A fellow once realized that he had been spending too much time gossiping in the market about his friends and community members, and decided to go and have a chat with the Rabbi. He then proceeded to tell the Rabbi that he felt really bad and wanted to make amends for all of the juicy tidbits of gossip which he had been sharing with others and asked the Rabbi for some advice.
The Rabbi told him that he would help him, but first he would have to go and bring him a feather pillow. He was a little baffled as to the purpose of the pillow but he quickly ran and procured a feather pillow and returned to the Rabbi. The Rabbi then told him, "now I want you to go to the market and cut open the pillow in the wind and let the feathers fly out, and then come back to me and I will tell you what to do next".
This fellow quickly runs to the market cuts open the pillow and watches the feathers scatter in the wind and quickly returns to the Rabbi to find out what to do next. The Rabbi then tells him to go back to the market and gather up all of the feathers, but the fellow shouts out that this is impossible as the wind has already scattered the feathers in all directions all over town. The Rabbi told him to try nevertheless, but he succeeded in gathering up just a tiny amount of the feathers that were in the pillow and ended up being really frustrated.
When he returned to the Rabbi he was really curious as to what the connection of the feathers and his original request of the Rabbi. He was beginning to think that perhaps it was some Kabbalistic and mystical act or perhaps some cryptic message.
The Rabbi didn't leave him hanging and told him, that the reason you couldn't collect all the feathers, was because once you let them loose, the wind carried them everywhere and now it will be virtually impossible to gather everything up. Likewise, the words of juicy gossip that you shared with others, have gone with the wind, and once they have left your mouth or domain, you have no more control on where those words go, in whose ears they will end up in and how much damage may be done as a result.
I have always loved the message of this particular story as it is so simple yet so powerful.
In today's day and age, the medium may not always be gossip via conversation, and instead it might be via email, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Tiktok or for today's youth Snapchat and others. Yet the message is not only still true, it is probably truer than ever, that what leaves our domain is no longer in our control and we need to measure every word, photo or message that we put out, especially when it might negatively effect someone else.
It is this kind of message, which is one of the main underlying themes of this week's Torah Portion of Tazria & Metzora which deals with the subject of Tzaraat which was considered to be a strong and miraculous repercussion of negative talk about others.
In Judaism there is a principle that whatever exists in the negative realm, exists in a far greater realm on the positive side. So if negative speech and gossip is seen as so bad and damaging, it also tells us the power of positive speech and how good it can be. With this in mind, we should never underestimate the power of a good word or a compliment, or just trying to share positive and encouraging words about others and situations which we are involved in.
We can probably all look back at our lives and remember certain people who gave us a boost, because they gave us a compliment, or had a positive attitude in how they dealt with us. Their positive words may have made a profound difference well beyond what they could have ever imagined as they provided encouragement, hope, positivity and so much more, and this is the power of positive speech to and about others which is such a potent and powerful tool.
Shabbat Shalom & Good Shabbos
Yisroel