Watch Your Tongue
The sages were careful readers of Scripture, taking note of any unusual expression or seeming redundancy to cull something new regarding God’s will. The parasha opens with a discussion of the Yovel (the Jubilee year), the fiftieth year, following a cycle of seven Shmita (Sabbatical years). In the Yovel year, land sold during the previous forty-nine years returns to its original owner. The price of buying the land sold during this forty-nine-year period was dependent on the amount of time for which the owner (renter) would have possession:
When you sell property to your neighbor, or buy any from your neighbor, you shall not wrong (al tonu) one another. In buying from your neighbor, you shall deduct only for the number of years from the Jubilee, and in selling to you, he shall charge you only for the remaining crop years… And do not wrong (v’lo tonu) one another, but fear your God, for I the Lord am your God (Leviticus 25:14-17)
The word “tonu”, from the verb root “yud nun hey” means to “mistreat” or “deceive”. It is used twice in this passage, the first usage is clearly concerned with monetary deception – “honaat mamon” – monetary deception, namely, that the parties involved in a sale, should not falsely represent what is being sold or bought, while the second usage seems to serve as a general conclusion to the paragraph. From the vantage point of the rabbinic sages, however, this general statement seemed superfluous. Since, for them, the idea that the Torah would state something unnecessarily was inconceivable, this second mention of the prohibition of “onaah” came to be understood as a prohibition against “onaat devarim” – verbal deception” or “verbal harm”, raising this sin to the status of a “deoraita” or Torah proscription, as noted in the following Mishnah:
Just as the laws against defrauding apply to buying and selling, so, too, do they apply to spoken words. A person should not say: ‘How much is this thing?’ if he has no intention to buy it. If a person has repented, they should not say to him/her, ‘Remember your former deeds’; if a person was descended from converts, they should not say to him/her, ‘Remember the deeds of your ancestors’; for it is written: ‘You shall not wrong (lo tonu) a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’ (Exodus 22:20) (Mishnah Bava Metzia 4:10)
It is worth noting that this Mishnah distinguishes between two types of verbal harm. One, which is a kind of theft and the other where one abuses someone verbally. When a person goes into a store and takes up the owner’s time and efforts with no intention of buying something, one has in some sense “stolen” from the owner. Obviously, one is under no obligation to buy something an item if the price is not right or if the item is not what was desired, but to go into a store in order to engage the expertise of the owner with no interest in buying from that store in order to buy online, would constitute “onaat devarim”.
This deception is clearly understood to be related to “onaat mamon”. Yet, the sages go further and assert that saying hurtful things to another person is also clearly prohibited BY THE TORAH!
To reenforce this message, the Talmud relates the story of a rabbinic debate between Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and the other sages of his generation – a story made famous in modern legal discussions as an instance of where traditional law has been superseded by majority consensus. Rabbi Eliezer, who represented law backed by divine imprimatur is overruled by his colleagues, who represent law humanly determined by majority rule. While this subplot of the story has become incredibly popular, in context, the Talmud focuses on another element of the story. During the course of events, the sages not only overrule Rabbi Eliezer, a legally necessary outcome, but also publicly shame him and ostracize him. The Talmudic story teller condemned this blatant example of “onaat devarim” by having the sage most responsible for this decision, Rabban Gamliel, die as a result of Rabbi Eliezer’s hurt ascending to God bringing upon him divine punishment. (See Bava Metzia 59a-59b and Jeffrey Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, chapter 2)
The lesson in all of this is clear. Verbal injury and bullying are not only a bad thing to do. They are a Torah transgression. None of us are exempt from observing this prohibition, not rabbi, and especially not politicians.
