Slandering your own people – K’doshim
A verse in K’doshim tell us, “Do not spread gossip among your people” (Lev. 19:16).
Taken literally, it means, “Don’t be a gossip-mongerer amongst the members of your community” – important advice at any time. But the Baal Shem Tov read the words differently.
According to him, the verse is a warning against spreading nasty comments about the people of Israel.
What a pertinent interpretation for our own time! The Baal Shem was saying, if you can’t speak positively about your own people, don’t speak at all.
Enough, too many, outsiders already say malicious things about Jews and Israel. Jews don’t have to join their band-wagon.
Isaac Deutscher wrote a book called “The Non-Jewish Jew”. The non-Jewish Jew of today is the person who maligns Israel and other Jews, who thinks it’s smart, clever, pleasant to join our enemies.
As a rule they go to other countries to do it, and all they achieve is bringing themselves into disrepute and making things worse for those who are doing their level best to support Jews, Judaism and the Jewish State.
