LEV521 It is a negative commandment not to tell anyone things that another person said against him for Scripture states, You shall not go about as a tale-bearer among your people [this verse]. Even if he speaks the truth, a person thus brings ruin into the world. It is an enormous wrong, which causes the murder of lives among the Jewish people, as we find with Do'eg the Edomite. Now, there is a criminal act very far worse than this, included under this prohibition, and that is evil gossip. This means that a person speaks disparagingly about his fellow-man, even though he tells the truth; for a person who speaks falsehood is called "one who spreads a bad report." It is evil gossip when one says, "So–and–so did this and that. Thus and so are his forefathers. This is what I heard about him." And so he relates matters of disgrace. Regarding this the Writ says, Hashem will cut off all unctuous lips, the tongue that speaks proud things (T'hillim 12:4). The Sages of blessed memory taught (Talmud Yerushalmi, Pe'ah I; see Rambam, Yad, hilchoth de'oth vii 3): For three transgressions punishment is exacted from a person in this world, and he has no share in the world-to-come: idol-worship, incest or adultery, and bloodshed. But evil gossip is equal in seriousness to them all. Our Sages of blessed memory taught further (Yalkut Shim'oni, T'hillim §656): If someone relates evil gossip, it is as though he denied the main principle [of the one and only God]. And our Sages of blessed memory said, too (D'varim Rabbah v 10): Evil gossip kills three: the one who tells it, the one who accepts it, and the one about whom it is told. But the one who accepts it is affected more than one who tells it. There are certain matters that constitute a "shade" of evil gossip. For example, "If only someone would tell so-and-so that he should always be as he is now"; or one says, "Do not talk about so-and-so. I don't want to tell what happened with him." So also if one speaks well of another person before someone who hates him, because that makes that person speak in disparagement of him. So too if someone speaks evil gossip by way of a joke. And so likewise if it is told in a way of guile and deceit, as if he does not know that this matter is evil gossip. It is all one whether a person tells evil gossip in the other's presence or in his absence. So too, if a person tells things that cause [trouble] if they are conveyed from one man to another, harming his fellow-man physically or through his possessions, or even [merely] distressing or frightening him -- and there is no need to add, if one informs on his fellow-man before a government officer and this causes him to take the other's items of monetary value. It is as though he killed him and the wife and children who depend on him. For he is an informer [in effect]. Purgatory will finish, and he will not be finished [with his punishment]. (See the volumes Hafetz Hayyim and Sh'mirath haLashon on the enormity of this crime of evil gossip, and its punishment.)