Cynthia Ozick, a Jewishly-informed extraordinary author and woman of letters, whose novella, The Cannibal Galaxy (originally appearing in The New Yorker of November 10th 1980 as “The Laughter of Akiva”) is, among other things, a profound meditation on the integration of Jewish and general studies within a day school context, a theme quite close to my heart and career, published an intriguing essay entitled “The Novel’s Evil Tongue” as the front-page article in the most recent New York Times’ Book Review Section for Sunday, December 20, 2015 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/books/review/the-novels-evil-tongue.html?_r=0 ).
Ozick posits in her essay that, on the one hand, telling stories inherently involve the Halachic prohibitions of gossip (Lashon HaRa; Devarim 24:9), talebearing (Rechilut; VaYikra 19:16) and rumor (assuming that the information has been deliberately falsified, Cheshad and Motzee Shem Ra; Devarim 22:13-9), and on the other, that biblical stories, beginning with the account of Adam and Chava giving-in to the beguilements of the primordial Nachash, all contain these prohibited elements!