Dear Friends,
I can’t tell you the joy that I experience every week when the One Room Shul House meets. We gather children, parents, Grandparents and a whole lot of good Jewish learning. Each week I teach one major Jewish ethical idea, and it gets introduced when the entire school, parents and all, are in the chapel learning our prayers. The Torah comes out, and this beautiful rhythm of Jewish life gets a chance to dance around the school and stick to the souls of our families. Invariably, the message from that weeks Torah will have something important to say about the ethic of the week. (Okay, so rabbi writes her rhyming messages from God) but they do introduce the wisdom that has crafted our beautiful and eternal heritage for thousands of years.
This past week we learned about the most important prohibition of all, the command not to gossip about other human souls. Gossip, or La Shon Hara in Hebrew. It is considered to be the worst form of moral disease that humans suffer from and almost everyone has a touch of it.
Please enjoy God’s message to our congregation,
La Shon Hara/Gossip
A message from God
Hi Kids, its ME God, your friend
I’ve got an important topic to defend
It's called La Shon Hara, or gossip better known
And it’s the worst kind of poison that our words can throw
La Shon Hara is when you use your words to hurt another
By speaking mean about them and doing it undercover.
It’s talking about someone who isn’t there to defend
So their side is never heard and the story comes out bent
It’s the way to destroy and hurt a soul
By pretending that you have the right to act like a troll
We see it today everywhere we go
People tear apart others without a care to show
They say that sticks and stones can hurt when they hit
But words hit even harder into the heart’s deepest pit
Your mouth you see, was a gift God did create
For words to be used to elevate
The world in which we live day to day
Words can breathe hope into a heart gone astray
Or they can cut like a knife and strike with pain
Tearing apart your soul with utter disdain
Words are like gifts waiting to bring alive
Or words can be like weapons destroying everything in sight
When you talk about another who isn’t there to defend
It is considered the worst kind of human sin
To say things that tear a person asunder
Robs from them the chance to get up from under
The words that fly away like a driven leaf,
can never really ever be retrieved,
You steal someone’s soul and their reputation all in one
Gossip and ugliness can never be undone.
Words we say are like the feathers in a pillow made of down
And if you threw them into the wind they would be impossible to find.