NYTimes January 31, 1999
Adding a piquant note is that this project was organized by Susan Blond, a press agent for rock stars and rap artists whose very job is to place items in gossip columns (and who had more than 15 minutes of fame herself as a pal of Andy Warhol).
On her desk in the West 57th Street building is a small white sign that looks like a no-smoking request, but on closer inspection turns out to say, ''Thank you for not speaking loshon hora,'' which is Hebrew for ''evil words'' or ''forbidden speech.''
The sign was a gift from Ms. Blond's brother-in-law, Rabbi Leib Tropper, who is the guiding spirit and teacher of the group. The rabbi runs a lecture program about Jewish values for college students, as well as the Kol Yakov Torah Center, a yeshiva in the Orthodox community of Monsey, N.Y. But much of his time is devoted to studying the Torah with small groups or individuals, most of whom are not strictly observant.
The class that discusses the evils of gossip is the largest of these groups. On a recent Tuesday it drew about a dozen regular participants of various ages, most of them Jewish, including a lawyer, a psychotherapist, a movie producer, an opera singer, a nutrition consultant, a writer and two young women who work at a big advertising agency.[...]
