People complain to me about our society's political and ideological polarization, and many blame it on the media. A friend who is a journalist once explained to me that media companies know there is more money to be made by pitting people against each other than by bringing them together, and craft their programming and talking points accordingly.
While this may seem to be a good business strategy for some, it’s tragic when regular people adopt those habits and speak negatively about anyone who thinks or behaves differently from them. “But how can I just sit back while my neighbor/colleague/relative espouses such foolishness?” people ask. “Are we not obligated to call out such foolishness?”
Recently I heard a story of a 12-year-old orphan who was expelled from several schools in the span of a few months and gave much grief to his struggling mother. Worried no school would agree to accept her son as a student, she requested an audience with the Rebbe and dragged her son with her to the midnight meeting.
After she tearfully described her predicament, the Rebbe turned to the boy and said “Don't you want to make your mother happy?”
“No!” the boy brazenly replied.
“Very good! He only speaks the truth…” the Rebbe said with a big smile.
“That moment changed my life forever,” the boy recalled over 50 years later. The Rebbe’s positive compliment about his truthtelling became the catalyst for the turning point in his young and difficult childhood.
This week’s parsha is called “Emor” which means “Speak!” Although the word is the beginning of G-d’s command to Moshe to “speak to the Kohanim, Aharon’s children,” the fact that the name of the parsha is the one word “Emor,” indicates that there is a general instruction for all of us to speak.
What type of speech can the name of this week’s parsha be instructing us to engage in? Speaking words of Torah is already a separate commandment in Deuteronomy quoted in the famous paragraph of the Shema. Prayer is also a separate mitzvah, so what other “speaking” mitzvah is there?
We are instructed to say good things about people, especially when their behavior seems to warrant the opposite reaction. Not to condone such behavior or ignore it, but because speaking positively about others - even in their absence - is the most powerful way to reveal their inherent goodness. Because speech is a revealing agent. Just like speech reveals your hidden thoughts, speaking of others’ virtues - however hidden - forces them into the open.
Tuesday we will celebrate Lag B’Omer. The famous Talmudic sage Rabi Akiva had 24,000 students who died in a horrific plague because of their animosity and inability to speak positively about each other. The plague started after Pesach and ended on Lag B’Omer, celebrated ever since, to emphasize the importance of always finding the good in others. Because this is the best way to perfect humanity and the entire world and usher in an era of eternal peace and tranquility through Moshiach.