Parashat Devarim always falls on the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av. The connection runs deeper than the calendar. The word eicha appears in the parasha – the same word that opens the Book of Eicha, which we read on Tisha B’Av night. But there is a second connection as well: Moshe’s rebuke of Bnei Yisrael for the sin of the meraglim (the spies), which took place on the ninth of Av. That night, the people wept without cause. G-d’s response: if you cry tonight for nothing, you will cry on this night for generations. And so it has been. Both Batei HaMikdash were destroyed on the ninth of Av, and catastrophe after catastrophe has fallen on this day throughout Jewish history.
Rabbi Frand (Power of a Vort) offers a striking insight into the connection between the sin of the meraglim and Tisha B’Av. The sin of the meraglim was, at its core, a form of lashon hara – they spoke negatively about the Promised Land. The Gemara (Sanhedrin 104b) finds an allusion to chet hamеrаglim embedded in Megillat Eicha. The first four chapters of Eicha are written in aleph-bet order – with one notable exception. In the second, third, and fourth chapters, the letter peh appears before the letter ayin, reversing the alphabetical sequence. This is no accident. It symbolizes that the meraglim spoke with their mouths (peh) about things they had not seen with their own eyes (ayin).
Perhaps this is what Chazal are teaching us about lashon hara: one of the forces that makes it so pervasive is the tendency to report what we have not personally witnessed.
This sheds light on a perplexing halacha regarding nega’im. When a person is afflicted with tzara’at – understood as a spiritual punishment for lashon hara – only a kohen may determine whether the nega renders him tamei. The kohen may consult an expert, but he must see the nega himself. A blind kohen cannot make such a determination (Meiri, Sanhedrin 34b). The reason, perhaps, is precisely this: since lashon hara so often spreads through hearsay, through judgments passed on things never actually witnessed, the kohen who rules on the very affliction caused by that sin must see it with his own eyes. A kohen who cannot see cannot rule – because to do so would be to pass judgment on something unseen, the very pattern of behavior the nega comes to correct. Even when we do witness something firsthand we are forbidden from spreading lashon hara – but rumors passed without any firsthand knowledge are all the more destructive.
As we mourn on Tisha B’Av and reflect on the sin of the meraglim, may we take upon ourselves to be more careful about spreading things we have not witnessed ourselves – and in doing so, strengthen the ahavat Yisrael that will bring us the geula sheleima.
Rabbi Shalom Rosner serves as rabbi of Kehillat Ohel Ephraim in Nofei HaShemesh, and as the Rosh Beit Midrash of Machon Lev English Speakers program. He is the author of the Shalom Rav English series, including Parsha, Haggadah and a newly released Birkon, as well as the Hebrew Mosad HaRav Kook series on various Moadim.