Words Create Worlds: The power of language
Rabbi Tom Samuels
The great Medieval commentator, RASHI (1040CE-1105CE), famously asks why the Torah doesn’t begin with the Revelation at Sinai, but instead with the myths of Creation, Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, and the legends of Abraham?
RASHI answers that this is done to make it clear that God is the God of all Creation, not only God exclusive to the Israelites.
Dr. Yehudah Kurtzer of the Shalom Hartman Institute adds a less theological, and perhaps more practical reason: That if the Torah focused exclusively on law and commandments rather than embedding them in drama and storytelling, it would be much more difficult to get people to read it, to retell it, to be inspired by it.
“We are the people of metaphor, myth and meaning,” Dr. Kurtzer teaches. “It is the story that carries the law, not the law that carries the story.”
And, at the core of storytelling, is our uniquely human capacity for speech, which ties into this week’s double Torah portion, Tazriyah/Metzorah. We read a heck of a lot about one specific Divine punishment, tzara’at. Throughout Rabbinic literature, tzara’at is associated with gossip and slander, as in the MetSoRah, the one with tzara’at, was a Motzi Shem Ra, literally, a person who spoke badly about others. Someone whose speech was filled with lashon ha-ra, Evil Speech.
(Tzara’at is often mis-translated as the skin disease, leprosy, from the Septuagint, the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, lepra. That the disease also afflicts the walls of buildings, is for a whole other discussion ).
And the Sages take the power of speech, and specifically its capacity to hurt, for destruction, seriously. Very seriously. Maimonides (1138CE-1204CE) for example, writes:
“There are three transgressions for which a person is punished in this world and has no share in the world come – idolatry, illicit sex, and bloodshed – and evil speech is as bad as all three combined… Evil speech kills three people – the one who says it, the one who accepts it, and the one about whom it is said. (Hilkhot Deot 7:3)
“Judaism,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “is less a religion of holy people and holy places than it is a religion of holy words.” We are, after all, a speaking specie. Language is life. It personifies us. It is at our core. Our essence.
In the Torah, we read that human beings are created from afar, (mis-translated as ‘dust from the earth,’ which, again, is for another discussion), and that God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, Nishma’at Chayim, and the man became a living being, Nefesh Chayah:
וַיִּיצֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם, עָפָר מִן-הָאֲדָמָה, וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו, נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים; וַיְהִי הָאָדָם, לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה.
“Then the Lord God formed man from the AFAR (often translated as dust), of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, Nishma’at Chayim, and the man became a living being, a Nefesh Chayah” (Gen. 2: 7).
The early 2nd-century CE Aramaic translation of the Torah, Targum Onkelos, translates Nefesh Chayah as "a speaking soul, a speaking being."
From the Jewish perspective, taught Rabbi Sacks, the ability to express oneself -- whether through writing or speech -- personifies what human beings are all about. Its at our core. Our essence. And it is this grand impact, influence, that the power of speech has on our lives, on our society.
Language is life.
Words are creative but also destructive. If good words are holy then evil words are a desecration.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught: ’Words create worlds’. That the Holocaust did not begin with the building of crematoria, with tanks and guns. It began with uttering evil words, with defamation, with language, with propaganda.
“Words create worlds.” Rabbi Heschel was paraphrasing one of the most important daily prayers: Baruch Oseh Bereishet, Baruch Omer V’Oseh, "Blessed is God who spoke and the world came into being."
God reveals himself in words, writes Rabbi Sacks. Our very humanity has to do with our ability to use language, L’Tov, for good, or L’Rah, for evil. As a creative force, as well as for devastatingly destruction.
Ultimately, it is our choice to make.
Rabbi Tom Samuels
The great Medieval commentator, RASHI (1040CE-1105CE), famously asks why the Torah doesn’t begin with the Revelation at Sinai, but instead with the myths of Creation, Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, and the legends of Abraham?
RASHI answers that this is done to make it clear that God is the God of all Creation, not only God exclusive to the Israelites.
Dr. Yehudah Kurtzer of the Shalom Hartman Institute adds a less theological, and perhaps more practical reason: That if the Torah focused exclusively on law and commandments rather than embedding them in drama and storytelling, it would be much more difficult to get people to read it, to retell it, to be inspired by it.
“We are the people of metaphor, myth and meaning,” Dr. Kurtzer teaches. “It is the story that carries the law, not the law that carries the story.”
And, at the core of storytelling, is our uniquely human capacity for speech, which ties into this week’s double Torah portion, Tazriyah/Metzorah. We read a heck of a lot about one specific Divine punishment, tzara’at. Throughout Rabbinic literature, tzara’at is associated with gossip and slander, as in the MetSoRah, the one with tzara’at, was a Motzi Shem Ra, literally, a person who spoke badly about others. Someone whose speech was filled with lashon ha-ra, Evil Speech.
(Tzara’at is often mis-translated as the skin disease, leprosy, from the Septuagint, the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, lepra. That the disease also afflicts the walls of buildings, is for a whole other discussion ).
And the Sages take the power of speech, and specifically its capacity to hurt, for destruction, seriously. Very seriously. Maimonides (1138CE-1204CE) for example, writes:
“There are three transgressions for which a person is punished in this world and has no share in the world come – idolatry, illicit sex, and bloodshed – and evil speech is as bad as all three combined… Evil speech kills three people – the one who says it, the one who accepts it, and the one about whom it is said. (Hilkhot Deot 7:3)
“Judaism,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “is less a religion of holy people and holy places than it is a religion of holy words.” We are, after all, a speaking specie. Language is life. It personifies us. It is at our core. Our essence.
In the Torah, we read that human beings are created from afar, (mis-translated as ‘dust from the earth,’ which, again, is for another discussion), and that God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, Nishma’at Chayim, and the man became a living being, Nefesh Chayah:
וַיִּיצֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם, עָפָר מִן-הָאֲדָמָה, וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו, נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים; וַיְהִי הָאָדָם, לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה.
“Then the Lord God formed man from the AFAR (often translated as dust), of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, Nishma’at Chayim, and the man became a living being, a Nefesh Chayah” (Gen. 2: 7).
The early 2nd-century CE Aramaic translation of the Torah, Targum Onkelos, translates Nefesh Chayah as "a speaking soul, a speaking being."
From the Jewish perspective, taught Rabbi Sacks, the ability to express oneself -- whether through writing or speech -- personifies what human beings are all about. Its at our core. Our essence. And it is this grand impact, influence, that the power of speech has on our lives, on our society.
Language is life.
Words are creative but also destructive. If good words are holy then evil words are a desecration.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught: ’Words create worlds’. That the Holocaust did not begin with the building of crematoria, with tanks and guns. It began with uttering evil words, with defamation, with language, with propaganda.
“Words create worlds.” Rabbi Heschel was paraphrasing one of the most important daily prayers: Baruch Oseh Bereishet, Baruch Omer V’Oseh, "Blessed is God who spoke and the world came into being."
God reveals himself in words, writes Rabbi Sacks. Our very humanity has to do with our ability to use language, L’Tov, for good, or L’Rah, for evil. As a creative force, as well as for devastatingly destruction.
Ultimately, it is our choice to make.