattan and you see this guy
running to one of these street vendors, non-kosher, it says halal, but it's not kosher. He takes it, runs into a nearby building and eats, devours his cheeseburger, or whatever it is. The guy's supposed to be a religious member of our community, and this is the way he eats? He thinks nobody saw? I saw him. So you're going to go announce it to the congregation? No. Go to the rabbi. And this is a story that happened, an actual story that happened in New York,
where someone went to his rabbi and says to his rabbi, you know, there's a guy in our community that we are treating him as if he's a righteous, upstanding Jew, but I, with my own eyes, saw him eating this non-kosher food in Manhattan. So you know what the rabbi said? And this is why he says over here, the author, they should bring it to a righteous person. The righteous rabbi said, maybe he's a diabetic, and he was in critical, you know,
he had critically low blood sugar, and in such a case, because he's in a place of absolute danger, he has to do whatever he can to survive. And indeed, that was exactly what happened. Indeed, that was exactly what happened. So sometimes it's important to not rush to judgment. רק הרחק ירחק מחברתו, עד שיבודה כי שוב מדרכו הראה. And you know what? People are going to distance themselves from such a person if you announce it out in public, because we don't know if he repented.
Again, a person needs to, we know, the Mishnah tells us, don't judge your fellow until you're standing in his place. And if you judge someone, judge them favorably. But we are not in a position to be a judge. You know what it means to be a judge? You know what it means to be a judge? To be a judge means you're impartial. That means you're not close to that person, that means you don't hate that person, it means that you don't have any pre-existing judgment on that person,
it means that they're not a relative, it means that you're not someone who hates that person. We've got to be careful before we judge another person. רק הרחק ירחק מחברתו, עד שיבודה כי שוב מדרכו הראה. ואם אחותי תלמיד חכם באיש ירחית, רואה לחשב עליו בבירוש שעושה תשובה. You have to definitely assume that the person did tshuva if he's righteous. ואם תקופו ייצרו פעם אחס נשחרר את אחר כך. And what happens if one time he had a temptation that he wasn't able to overcome
and then he did tshuva immediately after. I had once a story, I was in a meeting and someone brought up something and I said something, this was many, many years ago, and I said something that was really, really not nice. I said something that was really, really not nice. And I came home and I told my wife, I'm sick to my stomach by what I said. I'm sick to my stomach. It was something that was disparaging against an entire group of people
and I said to my wife, I need to lay down, I'm just so disgusted with myself. I was really upset at myself and I asked Hashem for forgiveness and I had to lay down. I was just like so beside myself. How can you say such a thing? About an hour later I get a phone call from someone who was in that meeting and he says to me, I want you to know something. I heard what you said in the meeting and I was shocked.
And immediately when I walked out of the meeting I got an email from the Chafetz Chaim Heritage Foundation, which is the organization that teaches a lot about the proper speech and to keep us away from Lashon Haram. Every day they have a daily inspiration. He says just at the moment I left the meeting I saw the message of the day was that if someone is righteous and they say something that is inappropriate, you can assume that they did teshuva.
See, he says I waited an hour and now I'm calling you. It's so good, obviously, that he thought that I was righteous. Little does he know, right? But I felt a little bit of a redemption that Hashem was sending me a sign that I accepted your teshuva. And I told this person, I said, I just want you to know I was sick to my stomach when I came home. I told my wife that I'm so ashamed and embarrassed by what I said.
And nobody said anything to me. I just did. People asked me my opinion. I said my opinion. But I felt that it was, in retrospect, I felt that it was disparaging to have a community and it was inappropriate. But when, hopefully, we're all righteous, but when someone who is truly righteous does something wrong, we can assume that they had harotah, that they had regret. The person who speaks the shonorah, you know what type of damage he does? He does damage. He insults the person.
He embarrasses them. He humiliates them. All of the different shame that goes along with that is all part of the sin. You rejoiced at their downfall? The verse tells us in the Torah, love your fellow man as yourself. You love your honor, right? Everybody loves their own honor. You're kidding? That's our life. It's our dignity. Someone takes away our dignity. We have nothing left. You know the number one category of people who commit suicide are white collar criminals. White collar.
You know why? Because this guy was the CEO of Enron. Everybody was saying, oh, this guy's a genius. He's great. Give me some advice. I want to know. Tell me how to invest. Tell me what to do. Boom. There's the whole scandal. The guy's thrown into a prison in Louisiana. They throw away the keys. How many people are knocking on his prison door asking for advice now? Suddenly, all of his friends are gone. Suddenly, nobody's asking. Nobody's saying.
Nobody's visiting. Nothing. He goes from the top of the mountain to the pit. It's a terribly embarrassing thing. Everybody needs honor. Everybody needs dignity. As it says, he who rejoices in calamity shall not go unpunished. You're laughing. You're joyous that someone else got put down. That's a terrible thing. And there is a respect in which the sin of one who slanders with the truth is greater than the one who slanders falsely.
He says, if you say Lashon Hara about something that's true about another person, then the guy's done. When you say something that's false about a person, everybody sees through it. They see through it. So they don't believe it. It's not as genuine. It's not as real. And yet we see that someone who says something which is false has a terrible, terrible punishment. So it's not like, oh, it's not such a big deal. It's a big deal. And this concludes day number 138.
And we just said the fifth dimension of the slander.

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