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With the month of Elul upon us and Rosh Hashana coming up fast, I recently got a bird's-eye view of the problems of lashon hara (literally evil speech, but referring to spreading nasty rumors about people) and motzi shem ra (literally bringing out a bad name, referring to spreading lies about people).

A friend of mine has a son (let's call him Tzvi) who was going to a school where homework was a major part of the grade. Despite Tzvi's acing of all the tests, he was failing his 7th-grade classes because he wasn't doing his homework. He's a very bright boy and he's far too intelligent to be kept back, so the headmaster of his school, a kind rabbi, thought it would be to his advantage, he told my friend, to have her take him out of the school and home school him until 8th grade when he could return to the school. So my friend took Tzvi out of the school and started home schooling him.

The original plan, of Tzvi returning to school for 8th grade, never materialized (she continued home schooling him for 8th grade) and he made plans for high school. He applied to the high school he wanted to go to and passed all the tests (not doing well in his weak subject, math, but otherwise he did quite well). They waited to hear from the school.

About a week before school started, they finally told him they were not accepting him. They gave some academic reason, but underneath it all was another reason.

Pretty much from the time Tzvi left his original school, people started treating him like a pariah. Parents wouldn't allow him to interact with their children. Former friends avoided him. And Tzvi and his family started getting asked some very strange questions. "Is it true," some would ask, "that you were expelled from school for kissing a girl in the elevator?" Others would say, "I heard you were expelled because you vandalized the school" (mind you, Tzvi was out of state the weekend the school was vandalized, several hundred miles away). Some even accused Tzvi of drug use.

Keep in mind: Tzvi's only "crime" was not doing his homework.

The day before school started this semester, Tzvi was accepted into a non-denominational Jewish high school. In the community my friend lives, this and the school that didn't accept Tzvi are the only two Jewish high schools available.

This school, by the way, asked him to leave after the first day because in the last class of the day the other boys in the class were repeating the above mentioned rumors and asking Tzvi if they were true (of course not one of them is).

So now Tzvi is a young man without a school. This bright, friendly, sweet, typical teenager has been turned into a recluse by the spreading of innuendo, judgmentalism, and the telling of lies.

Is this story extreme? Possibly. But, unfortunately, it is all too typical. People are far too quick to jump to conclusions.

But even assuming the stories people told about Tzvi were true (and they most decidedly are not), are we not Torah Jews? Do we not, especially now in the month of Elul, need to permit people to do teshuva (repent, make changes, correct their behavior)? We are, after all, speaking not of a mass murderer but of a teenage boy. How many of us know teenage boys who kissed girls? How many of us know teenage boys who made mistakes? How many of us know teenage boys who never made mistakes?

I hope that this experience with my dear friend will remind me to be less judgmental. I hope that this experience will remind me to be careful what I say about people. And, perhaps, we can all try to open our hearts and remember that nobody is perfect.

We need to open the doors of our own lives and allow people to improve themselves. And, in the process, we might find that we have improved ourselves and the world.

Debbie Israel is a graphic artist (see https://www.cafepress.com/compugraphd2 for some of her work) and tutor living in Highland Park.