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Rabbi Sacks, zt’’l, had prepared a full year of Covenant & Conversation for 5781, based on his book Lessons in Leadership. The Sages were eloquent on the subject of lashon hara, evil speech, the sin they took to be the cause of tzara’at. But there is a meta-halachic principle: “From the negative you can infer the positive.”[1] So, for example, from the seriousness of the prohibition against chillul Hashem, desecrating God’s name, one can infer the importance of the opposite, Kiddush Hashem, sanctifying God’s name. It therefore follows that alongside the grave sin of lashon hara, there must in principle be a concept of lashon hatov, good speech, and it must be more than a mere negation of its opposite. The way to avoid lashon hara is to practice silence, and indeed the Sages were eloquent on the importance of silence.[2] Silence saves us from evil speech but in and of itself it achieves nothing positive. What then is lashon hatov?

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