Chofetz Chaim

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title: "Chofetz Chaim" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1873-books", "hebrew-language-religious-books", "rabbinic-legal-texts-and-responsa"] description: "1873 book by Yisrael Meir Kegan" topic_path: "society/religion" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chofetz_Chaim" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary 1873 book by Yisrael Meir Kegan ::

::callout[type=note] the book ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Chofetz_Chaim_(cover_page_1873_ed.).JPG" caption="''Chofetz Chaim'': cover page 1873 ed."] ::

The Sefer Chofetz Chaim (or Chafetz Chaim or Hafetz Hayim) (, trans. "Pursuer of Life") is a book by Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, who is also called "the Chofetz Chaim" after it. The book deals with the Jewish laws of speech.

The title of the Chafetz Chaim is taken from Psalms:

The book's subject is Hilchoth Shmirath HaLashon (laws of clean speech). Kagan provides copious sources from the Torah, Talmud, and Rishonim about the severity of Jewish law on tale-mongering and gossip. Lashon hara, literally "'the evil tongue", i.e., evil speech (or loosely gossip and slander and prohibitions of defamation), is sometimes translated as "prohibitions of slander", but most commonly concerns the prohibitions of saying evil/bad/unpleasant things, whether or not they are true. |url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3535271 |title= From individual rights to community obligations: a Jewish approach to speech |author1=Jessica Hammer |author2=Samantha Reig |journal= Interactions |date= 29 June 2022 |volume= 29 |issue= 4 |pages= 30–34 |doi= 10.1145/3535271 |access-date=May 30, 2024|doi-access= free

The book is divided into three parts:

• The legal text is Mekor Chayim ("Source of Life").
• Be'er Mayim Chayim ("Well of living water"), the footnotes and legal argument.
• It is commonly printed together with the text Shemirath haLashon ("Guarding of the tongue"), an ethical treatise on the proper use of the faculty of speech.

The author

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Israel_Meir_Poupko,_tefillin.jpg" caption="praying]]."] ::

Yisrael Meir Kagan is commonly known as the Chafetz Chaim, the name of his book. He was born in Dzyatlava, Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire (today Belarus), on January 26, 1838. By 1869 his house became known as the Radin Yeshiva. Kagan published twenty-one books. His first work, Chafetz Chaim (1873),{{cite web |title=Chofetz Chaim: Ethics of Speech |date=8 August 2015 |url=https://torah.org/learning/halashon-ccbio |access-date=May 30, 2024}} is the first attempt to organize and clarify the laws regarding Lashon Hara. Other notable works include the Sefer Shmirat HaLashon, an ethical work on the importance of guarding one's tongue and the Mishnah Berurah (printed between 1894 and 1907) which is a commentary on the "Orach Chayim", the first section of the Shulchan Aruch, and has been accepted among many Ashkenazi Jews as an authoritative source of Halacha. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Chofetz_Chaim,_1923.jpg" caption="Kagan in Vienna, 1923" alt=""] ::

References

References

1. ([https://www.hebrewbooks.org/14234 Online edition in Hebrew]
2. "The Codification of Jewish Law and an Introduction to the Jurisprudence of the Mishna Berura".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::