13. The Lashon Hara That Caused the Churban

Rav Shlomo Katz tackles a painful truth: there is one kind of Lashon Hara that might be worse than speaking badly about another person—speaking negatively about Eretz Yisrael. Through Rav Kook’s writings and the example of Chazal, we explore how the Meraglim’s sin wasn’t just ancient history. It repeats every time we diminish the Land with our words. This episode calls for a deeper awareness, a shift in mindset, and a refusal to join the “kvetchers.” Instead, we’re invited to become part of the tikkun—proclaiming the splendor, holiness, and inner light of the Land.

What is The Mitzvah of Eretz Yisrael?

In "The Mitzvah of Eretz Yisrael," Rav Shlomo Katz takes us deep into the heart and soul of one of Judaism's most profound and debated mitzvot. What does it really mean to conquer, dwell, and truly live in the land of Israel today? Is it merely about physical settlement, or is there a deeper spiritual conquest at play? Drawing on Torah sources, Chassidic insights, and practical halacha, we’ll explore questions like: How central is living in Eretz Yisrael to fulfilling our Jewish destiny? Can the mitzvah be achieved spiritually outside the land? What is our role in actively building and nurturing the land given to us by Hashem? Join us as we journey to reveal the extraordinary dimensions of this holy mitzvah.

יש כוח. בוקר טוב לכולם. Good morning everybody. Usually when we talk about לשון הרע, we don't refer to talking לשון הרע about objects.

לשון הרע is something that when we speak about it, it's always referred to human beings, to hurting them and to, חס וחלילה, causing צער and pain. But we don't say, listen, you know, that table, you can't speak לשון הרע about that table, it's not nice. Unless, חס וחלילה, you know that by speaking ill about someone's art or their craft, right, or their work, that could be something. But that's not what we're talking about.

There's only one thing that when it comes to things that seem to be not people, that the איסור of לשון הרע is so bad that it causes actually worse things than by speaking about a human being. And what's that? Obviously, speaking לשון הרע about ארץ ישראל. Recently a musician called me, and he said to me, I really need you to start to promote, to start a new series of learning, because when I was traveling last time, I just heard people speaking about all the problems of ארץ ישראל, all the other issues of ארץ הקודש, and if only those issues weren't there, we would have come home.The איסור of speaking לשון הרע about about ארץ ישראל, all we need to do is realize is think about תשעה באב, because and the חורבן הבית, because that's how it all came out. The whole thing.

And we see by the תנאים and the אמוראים, when they were in ארץ ישראל, what they tried to do was to make sure that anytime they saw that there was an issue that someone could say something bad about ארץ ישראל, חס וחלילה, they tried at that moment to be מתקן it, on whatever level it was. I think it was Rav Asi that when he would see some kind of an object on the road, like a sign that was like off or whatever, he would fix the sign. There's no חיוב, but he would fix the sign. Some of the אמוראים, when תלמידים would come from בבל and come to ארץ ישראל, and the אקלים, the אקלים, the weather is different, the climate's different, so what they would do is that in the morning, the גמרא tells us that when the תלמידים were cold, they'd make sure before they would even get cold, let's do שיעור today in the sun.

And at night, when it was getting, you know, during the day when it was getting a little bit hot, they before they can even come to a conclusion that they're feeling uncomfortable, let's move into another area. זאת אומרת, the מהלך of the of the mind of an ארץ ישראל בן תורה is that we're here to make sure like Rav Kook said, to not be join the team of קוועטשערס, but to make sure that whatever we're doing over here, we're adding on to the world of אמונה because, חס ושלום, this is an איסור גמור to speak לשון הרע about ארץ ישראל. I want to quote here a letter from Rav Kook that that sums up exactly what what we said right now. And he says like this: from the אגרות, אגרת צדיק ו'.

Now you know if I if I said it the way like Rav Kook spoke it, it wouldn't sound like what you're used to, right? Because Rav Kook sounded like this: יסוד הגלות והשפלות הנמשך בעולם. But the way we learn Rav Kook normally today is: יסוד הגלות והשפלות הנמשך בעולם, בא רק ממה שאין מודיעים את ארץ ישראל. גלות in the world, the state of exile and being humiliated, not in a good way, only comes because we, our PR for ארץ ישראל stinks, פשוט מאוד. את ערכה וחכמתה.

The way we speak about the value of the חכמה of ארץ ישראל. ואין מתקנים את חטא המרגלים שהוציאו דיבה על הארץ. And we don't מתקן what the מרגלים started with, which was לשון הרע about ארץ הקודש. להגיד, and how do we do the תיקון? להגיד ולבשר בעולם כולו, הודה והדרה, קדושתה וכבודה.

To proclaim the whole world how glorious and full of splendor, holy and honorable ארץ ישראל is. Now, many of us can say, what are you talking about? That's what we spend our lives doing. Israel advocacy and everything like that. We've already spoken about this.

If the focus was more about how beautiful and and special ארץ ישראל was, is, as opposed to how dreadful and disgusting it is to be a Jew in גלות, the tables would be turned much more to the direction that we all hope for. And Rav Kook is not saying over here, go out and, you know, go out and let everyone in גלות know how awful their מציאות really is. That's not it either. It's about just tuning into the splendor and beauty and glory of ארץ הקודש.

And he ends off here and he says: והלוואי שנזכה, אחרי כל ההפלגות כולן מצדנו, להביע אף חלק אחד מרבבה מחמדת ארץ חמדה, ומהדרת אור תורתה, ועילוי אור חכמתה ורוח הקודש המתנוסס בקרבה. הלוואי that should be, it should be amongst our חלק, that our חלק is to even to scratch the surface of sharing even a tiny fragment, a tiny bit of the light, the holiness, the splendor, the light of wisdom, and the רוח הקודש that is basically swimming all around this room right now as we speak and all over this this this this beautiful, beautiful land. So יהי רצון, that should be our חלק as well and we should really participate and take part in the תיקון of the מרגלים. There are a lot of hands going up.

I know these are like trigger week. שחר, what do you want to say? Does this apply to speaking ill about any bureaucratic or governmental body? 100%. Rav Kook, 100%. The שאלה comes up, the שאלה comes up quite often.

The לשון הרע of the מרגלים was about the people in the land. It wasn't just talking about that the fruit were big, it was talking about the בני ענקים ראינו שם. Nothing's changed. Yeah.

I have a really, this is like a passion of mine. Really, this topic. I very much agree with you. יש כוח.

You can come back tomorrow. It's fine. It's a very main. I'm saying passion.

Yeah, a חלוק. I I just want to say on that point. My in-laws had a had a חבר from the dead who was from London, Joey, who lived by them. He went through the עלייה process here and married an American and had is an American now.

And he has gone through the government green card process there, in America. He told me it's harder there. The bottom line is it's hard for a foreigner to be a foreigner in a foreign land to deal with the bureaucracy. And here at least we have נפש בנפש, whatever.

So it's it's just a lie that, oh, it's so hard in Israel and it's so easy everywhere else. It's hard just to be a foreigner and you know, and every time we speak, every even as, I think we're all guilty of this, we may, you know, casually be like, oh, it's so hard, this, that. Like people absorb that and you have to be really careful because a lot of, you know, חוצניקים don't, you know, have negative thoughts or whatever. It's extremely important.

I I actually, I don't think we agree with each other now. Look at this. Because as Rav Shlomo said, the closer you are to where you're supposed to be, the harder it's going to get. A foreigner, an Italian that goes to America, there's no עניין for him to be in America or not.

His עניין is nothing specific. It's דווקא because a ייד has to come, you know, his place is here, the מצד הטבע of the other side trying to push back on where a Jew is supposed to be, you will feel it more intense, but it doesn't negate what you said in the beginning. זאת אומרת, ברוך השם, there's there's plenty of, you know, sources that can help us more today, but it's still, if you're feeling that that tense pressure, it's because we're supposed to be here and the closer you are where you're supposed to be, the harder it's going to get. Where do we know this from? All of ספר במדבר.

ספר במדבר is we're getting closer and closer to where we're supposed to be. Where are we supposed to be? ארץ ישראל. ספר במדבר is the book of mistakes. It's the book of people doing mistake, big people, doing mistake after mistake after mistake.

Why? Because we're we're about to get to where we're supposed to be. So therefore I just I just give us a ברכה to hold on tight and to remember it's where we're supposed to be. For the individual. נכון.

But tell that to an עולה, he'll slap you in the face. Don't try that on an עולה. For the individual, it could work. But you can't tell, you should never, we shouldn't ever put that on someone.

We should all be privileged though to just follow these words of our חלק should be what Rav Kook said, that in through us the revelation of how how how absolutely not just monumental, but how absolutely beautiful it is to just have any שייכות to ארץ אשר עין השם אלוקיך בה מראשית השנה ועד אחרית שנה. יש כוח everybody.