Question:
I try to be careful to always avoid lashon hara, but I’m not sure about something I recently said. A friend of mine follows a certain Rabbi who holds it’s assur to take the covid vaccine. I was trying to convince him of how unreasonable his position was. To make this point, I told him (truthfully) that I saw a video this Rabbi put out, where he explains away how a prominent rav released a public letter saying you SHOULD take the vaccine. This Rabbi explains that this is not a contradiction to his view that the vaccine is assur, because when this prominent rav said you SHOULD take the vaccine, really he meant that you SHOULDN’T take the vaccine. And he was being meramez in his wording to mean the exact opposite of what he said. Now, any rational person should see that this is ridiculous. I told my friend about this video, with the intent of showing him how he needs to think about if it’s logical to follow such a person. I didn’t say anything derogatory about the rabbi. But I’m concerned maybe it’s similar to the case in the chofetz Chaim (I think) where he says it’s assur to show someone a letter that someone wrote if, due to the content or the writing etc, it would be a genai to the writer. Here too, my point was to just transmit the content of the video, with the intent to show that the speaker is not reliable. On the other hand, my intent here was l’toeles, so my friend isn’t swayed by such nonsense. Was this lashon hara? Do I need to ask mechila from this Rabbi? Thanks
Answer:
You don’t need to ask mechila from the Rabbi, as you write, because it was done l’toeles.
Best wishes
