The Power of Speech, and The Journey Through Exile, Together.
Each week, we rehash and reflect upon our Torah study discussion from this past Shabbat as a means of inviting us all into the conversation; injecting a little Torah, i.e., both ancient and modern Jewish wisdom, into our weeks; and getting ourselves in sync with the rhythms of the enduring Jewish calendar.
This past week, we reflected on a passage from the book of Numbers found in our parshah (weekly portion): “If a man makes a vow to the LORD or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has crossed his lips” (Num. 30:3).
We reflected on the significance of this passage for our own lives. “Vows” and “oaths” do not tend to be common features of our contemporary discourse (except perhaps in the context of marriage), and yet we wanted to imagine what this might be teaching us from across the generations.
Upon reflection, it seemed to underscore the significance of each utterance that “crosses our lips.” Our ancestors treated language as powerful. Sacred. It’s no accident, as one participant pointed out, that the creation of the universe, in Genesis, comes to fruition through the spoken word. (“God said, ‘let there be light’; and there was light.”) Not through gesturing, or through imagining, but through speaking. Speech changes hearts and minds, nourishes the spirit, soothes the soul.
So, too, does it hurt. In imagining the significance of speech to the ancients, we explored a less-well-known passage from the biblical book of Judges wherein an unknowing Israelite chieftain promises to offer up as a sacrifice whatever creature first meets him on his return home from battle, provided that he is victorious—only for the creature in question to turn out to be his one and only daughter. It was a truly devastating piece, and while we could read it as a hyperbolic parable, it emphasized how powerful, and even dangerous, speech was to our ancestors—and is to us, and how much care is called for in its use. Words, once uttered, are out there, not able to be retracted.
And at the same time, we recognized our humanity—how prone we are to speak without thinking, how likely we are to run afoul of these lofty standards. So we held two truths at once: (1) language is powerful; use it with caution and sensitivity for our fellow human beings (2) we all misstep; have compassion upon one another and upon ourselves. Which led us to conclude our study with a review of Kol Nidre, that soulful dirge chanted on Yom Kippur that essentially knows that we will speak out of turn throughout the course of the year. “God,” this prayer seems to say, “we yearn to use speech for good, for constructiveness, for healing, and yet we know we will also use it to harm. Help us do better.” May it be so with all of us.
