A few weeks ago, I emailed Yossi Klein Halevi a link to my work-in-progress on Jewish journalism and asked him for an interview. He replied: "I looked up your web site and have to admit to being troubled...by the lashon harah aspect of your work. Why is it important to know the private lives of Jewish leaders? Would that make better Jewish journalism? What is Jewish journalism? Does it have a commitment not only to truth but also lashon harah?"
After a few desultory exchanges, Yossi refused me an interview.
I was confused. I'd read a lot of his work. I did not notice any difference in his approach to reporting telling personal embarrassing details from any other journalist, Jewish or otherwise. What was I missing? Surely his concerns with lashon hara weren't only about the writing of others? Surely it wasn't his fellow writer's soul and his own income that he was concerned with?
So I read his book Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist. It's a terrific read. Beautifully written like most of his work. But as far as lashon hara is concerned, it is indistinguishable from other memoirs.
For instance, this paragraph on page 208 about the poor sucker who funded Yossi's 1980 paper New Jewish Times:
"The answer was Marv Steinhartz [fictional name for a real person], a young businessman who'd made his money running private hospitals. Steinhartz was what they called in Yiddish a chazir fesser, a gluttonous consumer of pork, an expression that described not merely his diet but his being. Marv was always on the make -- for quick bucks, quick lays, quick highs. A cigarette dangled from his thick lips, a Humphrey Bogart effect ruined by traces of spittle. His favorite words were "chick" and "chic," and he prounounced them both the same way. "The chicks will be lining up at the door if we put out a chick product," he said, explaining his vision for the newspaper."
So how is that not lashon hara by his own standards? He's delving into the embarassing personal details of a prominent Jew.
Now, you could argue that his book is more thoroughly fact-checked than the transcripts I've placed on my site. True. But that has nothing to do with lashon hara. It's lashon hara when it is true.
As Yossi is not answering my emails, I can only conclude that he is a big phony on this matter. Like other Jewish leaders who cry lashon hara when you ask them a tough question, he carries God's name in vain. He invokes divine law to escape from accountability.
I hope he proves me wrong one day and answers some elementary questions about his work.
