RELIGION
LASHON HA-RA (THE EVIL TONGUE) AND THE PROBLEM OF JEWISH UNITY
CHARLES BERNSEN
Dissertation under the direction of Professor Shaul Kelner
The premise of this project is that the ancient rabbinic prohibition against lashon hara the sin of speaking badly about another Jew is more than an ethical concept governing interpersonal relations. Because it has implications for discourse aimed at excluding or marginalizing social deviance and independence, the prohibition against lashon ha-ra mediates the tension inherent in the question of how much difference and autonomy can be tolerated within Jewish society. Part I examines contested notions of lashon ha-ra in early rabbinic texts. It identifies two main traditions one that is quite restrictive of demeaning or harmful speech and another that is more tolerant of it. The former was more prevalent among rabbis who were socially or politically vulnerable. The latter was more prevalent among rabbis who were more powerful and felt relatively more secure. Part II looks at how this tension plays out in Sefer Chafetz Chaim, the nineteenth-century legal code and commentary on lashon ha-ra by Lithuanian Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan. Like the early rabbis who emphasized the danger of lashon hara, Kagan was responding to the presence of polemical discourse that he viewed as a profound threat to Jewish social cohesion. But also like the early rabbis there were limits to his concern. Although his primary aim was to suppress rhetoric that was alienating Jews from each other, he nevertheless permitted and even encouraged it for certain pragmatic, ethical and ideological purposes. I argue that in regard to delimiting Jewish collective identity, Kagan responded pragmatically to the forces of religious divergence at work among traditional Lithuanian Jews while at the same time emphatically rejecting the ideology of the Jewish enlightenment that challenged the primacy of traditional texts and the authority of rabbis to interpret them.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-11142011-185139 |
| Date | 06 December 2011 |
| Creators | Bernsen , Charles Jay |
| Contributors | Dr. Shaul Kelner, Dr. Jay Geller, Dr. Martina Urban, Dr. Richard McGregory, Dr. Philip Ackerman-Lieberman |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-11142011-185139/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0015 seconds