You know the old joke about the Jew stranded on a desert island? By the time he was rescued, he had built himself a whole town. Before he left the island, he gave his rescuers a tour of the house, the gym, and the two synagogues he made. “Why do you need two synagogues?” they asked him. “This is my synagogue,” he said. “And that synagogue, I wouldn’t set foot in it!”
For some reason, it’s easier to make offensive comments about “a kid” from that school or “a member” of that synagogue. We tell ourselves, “I wasn’t talking about anyone in particular. I didn’t say anyone’s name.”
But by leaving out the name of the person, the insulting comment then refers to every kid at that school, and every member of that synagogue. “The kids from that school are so disrespectful.” “The members of that synagogue don’t really care.”
When Bernie Madoff was arrested in 2009 for his horrible Ponzi scheme, anti-Semites gleefully described him as a “Jewish” thief. The implication was that all Jews are thieves. It became an easy way to target one group: Jews.
Similarly, if we draw attention to the fact that something wrong is being done by “one of them” or “one of those you-know-whos,” then we are in fact besmirching that whole group.
It’s lashon hara to express disdain for a whole group or community, whether Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Israeli, Russian, or any other group.
Henry Thomas Buckle, English historian and author, said, “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
And it doesn’t help if we are members of the group that we’re talking about. Even if we might not mind or take offense at our comments, other people in the group might.
Daily To-Do:
Today, keep your ears open for comments that address a whole group of people at one time. Think about how you might modify your own speech to eliminate such comments.