<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><span style="font-size: 20px;" class="">Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, in his book “Love Your Neighbor,” quotes a hilarious true story about Lashon Hora.<br class="">Someone asked a cerain woman if she wished to borrow a copy of “Guard Your Tongue” to study the laws of lashon hora.<br class="">Her response was: “I don’t need it. I never speak lashon hora. But my husband really needs it. He always speaks lashon hora."<br class=""><br class="">We all know about lashon hora and how speaking ill of others is rather a poor reflection of ourselves. However, taken to another level, it was the S’fat Emes who <br class="">said that it also can refer to having failed to speak lashon tov. This brings to mind the poignant story of a man weeping uncontrollably at the grave of his young wife.<br class="">When the rabbi tried to console him by saying how good he was to her, he replied: “Oh, rabbi, how I loved her so much and once I almost told her.” We have <br class="">friends who take the time and effort to say nice things, and it would even be nicer if more of us did that. You never know the ripple effect a good word can have.</span><br class="">ri<br class=""><br class=""><b class="">After receiving another notice from school about bad behavior, a frustrated father sat to explain to his child the source<br class="">of each one of the gray hairs in his once black beard. “This one is from the last time the principal called about your misbehavior.<br class="">This one is from the time you were mean to your sister. This one is from the time you broke our neighbor’s window,” etc., etc.<br class="">The father looked at his child for a response to his appeal for better behavior, to which the child calmly replied: “Oh, now it makes sense why Zaide has such a white beard!”</b><div class=""><b class=""><br class=""></b></div><div class=""><b class=""><br class=""></b></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 15px;" class=""><b class=""><i class="">Speech is the mirror of the soul Publilius Syrus, Latin Writer 85BCE</i></b></span></div></body></html>