DY: “That was a very poor way of defending your opinion that it is lashon hora.”
I had already tried the straightforward cerebral approach (which is my derech in general) and you didn’t respond, so I decided to try copy someone else’s more emotional tactic and see if it worked better. I have noticed in general that most people seem more likely to respond to emotional arguments than to intellectual arguments.
Since I can’t come up with those types of arguments, I decided to copy someone else’s and see if it worked better and if you were more likely to respond. And apparently, I was right since you did respond and you hadn’t responded to my previous post.
“The point was simply that it’s Loshon Hora.”
“Then you seemed to have missed the point of what you copied from Imamother. That post was saying that the intention of those objecting to what they did was to gossip.”
I understood the point of what I copied from Imamother. There was a reason why I answered the way I did, and I was planning to follow up with more clarification.
My point was as follows: The quote from Imamother was not meant as proof that you were speaking LH.
I just want to clarify something before I go on. The term LH can be used in two ways – either to refer to speech that is forbidden or to any derogatory speech even when it fulfills the toeles conditions and is permitted. (In “A lesson a day” they explain that the second definition is not technically accurate, but it is used for lack of a better term, although the word “l’toeles is tacked on).
In this case, what was being said was clearly LH according to the broader meaning of the term (while this is not the accurate definition of the term and it is NOT the way I used it previously, for clarity’s sake, I am using the term that way right now). The question is whether or not it is l’toeles. In order for LH to be l’toeles, there are many conditions that must be fulfilled, it is very difficult to fulfill them, and it is very easy to convince oneself that they are being fulfilled, and one needs to ask a sheilah, especially if the LH is taking place in such a public forum. I pointed this out to you previously, and you did not respond.
Obviously, if you are speaking LH (in the broader sense of the term), you think that your intentions are l’sheim Shamayim, since I don’t think you are the type who would deliberately speak LH (in the narrower sense of the word). I know it is something you are usually very careful about, and you seem like the Yarei Shamayim type. And I’m sure that your intentions were 95% l’sheim Shamayim, but if you were nichshal, I think that means that your intentions were not 100% l’sheim Shamayim, even though I am sure that you thought that they were.
And that is how I understood the quote from ImaMother, and that is how I meant it. I think the poster realized that a lot of people don’t listen if you just say, “it’s LH” but if you present it in the type of way Imamother did, people are more likely to listen. And this is something I have noticed in general – that that type of tactic tends to be more effective, although it is something I personally find hard to do.
If I understand correctly, you thought that I was starting out assuming your intentions were to gossip and that was my proof that you were speaking LH (in the narrow sense) It was actually the other way around – I was assuming that the statements were LH (in the narrow sense), and that therefore, your intentions must not be 100% (although they might be 99.99999% l’sheim Shamayim).
The basis for my assumption that what you were saying is LH is mainly the fact that it is clearly LH in the broad sense, and therefore a sheilah should be asked to find out if it is LH in the narrow sense. This is no less a sheilah than a sheilah in Hilchos Shabbos or anything else. It is a very serious matter, and one that really requires a Psak Halacha. In addition, I really didn’t see the conditions of toeles being fulfilled here.
Since you don’t seem to want to ask the sheilah, I will bli neder, try to do so on your behalf, but I will have to wait till 5:00 or 5:30 my time when the hotline is open. I was actually planning to go to sleep tonight, but this is important, so I will try to stay up, b”n.