[Avodah] Lashon Hara about non-Jews

[Michael Makovi]

**>From: "Doron Beckerman" <beck072 at gmail.com>
>Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2007 10:03:22 -0800

>I understand that there is no prohibition involved in telling Lashon Hara
>about non-Jews, but someone asked me a question today. Assuming Lashon Hara
>causes a Hashchasas HaMiddos, (or, alternatively, stems from a Hashchasah
of
>needing to feel superior to Ploni by putting him down), why would the Torah

>allow us to spread Lashon Hara about non-Jews?

My rabbi said that though it's permitted, it doesn't mean you want to do it.

I would personally say that it seems like the kind of loophole in a d'oraita
that is often plugged by a d'rabanan. For example, if you shecht a cow and
then it gives birth, the baby is halachically dead, and you can stab it to
death. Or you can let the "dead" calf grow up and breed a herd of "dead"
cows, all of which can be killed without shechting. Obviously we don't want
this, so Chazal forbade it.

Here too, I'd say that here, it seems to me that for some technical reason,
lashon hara is allowed about non-Jews.

Perhaps because in a normal situation, we're a nation living in our own
land, and the only non-Jews around are gerei toshav, which I'm not sure, but
going to assume, about whom it is forbidden to speak lashon hara (I do know
that it is a command to love them - Mesechet Gerim chapter 3 says "love the
ger" includes the ger toshav). Any other non-Jew is either going to be a
rasha in Israel (about whom you can speak lashon hara) or a gentile in chutz
la'aretz - and without TV and newspapers, what lashon hara can you possibly
have to say about some gentile living 1000 miles away?

Similarly, we find no commandment to love the gentile in chutz la'aretz,
unless one follows the opinion that a ben Noach can be a ger toshav even
without an appearance before the beit din. But we know that gentiles have
tzelem elokim, and that Sanhedrin says one who saves a life says the whole
world (nefesh achat m'bnei adam - m'bnei Israel is an error, and in any
case, the Yerushalmi and standard edition of the Mishna both say adam), etc.
I'm sure if one goes through Rav Hirsch's Chumash, 19 Letters, and Horeb,
he'll find only 1,000,000,000 instances of Rav Hirsch telling us to love
humanity. So why no command to love the stam gentile? I'd say technicality.

And perhaps a Jew who speaks lashon hara of a gentile, we can say the same
thing about a Jew who takes advantage of a loophole in a monetary matter -
G-d knows how to settle the score. You didn't break the law per se, but so
what? It's like the guy who went psak-shopping for the heter, and so when he
got to Olam haBa, he was given a derelict shack - "according to some
opinions, this IS olam haba".

I am reminded of Rabbi Yehuda heChassid saying that gentiles will be called
to task for every violation of "love your neighbor". But where is "love your
neighbor" in the Noachide laws? I suppose it's a sevara.
Mikha'el
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