Exceptions
There are times when a person is supposed to speak out, even though the information is disparaging. Specifically, if a person’s intent in sharing the negative information is for a to’elet, a positive, constructive, and beneficial purpose, the prohibition against lashon hara does not apply. If the lashon hara serves as a warning against the possibility of future harm, such communication is under certain conditions, compulsory. Hotzaat shem ra, spouting lies and spreading disinformation, is always prohibited.
Read more about this topic: Lashon Hara
Famous quotes containing the word exceptions:
“For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud—and it is here above all that exceptions prove the rule—that everything that exists in nature exists in art.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks: as he deals, so he is, and so he appears; he does not see that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his actions; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits; that relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly,—but method, and an even web; and what comes out, that was put in.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every declaration of love contains an unstated list of exceptions and demands.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)