[Avodah] Lashon Hara about non-Jews

[Michael Makovi]

> There was some suggestion that perhaps the Torah forbids us to speak
> lashon hara about non-Jews because of hashchasas middos.  Bad middos are
> already forbidden by the Torah.  If the lashon hara about the non-Jew is
> an expression of those bad middos, so it is assur.  But not because of
> L"H, just because of bad middos.  The Torah forbids lending money to a
> Yid on interest, but allows it for a goy.  The Torah is m'chaiv hashavas
> aveidah for a Yid but not for a goy.  Why aren't we worried about the
> effect on middos in those cases?  Charging interest from a goy might
> result in (or come from) feelings of cruelty, selfishness etc.  The same
> for hashavas aveida.  But the Torah says we can keep it.  So obviously
> the Torah knows better than us and has kavanos that take in to account
> our nature and purpose in the world.  Sometimes b'davka speaking ill of
> a goy could be very beneficial.  It helps us stress in our own minds
> that a Yid is not a goy and that our first obligation is to love all the
> Yidden and then the rest of the world.
>
> Michoel Kelmar

Actually, it is forbidden by the Torah to take interest from a
gentile. The Torah permits interest to a nochri, which, as the Hertz
Chumash teaches, is a gentile passing through the land, not an
inhabitant. Elsewhere (I forget where; maybe Vayikra 25:35) the Torah
prohibits interest to a ger toshav. Rabbi Isidore Epstein in his The
Jewish Way of Life quotes Rav Hertz as well as the exact Gemara in
question (I have to check it) and brings Tosafot that we permit
interest from a gentile only because pragmatically, the taxes imposed
by gentile governments made it impossible not to charge interest.

It seems to me that perhaps the Torah prohibits interest only from a
gentile inhabiting eretz yisrael. Just as it is permitted to take
interest from a nochri passing through the land without settling,
perhaps the Torah is prohibiting interest only from our neighbors in
the land. If so, then again, just as I posited for lashon hara, taking
interest from a gentile would be perhaps a loophole due to the fact
that the Torah deals only with cases pertaining to eretz yisrael, and
ignores chutz la'aretz, as Rabbis Moshe Shmuel Glasner and Eliezer
Berkovits have pointed out regarding keeping Shabbat in a land where
Sunday is the day of rest (they say the Torah is not concerned with
how we do it; the Torah's concern is only that we are able to keep
Shabbat in the land where we control the economy; the chiyuv even in
chutz la'aretz notwithstanding).

Mikha'el Makovi