I want to begin tonight by saying that this is my favorite crowd. Not many people show up for the second night of Rosh Hashanah, and your presence feels me with love and awe. I see your devotion to recreating yourself, to being part of the community, to take leave from the hustle and bustle of an ever busier world to go inward and connect with the version of yourself that brings light and love to our community.
Songs, sentences and words dominate our machzor, the prayerbook for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This is the time, says our tradition, in which we examine ourselves as if we were God, through God’s eyes.
The shofar’s call on Rosh Hashanah serves as both awakening and warning — awakening us to teshuvah, warning that there is a real internal war going on, above and beyond the many wars we see in the news.
Many of the prayers remind us of the power of our words. Just as the shofar’s blast can carry across great distances, so too can our speech reach far beyond what we intend.
Many years ago, I was hanging out with a girl who was studying in an Orthodox seminary, and she was always gossiping about other people and criticizing them quite harshly. When I balked at something she had said about another friend, she turned to me and said “lashon hara, lamed hey, let’s go to gehenah the easy way”. Gehena is the Jewish version of hell. And yet she laughed and simply continued. Needless to say, our friendship never really took off.
A Brazilian psychologist, José Ângelo Gaiarsa, wrote a brilliant book called General Treatise on Gossip.
In it, Gaiarsa makes a sociological, philosophical, historical and psychological analysis of gossip. He states that when we gossip about an individual, we project onto them all the prejudices that are within us. And by doing so, we automatically free ourselves of any flaws, making ourselves models of perfection.
The consequences, he says, are serious not only for the people we talk about but also for us: besides harming the other person, we frustrate any and all possibility of internal change that could lead us to a higher level of consciousness.
In the Jewish tradition, lashon hara — literally “evil tongue” — refers to derogatory speech about others, even when truthful, that serves no constructive purpose. This is the crux of it: constructive purpose. If you are criticizing someone, it has to be in a way that builds them up, and not tears them down.
Lashon Hara encompasses gossip that damages reputations, has the power of embarrass people publicly, or is able to diminish them in others’ eyes simply for our own entertainment or social bonding. Lashon Hara is not about making up stories or creating lies or exagerating things for entertainment. These fall in different categories, motzi shem ra and ona’at devarim. I am not focusing on that today, but on what we could call the garden variety of evil speech. The speech that is actually about truth. Unlike outright lies, lashon hara is specific in that it hides behind the shield of truth while still causing real harm.
The centrality of speech in our spiritual development becomes clear when we examine the vidui, our confession. As we beat our chests on Yom Kippur, many of the sins we acknowledge relate directly to our words: al chet shechatanu lefanecha b’dibbur peh (for the sin of idle chatter), b’lashon hara (for evil speech), b’siach sitnah (for causeless hatred expressed through speech), and b’vidui peh (for insincere confession). This last one is amzing: look at us, even as we confess we don’t really mean it. The liturgy recognizes what the sages knew — that our words are among our most powerful and dangerous instruments.
The Talmud teaches that lashon hara is so powerful as a weapon that it “kills” three people: the speaker, the listener, and the one spoken about. But its destructive power extends even further—it tears at the very fabric of community itself.
Each piece of lashon hara is like pulling a thread from a tapestry; individually, it may seem insignificant, but collectively, these conversations unravel and weaken, bit by bit, the trust and solidarity that bind us together.
When we engage in lashon hara, we don’t just harm individuals — we poison our communal life, we create an atmosphere of suspicion where people wonder what others might be saying about them behind closed doors.
On Rosh Hashanah, we think of God as the Judge, capital J. But we must remember that we ourselves are judges every day. Every time we engage in lashon hara — sharing that truthful but unnecessary negative story, making that accurate but cutting observation, sharing that juicy piece of information to get eyes on us for a few seconds — we become prosecutors rather than advocates for our fellow human beings, and architects of division rather than builders of relationships.
The midrash tells us that on Rosh Hashanah, our words from the entire year are weighed alongside our deeds.
Every piece of gossip, every moment we chose entertainment over kindness, every time we spoke truth without constructive purpose — all of this testimony comes before the heavenly court.
But the midrash assumes we embrace unthinkingly the imagery of a heavenly court – we, modern people, chafe at that. But in reality, lashon hara is, as some people like to say “a thing”. You don’t have to buy into the imagery of a heavenly court to judge yourself. Today, regardless of how you deal with the ideas of God as a king, of angels trembling before a Judge, we are lovingly nudged and invited to consider how our speech patterns have either strengthened or weakened the sacred bonds of our community, our friendships and our families.
Here lies our opportunity: just as the shofar’s different sounds each serve a purpose in our spiritual awakening, so too can our speech serve constructive purposes. We can choose words that heal rather than harm, that build up rather than tear down, that weave communities together rather than unravel them. When we must share difficult truths, we can ask ourselves: is this necessary? Will it prevent harm? Am I the right person to say this? Am I saying it in the right way? Will this strengthen or weaken the fabric of our community, our family, our relationship?
As we enter this new year, let us commit to transforming our speech into a tool of teshuvah and community building.
When tempted to share that juicy but purposeless story, when we are tempted to criticize someone without them being present, may we remember the shofar’s call and choose silence or, better yet, choose words that bring blessing, repair, and unity into the world.
May this year be sweetened by the discipline of thoughtful speech and the honey of kind words that bind us together in sacred relationships, be they community, family, friendships. L’Shanah tovah tikatevu – may we inscribe ourselves and others in the book of life.