LEAD TIDBIT:
Guard Your Tongue

What do you usually associate with that phrase? Survey says... LASHON HARA. Without diminishing the seriousness of LASHON HARA, let’s take a look at another prohibition, one from this week’s sedra, that fits equally well with the important advice of Guard Your Tongue.

The prohibition under discussion is ONA’AT D’VARIM. We’ll explain it a piece at a time. ONA’AH is cheating, defrauding. The Torah warns a person not to take unfair advantage of others in money matters. The specific example is not to overcharge for land if the number of years to the next Yovel release of land is few. The treatment of this prohibition in the Oral Law makes it obvious that the Written Torah was giving an example of a more general type of sin.

And then, the Torah seems to say, “Speaking of ONA’AH, be careful not to harm your fellow even with words”. And this prohibition is strengthened by the Torah by following it in the pasuk with YIR’AT HASHEM, reverence of G-d, and then the statement, I Am HaShem your G-d. The implication is that defrauding one of money is a “regular” sin, but harming one with words is something that really gets G-d angry (so to speak). Don’t you dare violate this one, because I (says HaShem) will consider it a lack of Yir’at Shamayim and a denial of Me.

Okay, it’s a serious offense. What is it? According to the Sefer HaChinuch it has many forms. So many, in fact, that they cannot all be mentioned, and that they vary from person to person and situation to situation.

Among the examples of Ona’at D’varim are: Not reminding a Baal T’shuva or a convert of his previous “life”. If one says a hurtful thing on purpose to hurt - Hey, you think your such a tzadik now, remember that you ate bacon every morning for breakfast - then that is truly a terrible thing to do to another Jew. But it could be very benign, and still be hurtful to the other person, and you might never even know that you hurt his feelings. Let so-and-so argue with this missionary; he used to be like him. You didn’t mean to hurt the convert. You seriously thought that he’d be the better one to argue. But he was hurt by the reminder of the life he gladly gave up to become a Jew.

Group of women need someone to go to the store for the group. Oh, let so-and-so go, she doesn’t have kids she has to watch anyway. Hurtful.
Hey, eating too much pizza and ice cream lately? Hurtful.

Hurtful words, once spoken, are very hard to undo. Maybe impossible. An apology does something, but cannot take all the hurt away. It is best not to say hurtful words in the first place. How? Think carefully before speaking.
What follows Ona’at D’varim in the Torah? Keep all mitzvot and live in security in Eretz Yisrael.