As a rabbi and professor who writes every day, I pay special attention to the line in my Yom Kippur confession that asks pardon for sins of dibbur peh, the damage done simply by “speaking.” Included in that rubric is everything from conversations that are simply a waste of time, to arguing, lying, and using language lightly without regard for its weightiness: its power to convince but also to hurt.[i] Jewish law best captures that hurting power under the category of lashon hara, “evil speech.”
America, these days, is awash in concerns for “evil speech,” especially as it butts up against our first-amendment right to freedom of speech. A lengthy history of free speech by Princeton professor Fara Dabhoiwala demonstrates how complex the topic really is, but the book’s subtitle alerts us in advance to his conclusion: not just What is Free Speech? But The History of a Dangerous Idea!
Is the very idea of free speech dangerous? Judaism’s many warnings about speech going wrong might lead us to think so. Lashon Hara, it turns out, is but one of three categories of hurtful speech that Judaism prohibits. The least serious is r’chilut, repeating ordinary “gossip,” that might seem relatively innocuous but is, by definition, negative. Lashon hara is worse, in that it designates purposely malicious speech that will likely damage others, even if it is true.[ii] Outright slander, making up lies about someone, thereby ruining someone’s reputation (motsi shem ra), is the worst of the three.
Given these grave concerns, we might wonder if Judaism even does advocate freedom of speech. Our classic sources are certainly more focused on its limits. Some organizational websites try to demonstrate that the right of free speech is, nonetheless, a Talmudic value.[iii] Their evidence is, at best, suggestive.
But we shouldn’t expect anything better. Dabhoiwala traces the whole idea of free speech only to the 17th-century and its dawning Enlightenment.[iv] The question ought not to be whether the Rabbis anticipated the Enlightenment (why would they?) but whether Enlightenment ideals are at least consistent with rabbinic values. The best evidence regarding freedom of speech is the very fact that the Rabbis prohibit some categories of speech in the first place; from which we can deduce that any speech other than the restricted categories is permitted! Hence also the supporting evidence from Talmudic arguments, which encourage differences of opinion, and do not censor out the side that loses the argument.
So freedom of speech is a modern idea. The Talmud had not foreseen it; but would have welcomed it, albeit with due regard for the damage that improper speech can inflict.
I make this argument for both liberals and conservatives, because both sides accuse one another of limiting free speech, to advance each other’s perspective in today’s culture wars. With conservatives now in the ascendancy, it is the liberals who denounce the administration’s forbidden (and perhaps even punishable) word-list : such “woke” language as “non-binary” and “gender diversity.”[v] But when liberals held power, conservatives had similar grievances: having to say “the global south” rather than “the third world,” for instance, or (closer to home) having to worry about using the right pronouns. I make no judgement here on either set of claims. I just point out that both sides of the American divide feel victimized by having their freedom of speech curtailed.
More serious is the category of hate speech that Jewish tradition has long warned against. But what counts as hate speech? And does the first-amendment guarantee of free speech have limits. Apparently it does: we cannot maliciously yell “fire” in a crowded theater. White racists cannot burn a cross on someone’s lawn.
But things get tricky. When he was charged by President Johnson to plan the “War on Poverty,” sociologist (and later, senator) Daniel Patrick Moynihan believed that the horrific conditions in our inner-city ghettos is partly the result of problems within black families. Can Moynihan say so? He did. And even write a treatise on it? He did that too.[vi]
Suppose someone believes that Israel is an aggressor, a colonial power. Can they say that? Yes. Write a treatise on it? Also yes.
What they cannot do is say the same thing outside a crowded synagogue, in such a way as to suggest violent action, to a crowd of people waving Palestinian flags.
Why not?
It helps to distinguish “word” from “message.” The same words can imply vastly different messages, depending on how and in what context they are said. Limits on free speech are protections not just against words, but against the messages inherent in them. Freedom of speech protects the flow of ideas expressed usually (although not only) through words; it does not permit any and all messages.
One more thing. The Jewish laws of damages are framed illustratively: mayhem caused a goring ox, for example. A particularly interesting case is “pebbles,” damage caused not directly by the animal, but by pebbles that it kicks up and that fly off and injure someone at a distance. It is not just the message of the moment that we worry about; our concern (especially in this age of social media) is damage at a distance, how messages get spread and magnified until they pollute the very way people think, causing damage over time.
A reviewer of Dabhoiwala’s book concludes, “Such freedom [of speech], the skeptics insist, is not an unalloyed good. They’re right. It is an alloyed good. But alloyed goods… are the only kind we ever get.”[vii] And we need them.
[i] Iyyun T’efilah, Siddur Otsar Tefillot (Vilna: 1914; reprint. 1938), d.h. b’dibbur peh, vol 2, p. 1122
[ii] Maimonides, Hilchot de’ot 7:2.
[iii] See, e.g, https://truah.org/resources/freedom-of-speech-in-jewish-tradition/; https://rac.org/jewish-values-and-civil-liberties.
[iv] To John Milton’s Areopagitica (1644) and John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689).
[v] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html
[vi] The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington, DC: The Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor, March 1965).
[vii] Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Watch What You Say,” The New York Review of Books (September 25, 2025), p. 66.
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D. 