Maxon came home from school one day with a tale of a fight between some kids in his class. He told me what he heard happened, who was injured and how badly, who was punished and how severely.
The next day, Maxon learned the truth from the teachers, and it wasn't a surprise to me that the two stories didn't match up.
"It didn't happen the way everyone said it did, huh?" I asked Maxon.
"Nope."
"That is gossip," I said (sadly not in an Irish accent like Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Doubt"). "In Hebrew we call it lashon hara."
Lashon hara, the evil tongue, is considered a weighty sin in Judaism – bad enough for God to saddle you with a nasty skin disease and banish you for a week, which is what happened to Miriam when she dissed her brother for marrying a Cushite.
I asked Maxon, "How do you think those kids felt knowing people were probably talking about them and what they did, especially when the things they were saying weren't true?"
"They probably didn’t feel so great."
As I spoke to Maxon about lashon hara and the importance of refraining from talking about other people, I discovered that explaining the difference between sharing something that happened with a friend and gossiping about something that happened with a friend is a delicate distinction. In the case of Miriam, it wasn't just the smack talk against Moses that got her in trouble, it was also the judgment that seasoned her smack talk. Lashon hara is a type of verbal murder, with the victim being someone's reputation.
As moms, we are all guilty of being too quick to judge other childrens' "badness" or "goodness" based on behaviors we witness or hear about. As the mom of a son with a checkered past filled with "incidents" requiring apology notes and harsh consequences, I always wondered if other moms were gossiping about me or my boy. I wouldn't have blamed them — of course they would be protective of their kids — but having to be the defender of the biter/hitter/kicker/pusher gave me another perspective, one I am thankful to have.
Sometimes, good kids do things that aren’t so good. I hope I do enough to teach my boys that those kids probably feel bad enough without our help.