By Yishai Gross
The following piece is in response to the article “A Day in the Life of a Beren Security Guard,” which appeared in this year’s Purim edition of the YU Observer. If you haven’t read it, please don’t. The article consisted of a mean-spirited bashing of the security guards who work constantly to protect us. Upon reading it, the article struck me as a flagrant violation of the prohibition against lashon hara (evil speech). We are all taught from a young age about the negative impacts of lashon hara and the importance of being vigilant in what we say and hear about other people, and the security guards who work day and night to ensure our safety should be the last people any of us would wish to harm. The idea that anyone would want to write derogatorily about them, or that anyone could allow such writing to be widely distributed, is an enormous breach of the standard that we should be holding ourselves to.
Explicit violations notwithstanding, speaking derisively about somebody else could never be considered praiseworthy behavior from a Torah (or any other) perspective. When I asked Rabbi Daniel Feldman about this topic, he sent me an email in which he explained that “there are values that are displayed from the halachic system that at a minimum represent ideal behavior for a ben Torah, and, more so, when viewed in light of the contemporary sensitivity to individual dignity, create a mandate by virtue of kiddush Hashem.”
I’ll add that in this specific case, there are even more reasons that negative speech is unacceptable. There are very few people more deserving of our hakarat hatov (gratitude) than those who make it their livelihood to protect people, especially Jewish people and especially Jewish people studying in the beit midrash. To overlook these considerations displays a severe lack of the basic kindness with which we should be conducting ourselves.
The fact that the article was posted online for large quantities of people to see only makes it more devastating. Lashon hara is bad enough when spoken to only one person; it’s immeasurably worse when presented publicly. We all know that once something is online it’s nearly impossible to delete. This adds an incredible weight to everything that gets put online, especially when it is intended to attract attention.
Whenever anyone writes an article to be published, it should be checked repeatedly to ensure that no one could be adversely impacted by its contents. It’s clear that very little effort went into checking “A Day in the Life of a Beren Security Guard,” since from its second sentence it already creates a harmful image of the people it’s talking about. As the ones who made “A Day in the Life of a Beren Security Guard” available to the public, it seems fair to say that the YU Observer shares some of the blame for the violation that was committed.
No different from any other newspaper, the YU Observer is represented by the things it publishes. Articles contained in it, and spread by it, should be in line with its mission and work toward the goals it pursues. The YU Observer’s website boasts: “the YU Observer is the independent student-run newspaper of Yeshiva University with the sole focus on promoting student voices,” and “providing a space where everyone can speak up and raise awareness upon issues that they are passionate about.” Missing from this is any mention of Torah or religious values. In fact, the mission of the YU Observer seems to prioritize including all speech over concerns regarding lashon hara or any halachic or moral considerations. For this reason, it’s important that everyone reading the paper be aware that what they read may not contain halachically or morally valid stances. Just because an article (or advertisement) appears in the YU Observer does not mean it can’t be laced with ideas that may have a corrupting impact on the reader.
Most obviously, to read an article such as “A Day in the Life of a Beren Security Guard” without staying vigilant of the fact that it contains harmful negative speech, or to allow it to alter your attitude toward the security guards who spend their time protecting you, would be a major problem.
Other, subtler instances of halachic heedlessness have been printed before as well. Even less obvious promotions of invalid stances could certainly cause as much harm as conspicuously problematic ones. For example, an article from earlier this year seemed to protest the rules of kol isha, the prohibition preventing women from singing at mixed events, and featured a quote calling it “a double standard that has weak basis in halacha.” This is objectively untrue, yet it appeared in the pages of the YU Observer nonetheless. To put this idea in the YU Observer could easily lead to someone mistakenly believing that kol isha is less legitimate than it is. The value of speaking with lashon naki (clean language) is important as well, yet the article about the need for feminine hygiene products in YU restrooms which was featured on the front page of the last edition was clearly lacking in this regard. These cases aren’t as blatant as the lashon hara about our security guards, but should have been edited to avoid anti-halachic content.
Judging by the YU logo that appears on the front page of the paper, it’s clear that the YU Observer tries to incorporate Torah values in all that it prints. However, the fact that these pieces did manage to get through indicates that there exists a lack of vigilance when it comes to monitoring what the YU Observer publishes. Mindfulness in our speech is the central point of what prohibitions like lashon hara are about in the first place, and as such there is no room to be lax in filtering every article that is submitted before publishing it.
Editor’s Note: This Letter to the Editor was written in response to the YU Observer’s satire Purim edition, the YU Absurder.