We continue to study the Bet HaLevi on Ahavat Yisrael; he tells us- “ Hating your friend brings you to Lashon Hara, which is very severe; Because he hates his friend, he reveals and sees negativity.” You start to see the bad, because you don’t like the person. Rav Yerucham Levovitz, in his sefer Da’at Hochma Mussar says that it’s only possible to speak lashon hara because we are distanced from our friend. We don’t feel who he is; we don’t even know that he exists. How can we speak bad about a person? He says that If you thought for a moment about this man, and imagined that he was standing near you, screaming out and begging, “Please have mercy on me, don’t embarrass me, protect me,” you wouldn’t speak about him. The pasuk says, “ Don’t stand by as your brother’s blood is being spilled,” and right next to that it says, “ Don’t be a gossipmonger.” When you’re speaking lashon hara , you are spilling blood. Rav Yerucham wonders how a person can do that. He says that it is because you don’t see your friend because he is so distanced from you. Nobody would be able to speak lashon hara if they thought that the person could hear them and scream out, “ Please have mercy on me! ” But we don’t think about him. We don’t hear his voice, and therefore we do whatever we want. So, deep down, the source for all the lashon hara is that our friend is not on our minds. We don’t put ourselves in his situation, and we are distanced from him. Rav Wolbe writes that the word אכזר - achzar/cruel, can be broken down into two words אך זר Ach Zar - totally a stranger. You can only be cruel to a person when he is strange to you, when he is distanced from you. He says that when a tiger eats a deer, it doesn’t see the deer as a mother, friend or even as an existence. He sees the deer as his dinner. It’s the way we look at a hamburger. If you had a cow as a pet, you would not want to eat him for dinner. But we have no relation to the cow, and therefore we have no problem eating the steak, or the chicken, or whatever else we eat. We have no feelings for it and therefore we have no problem. (Vegetarians, on the other hand might have a problem) If we heard about somebody eating their dear dog, we would get sick. That is what we do when we speak lashon hara. We are eating our friend, swallowing him alive. We do this because we aren’t thinking about, or feeling a connection to him. That is the source of lashon hara. Have a wonderful day.