EMETTalk - Rabbi Reuven Kigel - Loshon Hara: The Power of Avoiding

all right Rabbi kigo Round of Applause for Rabbi [Applause] kigle I know Rabbi kle can do it a five minutes okay hello everyone okay people are still here don't worry there's more food coming this a little just a break before we eat again okay so we're talking out lanara okay now I want to Define lanara and then I'm going to give you my first experience with lanara hearing about the not doing it not actually speaking lanara I don't remember my first experience with that but it must have been early on in my youth so lanara has four parts first part I think is called lanara that's when you say something negative about someone that is actually true okay that's lanara then there's uh rais that's when you uh are spreading rumors about not spreading rumors but that's when you tell person a that person B said something about them so you're sort of like it's called tail bearing then there's also called onus devarim and that's when you say something that is uh negative about somebody that is actually false okay so Lush and Har is true negativity and onest arm is is uh F I believe false negativity and then there's another there's another one that is when just negative speech in general just Downer is being lushan har okay so that's lushan har so you can't say something what what are we talk what are we going to talk about anyway right we can't can't say anything negative it's true can't say anything negative is false you can't tell someone that someone said something bad about them and you can't really say anything negative in general wow so therefore when I was in college and my father became religious before me and he called me one day he would like to share his uh the things he learned with me and he said wow son you know believe what I learned there's this concept called lanara and you're not allowed to gossip about people now I'm like 21 years old in college I think that's probably 90% of what I'm I'm doing and I tell them I was like I don't believe you so why don't you believe me I said how can God ask us to do anything so difficult you know so and that that was my frame of mind then and I want to tell you the power of avoiding lanara is so strong right because why I'm going to tell you and a lot of people ask me you know wow Rob kley you're so positive so one of the best ways to stay positive is to avoid lanara and I'm going to explain why if we can't say anything negative that's true and if we can't say anything negative that's false and if we can't say things that are negatively General negative in general and if we can't tell people that other people are saying negative things about them and our mind's always working cuz we actually are human and this thing is ticking ticking ticking ticking then what are we going to talk about you know what we're going to talk about we're going to talk about positive things instead of saying negative things about people we're going to think about positive things about people instead of looking at the world in a negative way slowly slowly but not too slowly our mind is going to fix be fixated on looking the world in a positive way instead of seeing the cup half empty we're going to start seeing the cup half full not speaking lanara is the greatest thing for us because it will force us to do something else and you know what that else something else is it's called L to so instead of speaking har right which is evil talk which really just means negative talk even if it's true so we're going to speak be speaking which is positive talk now by the way if if you say something positive about somebody that's so that's good if you say something positive about a situation that's also good if you tell someone that someone says something positive about them that's also good if you say something positive about someone it's not even so true that's also okay because you know what as long as you're thinking positively and then it reframes your mind and instead of looking the world through a negative lens by the way it's so easy to do so easy to do the news everything negativity is just sells like if they have positive news no one will watch it it be like okay one day H too positive so but when we start speaking POS positively and we have positive thing positive speech and positive thought then we're going to start seeing the positive and everything and hasem every Mitzvah no matter how hard we think it is it really is the best thing for us and in this example is because we're going to go through seeing the world in from with a negative lens to seeing the world in a positive lens all by following the of avoiding it's what a beautiful thing thank you Hashem I want to end on one note because I have 10 seconds left and I want the Bell to ring for me also so my grandfather we have a legend here right my grandfather uh back in the old country in Russia he did not speak lanara and did not rat out his friend and went to Siberia for two [Applause] years perfect time I even fit fit in the grandfather in there perfect timing perfect timing