Musician Nick Cave and His Wife Follow This Jewish Law

For a truly impressive number of years, Australian musician Nick Cave, frontman of the Bad Seeds, (not to be confused with American visual artist Nick Cave, though I am a huge fan of both) has been answering fan mail from his fans on the website The Red Hand Files.

Cave is not Jewish, but in the latest installment of the files he cheekily brings up a Jewish concept not often quoted by non-Jewish artists. That concept is lashon hara, which literally means evil tongue, but more expansively refers to bad speech and the prohibition, according to Jewish law, to speak ill of someone.

Cave used the term in response to some negative feedback he got, possibly in reference to the singer’s longstanding refusal to boycott Israel and insistence on still performing with his band in the Jewish state. Cave shared his feelings about BDS in an e-mail with Brian Eno, who tried to get him to cancel his Israeli shows, writing that he thinks “the cultural boycott of Israel is cowardly and shameful. In fact, this is partly the reason I am playing Israel – not as support for any particular political entity but as a principled stand against those who wish to bully, shame and silence musicians.”

Lee from Bournemouth in the UK asked the Grammy-nominated star: “Do you have any plans to spearhead a new artist’s collective? It could be called ‘Artists who are neither for or against crimes against humanity, because making money is sacred!’ (You could change the last bit to ‘art is sacred’ but I doubt it will fool anybody.”

The chutzpah-filled question got an ever more chutzpah-filled response. Cave wrote to Lee that he and his wife of over 20 years, Susie, “try to be mindful of lashon hara – a Hebrew term meaning ‘evil speech,’ an act forbidden under Jewish law. It basically means you are prohibited from saying anything negative about anyone, even if it is true.”

They’re not Jewish, he explained, but the concept just “feels like a pretty solid idea” to them. So the loving couple will be sitting together and gabbing and “if Susie starts to say something unkind about someone,” Cave will respond with: “Lashon hara, babe.” And when he engages in any egregious negative speech about someone else, Susie will respond with: “Darling, lashon hara,” a line I’m personally going to adopt and maybe paint onto a large canvas to hang in my dining room.

In his letter, Cave goes on to explain that the couple has taken on this habit to “keep each other on the righteous path.”

Unfortunately for Lee from Bournemouth, Susie was not on the premises when Cave was writing his response to Lee’s “suggestion that whatever position I may hold, I hold for the money,” so Cave finished his response with a verbose and explicit: “Well, lashon hara and all that, but Lee, you are a massive fuckwit and should forthwith, with no hesitation and great urgency, go fuck yourself.”

Is cursing someone else really lashon hara? Well, that depends on who you ask. Technically, lashon hara only really refers to language that causes harm, but colloquially, we most often use it to refer to gossip and maligning speech about another person.

One thing is for sure: It’s always a delight to hear someone who isn’t Jewish talk about lashon hara.