How we know that gossip is a great sin TB Yoma 44 Part Two

The Yom Kippur Avodah service shows how grievous the sin of gossip, לשון הרע, is. The High Priest has slaughtered his bull after he said his second confession. Another priest stirs the collected blood in a bowl so it won't congeal because the High Priest interrupts this this part of the service to something else first. He takes some hot coals from the outer altar and places them on the golden altar found in the Holy of Holies. Immediately the High Priest burns the incense on the coals without saying a word.

According to the Torah, the sprinkling of blood atones for sins. So why is the bull sacrifice interrupted when on Yom Kippur we long for atonement? The answer is simple. The burning of incense also gains atonement for Israel according to today’s daf TB Yoma 44..

“Does incense effect atonement? The Torah mentions the concept of atonement only with regard to offerings. Yes, as Rabbi Ḥananya teaches in a baraita: We learned of the incense that it effects atonement, as it is stated: “And he put on the incense and made atonement for the people” (Numbers 17:12). And the school of Rabbi Yishmael taught: For what does incense effect atonement? For slander. And why is that? Let something that is done in secret, i.e., the incense, which is burned in seclusion within the Sanctuary, come and effect atonement for an act done in secret, i.e., slander, which is generally said in private. (Sefaria.org translation)

Almost all the time the gossiper doesn’t shout his gossip and slander. He quietly whispers it into the ears of a person or small groups of people. Then these people tell others and those others still tell other people. That is how gossip is spread. Since the sin of gossip is done on the qt, the incense atones for it because during no words are necessary or said as the incense is burned.

The burning of incense shows how great is the sin of gossip. Before the high priest can atone all of his sins, the sins of his family, the sins of his fellow priests, and the sins of all of Israel, he must make atonement for the sin of gossip. Only when our sin of gossip’s slate has been wiped clean, can the High Priest continue and make atonement for Israel.¹

Because the sin of gossip so great, no wonder our tradition constantly warns us to watch what we say.

1 From the Hafetz Hayim’s Shemirat Halashon