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Speaking lashon harah is a very serious crime. We all know that. It’s all over our literature. For example, the gemara says that lashon harah is more severe than the three cardinal sins. And the Shelah, on this week’s parsha, sees no need to give long speeches about this. He just makes a simple observation. “A pervasive plague that afflicts one’s body, clothes, and home. From this he should realize how critical it is to purify his words, thoughts, and actions. That’s enough for anyone who has any understanding.â€

But as pervasive as its punishments are, so are the challenges to speaking it. It’s hard to escape speaking lashon harah. So what’s the solution? Is it to go the extreme and stay quiet?

The Alter from Kelm says that, even if that were possible, it would be wrong.

He points out the irony in the way that the Torah warns us not to speak lashon harah… by telling us to remember what Hashem did to Miriam when she spoke against Moshe. In other words, the Torah says something negative about Miriam in order to get us to stop speaking negatively about people. What’s that all about?

And what’s more confusing is that Rashi in Beraishis says that the Torah purposely hid the identity of the fruit from which Adam and Chava ate in order to preserve its dignity. What does that mean? Is the Torah more concerned with the dignity of the fruit than of Miriam?

The obvious difference lies in whether there is to’eles, a constructive purpose, to saying something disparaging or not. Evidently, the Torah considered that the most effective way to warn us about lashon harah was by referencing the story of Miriam, while there was no compellingly productive purpose to letting us know which fruit was eaten.

This idea represents the great challenge of life.

In regards to the challenge of lashon harah specifically, we see that we can’t hide in the act of silence. Because there are times we have to speak. Parsha Kedoshim says, “Do not to go as a talebearer,†and then immediately, in the same posuk, it says, “Don’t stand idly by the blood of your brother.†R’ Chaim Volozhiner explains this to mean that you are forbidden to speak lashon harah… but if you have to say it to save someone, then you have to say it.

This is the balance. And in this balance lies the challenge of living, because it means that we don’t have only one one-size-fits-all behavior that we bring to all circumstances. The Torah doesn’t allow us to be complacent, and enjoy the luxury of riding through life in cruise control mode. Nor does it allow us to stand along the sidelines and play it safe. Instead, we have to engage situations. We have to think things through. We

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have to make judgments and decisions.

The playing field of life is not black and white; it is grey, because it’s the choices that we make on how to handle those grey areas – when we have to think about whether to speak or not to speak, or whether to act or not to act – where we are able to show our true values and our true character.