[Avodah] Lashon haRa in the Shulchan Aruch

Micha Berger micha at aishdas.org
Mon Apr 8 00:24:53 PDT 2019


On Sun, Apr 07, 2019 at 10:11:10PM +0000, Joseph Kaplan via Avodah wrote:
: It may, indeed, be that something changed. Or possibly not and it
: may have been simply that this was an issue that the CC cared deeply
: about and found that there wasn't as much halachic discussion about it
: as he thought there should be...

My question is less about the CC and more about the lack of anyone prior
to him.

R/Dr Chaim Soloveitchik wrote about the post-rupture textualism caused
by WWII. Kayadua to long timers here, I didn't fully buy into his model.
(Which is kind of scary, disagreeing with a genius on his home turf.)
After all, his own namesake was a textualist well before the Shoah. And
he himself writes about the contrast between the AhS and the MB, noting
that it's indicative of our textualism that the MB won out (in nearly
all Ashkenazi circles) over the AhS. But still, lemaaseh, that makes the
MB out to be a pre-rupture textualist. Even if as an indivual, and thus
not a counter-indication to his description of trends.

And I think R/DCS's "mimeticism" conflates two different things:
1- the imbibing of emotional landmarks, like growing up knowing the
feeling of Elul or the Erev Shabbos Jew.
2- norms of practice; like his textbook example of needing to study
what a kezayis is rather than just knowing what one's parents,
grandparents and everyone else around them eats.

And I think that the writing of the CC is a data point in all this. I'm
not sure how.

My instinct is that the reason why no one tackled the subject before the
CC is because no one felt a deep need to put rigorous halachic formalisms
(mimeticim type 2) around an ethical issue until then.

Or maybe it's an issue of value (mimeticism type 1) erosion. Not that
I think LH socially unaccaptable in too much of our history. But maybe
people knew enough to know that conversation about other people was
not their highest behavior. And when people started thinking
"but it's strue" is a good defense...

I think that it wasn't until the CC's era that we got to the point that
the only way to say X was wrong with any hope of reducing violations of it
was by putting it in SA-style black-letter-legal terms.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Brains to the lazy
micha at aishdas.org        are like a torch to the blind --
http://www.aishdas.org   a useless burden.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                 - Bechinas haOlam


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