What Is The Magnitude Of LaShon HaRa?

0:51Never speak about others unless it serves a useful purpose. There are exceptions, such as when providing warnings to the public. For example, it is useful to inform others if someone is promoting misleading information. That way, those who read or hear about that individual's work will know to double-check it. After verifying the accuracy of the warning, they may decide to discard the misleading materials. That's useful. But saying that Steve is rich, or Joe, I don't know, did this or did that, there's nothing useful that's going to come out of it. And most of the time it can create a lot of problems. Nothing good will come out of it. So generally speaking, it's better to never speak about people unless it's for a useful purpose. And also, how would someone actually do Teshuva for Lashon Hara? How would somebody do teshuva for Lashon Hara? A few things. First and foremost, like everything else, he has to stop. He has to stop saying Lashon Hara. Second, he has to commit to not talking about other people, not saying Lashon Hara in general in the future. Meaning, not just stop today, but already make some type of plan of "How could I stop myself from doing it in the future?" What triggered me? Oh, every time I meet Steve, he likes to talk about people. So, you know what? From now on, I'm not hanging out with Steve.

2:09Every time I go to this class, I talk about people. Okay, from now on, I'm not going to the class. He does things, too, and he sets himself up with some type of fence to preserve himself, if you will. The third thing is, he contemplates what he did and what kind of damage he caused, and he regrets it. He regrets it. He starts feeling bad for it. Another thing is he tries to fix it. How? Now he has to go and try to say, "Listen," he tells the person, "Listen, you know that rumor that came out about you, or the information that came out about you, it came from me. And I want to let you know, I'm sorry, and I'm doing teshuva, I'm really sorry." Now, that by itself is not enough. Why? Somebody came to the Chafetz Chaim and said, "I want to do teshuva for Lashon Hara." He goes, "Okay, fine, no problem, go to your house, bring me a pillow." "A pillow?" "Say, yeah, bring me a pillow." "Okay. Guys, Rav says bring a pillow, bring a pillow!" So the man goes to his house and says to his wife, "Honey, I need a pillow." She replies, "Bring it back." He insists, "I need a pillow; I don't know if I need it. The rabbi never said I'm going to take it back." So he takes the pillow, a nice, fancy, fluffy pillow full of feathers, and goes to the rabbi. The rabbi tells him, "Okay, come with me." They go to the roof, and the rabbi says, "Here, take this knife and rip the pillow apart." He rips the pillow apart and feels bad, thinking, "This pillow cost $50." He asks the rabbi, "What now? Is that teshuva?" The rabbi responds, "No, no. Now take all the feathers and throw them in the air."

3:32That's two bumps. We have to rub a fight through the feathers in the air. All the things fluid in the air flew in the air, flew in the air, flew in the air, and the guy's like, wow, to buy is really easy. Just cost me 50 bucks. The Rabbi said no, no, it's not the end. This is the beginning because what's now goes, now go collect all the feathers. Go collect all the feathers. Yes, it's impossible. I Impossible! If one feather goes over there, and another feather goes over here, a feather that I don't even know where it went. He goes, "Ah, that's true, it's impossible to know the magnitude of your damage." Impossible! Why? You said one thing, who knows how far it traveled! You wrote, hold on, you wrote a comment on the internet, "Don't listen to Rabbi such-and-such, he is too hard on people, he talks about Gehinnom in every shiur." And guess what? You don't know how many people read that comment and, because of that, didn't listen to the shiur and didn't do teshuva. Now you have a serious problem. You have a serious problem. You have feathers that are lost, and you don't know the magnitude of your sin. So, what do you do aside from stopping and putting a fence for yourself to not do it again, and aside from being sorry for the magnitude of damage that you've done, that you don't even know how big it is? You have to do the opposite. Publicize Torah.

4:48That teaches people not to sin. That teaches people to do teshuva. You have to become a partner in kiruv. You have to help people do teshuva. Why? Because other people doing teshuva, fulfilling that mitzvah, it's as if they are undoing the damage that you've done in the past. So Kiruv becomes a very, very serious part of all of our teshuva, and that's why in Sefer Yechezkel, the prophet Yechezkel says, don't let your sins from the past be a stumbling block in the future, meaning that, yes, you've done sins, yes, you want to do teshuva, but in reality, the only way for every person to do teshuva is to become a partner of other people doing teshuva. Because there are certain sins, many of them, that you cannot even understand the magnitude of the damage. because it's beyond you, it's like feathers; they went in the air, they went to different places. You don't know how far they went. You don't know how far this word traveled. So how are you going to fix that? You can't. You can only fix it by getting somebody else to stop, by getting somebody else to refrain from it. It's the same thing with wasting seed, and the same with all of the other sins, you have to get other people to avoid committing them. When you do that, that's the only way to really undo the damage that we've done in the past. Does someone have a question? Yes, you said that...