The Law does not only forbid the utterance of evil reports, but also the encouragement given to the tale-bearer by listening to his stories. “Thou shalt not take up a false report” (Exod. xxiii. 1). In the Book of Proverbs the evil consequences of listening to slander are thus depicted: “If a ruler hearkeneth to falsehood, all his servants are wicked” (Prov. xxix. 12). “He who giveth heed to wicked lips causeth evil-doing; he who giveth ear to a mischievous tongue feedeth lies” (ibid. xvii. 4). When we hear evil reports about our neighbour, we should try to defend him; when we are convinced that he has done wrong, we must rebuke him, lead him back to the right way, and not utterly reject him; we may still find some redeeming feature in his character that makes it worth our while to save him. Thus Joshua, the son of Perachjah, teaches us: “Judge every man favourably” (Aboth i. 6); that is, if you are uncertain as to a man’s faults, let him have the benefit of the doubt. When we criticise our neighbour’s character—and idle gossip frequently leads to this practice—we are too often inclined to dwell upon his weak points—his vices—and to pass over his merits in silence; but we ought to consider how little we should like to see the same treatment applied to ourselves. Another fault of ours is to judge the doings of other people without fully understanding all the circumstances and the causes that led to such actions. Hillel said, “Do not judge thy neighbour until thou hast come into his place;” that is, do not pass judgment upon your neighbour before you are able to place yourself in his position, and to say with certainty what, you would have done under the same circumstances. The Law forbids us to use divers weights and divers measures in our business transactions, lest we damage the property of our neighbour; equally unlawful is the use of one kind of weights and measures for weighing our own words and deeds, and another kind for weighing the words and the deeds of others, to the injury of our fellow-man’s name and repute. Contrary to the usage of courts of justice, our neighbour’s words and deeds are generally reported by us, interpreted, tried and condemned in his absence, when he is unable to defend himself, to show his innocence, or to prove the falsehood of the report, the error of the interpretation, and the injustice of the trial and the condemnation. The perversity of such conduct is evident, especially in the case of the departed. The prohibition, “Thou shalt not curse the deaf” (Lev. xix. 14) has been interpreted to apply to all kinds of slander about those absent or dead. Our respect for the memory of the dead is expressed in the Latin maxim, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum;” or in the Hebrew, ‏אחרי מות קדשים אמור‎ [41] “After their death say of them ‘saints.’” Similar maxims are the following: “We must not refute the lion after his death;” ‏מיתה מכפרת‎ “Death atones for all offences.”