Lying about people is one of the worse sins that we can commit. It can lead to people being attacked. We Jews have had to deal with this throughout our history. So now that it is happening again we have to stand tall and fight it.
Good morning. Now for a quick Devar Torah.
One of the major themes we confront on Yom Kippur is something we probably don’t think about enough: the power of speech.
Look through the Al Chet, the confession we recite again and again on Yom Kippur, and notice how many of our sins involve words. We confess for falsehood, for gossip, for lashon hara, for things said carelessly and for things said deliberately.
Why so much emphasis on speech?
Because words matter.
We all understand the attraction of gossip. Someone tells us a juicy story about somebody else and immediately we want to hear more. There are newspaper columns, magazines and entire industries built around that human weakness. Sometimes the gossip is malicious; sometimes it isn’t. But we want to know what somebody else did, what somebody else said and what scandal somebody else is involved in.
But there is an even more serious problem: repeating something that isn’t true.
There is a difference between making an honest mistake and saying something we know is false. And there is another danger as well: hearing something so often that eventually we stop asking whether it is true at all.
George Orwell illustrated this brilliantly in 1984. At the end, Winston’s tormentors don’t merely want him to say that two plus two equals five. They want him to believe it. Once we surrender our commitment to truth, eventually we can convince ourselves of almost anything.
This is particularly important when we speak about other Jews and about Israel. Serious accusations require serious evidence. We should not accept a claim simply because it confirms what we already believe, nor reject evidence simply because it makes us uncomfortable. Our obligation is to seek the truth.
That obligation applies to everyone—including people with whom we agree.
There is currently a lyng Israeli documentary called NAZA, a Hebrew abbreviation referring to collateral damage, made by two radical Leftists. It makes extremely serious allegations concerning the conduct of the war in Gaza. Those allegations have been disproved, and the film itself has become the subject of an enormous controversy.
But anyone about the who knows anything about the IDF and its regulations knows it to be a lie. Remember that I am a veteran of theIDF and know what would have happened if I violated these regulations. There is a larger Yom Kippur lesson here.
Before repeating an accusation, ask: Is it true? What is the evidence? Do I actually know this, or am I repeating something because I heard it from someone whose politics I share? And am I applying the same standard of truth to my own side that I demand from everybody else?
Yom Kippur requires us to examine not only what goes into our mouths, but what comes out of them.
Our words can destroy a reputation. They can spread hatred. They can turn a falsehood repeated a thousand times into something people simply assume is true. And once words leave our mouths—or today, once we post them on social media—we cannot easily take them back.
So during Yom Kippur, when we strike our chests and confess for the sins we have committed through speech, perhaps we should stop and think about what that really means.
Did I gossip?
Did I repeat something without knowing whether it was true?
Did I exaggerate because it helped my argument?
Did I remain silent when I knew something being said was false?
And perhaps most difficult of all: was I willing to discover that something I wanted to believe wasn’t true?
Yom Kippur demands more than simply saying, “I’m sorry.” It demands that we change.
And one of the most important changes we can make in the coming year is very simple:
Before we speak, make sure our words are worthy of being spoken.
Something to think about.
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