To be Discerning in Speech: The Gift of Language
3 Sh’vat 5771 / 8 January 2011
Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg
Two years ago this month, my family and I sat down to watch the inauguration of our 44th president. It was an historic day for our nation and a particularly exciting one for Chicagoans. The day progressed, the speech was concluded, former President Bush had departed on the helicopter, and the distinguished guests were settling in for the celebratory luncheon. As Senator Feinstein took to the podium to toast the new president, my then three-year-old daughter turned to Miriam and me and asked, “Do you think they’re going to sing ‘siman tov u’mazel tov?’” Miriam and I had a good chuckle, and then we explained to Ellie that President Obama is not Jewish so the guests would find other ways to celebrate his achievement.
Now, at the half-way mark of Obama’s term, as a new congress begins its session, and a nation speculates about the embattled president’s future, I would like to reflect, not on the man but on the attribute that drew so many to him in the first place, the thing that made him (in the mind of my daughter and perhaps several others) so hora-worthy. Like him or not, most would agree that few leaders are able to use language as effectively as Mr. Obama. He has been called the “Orator in Chief.” And though it seems he has disproved the initial detractors, those who accused him of soaring rhetoric with little substance beneath, make no mistake, this is still a man who relies heavily on the spoken word. So this Shabbat I ask you, what is the role of oratory? What are we to make of speechifying, and how much stock do we put in words, however beautiful their construction?
I want you to know that I recognize the irony in giving a sermon, a speech on the potential value of, well, speech. But since once it was said, “Silence is also speech,” I’ll take my chances on actual talking and try to have something of consequence to say.
At first glance, it might seem that the Torah calls into question the value of speech. After all Moses, our greatest leader and the hero of this week’s parasha, was no great orator. He was, in fact, “aral sfatayim,” a man of impeded speech (Ex. 6:30). A famous midrash imagines Moshe as a baby, pressing a hot coal to his lips, forever compromising his ability to speak clearly. Moshe himself cites his disability as a reason why God should choose another to represent the people. It’s as if we the readers are meant to pay closer attention to Moshe’s other qualities, his deep and abiding faith, his enduring humility or his capacity to reflect the will of God to a stiff-necked and stubborn people.
But this is not the only way to understand aral sfatayim. At least one commentator turns the traditional reading on its head, choosing to see Moshe not as oratorically limited but as discerning. The story is told that the Maggid, Rabbi Koppel Reich of Budapest, was one of the great orators of his generation, his mouth, it was said, dripped with pearls of eloquent speech. Once, his son came to greet him only to find his father deep in preparations for his upcoming sermon. “Abba,” said the son, “Do you, such a great speaker, really need to prepare so intensely for a speech?” Reb Koppel responded, “The truth is that my ability lies not in my knowing what to say, but what not to say. After all, the Torah tells us that Moshe said to God, “v’ani aral sfatayim.” Understand this in the following way: not ‘I am of encumbered speech,’ but rather as one early translation (Onkelos) would have it ‘words are precious to me….’ The best speeches, offers the Maggid of Budapest, are as much about what they omit as they are about what they include.
In this rendering, Moshe is not a man with a stutter or lisp, but a man who loves words enough to select them with care. “Talk is cheap,” as the saying goes; and for many I think it is. For Reb Koppel though, talk is yakir, precious and of deep and intrinsic value.
Our tradition puts a good deal of stock in words and in speech. The Torah is famously terse, and our Sages ferret out meaning in every word and letter. God creates the universe with words, literally speaking the world into existence! Baruch She’amar v’haya haolam. Humans are the pinnacle of that creative process, uniquely gifted the capacity for speech. And just as we imitate God in our acts of bikkur holim, visiting the sick, or “nichum aveilim,” comforting mourners, so too we are meant to emulate speech as a divinely inspired activity.
But set against this backdrop is Shammai’s famous statement from Pirkei Avot: “emor me’at va’aseh harbeh,” say little and do much. I ask you, if speech is divine, why not set our vocal chords free? But of course, Shammai’s instruction has as much or more to do with speech as it does with action. In other words, “say little, do much,” not only because “doing” is important, but because words are important, and we don’t want to waste them.
Shammai, like Reb Koppel of Budapest, understands that the gift of speech can be easily abused. We should all take care to remember what not to say! We Jews know well the power of language to destroy. Charismatic speeches have too often been used in our history to strip us of land, freedom and dignity. Passion plays in the Middle Ages once fanned the flames of hatred as does poisonous rhetoric in our day as it emanates from Madrasas and hate-filled websites. To actualize our gift of speech is not in and of itself divine. Divinity is found when words are carefully selected and used for good. As President Obama said to the Muslim world in his inaugural address, “Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.” I hope he’s right about that. I do feel fairly confident, though, that the Holy One judges us on whether we use language as an instrument of creation or destruction.
But we need not travel to distant lands to find language ripped from its heavenly perch. Each of us at times uses our capacity for speech in destructive ways, not through loquaciousness, but by turning a deaf ear to our friends and our enemies, our colleagues and families. Contrary to the wisdom of most kindergarten teachers, sticks and stones may break our bones, but words hurt plenty, and anyone who has been on the receiving end of truly hurtful speech knows this to be true. Words hurt. Words can even kill. The book of Proverbs (18:21) tells us, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” And Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of the Simon Wiesenthal Center says, “Words uttered… are like teenagers. They seldom come back to seek the advice of those who first breathed life into them.”
But just as God fashioned the world with words, we too have the tremendous capacity to use the gift of language for good, to create and not to destroy. I want to suggest to you that much of speech, the sentences we utter are, at their core, be either creative or destructive. Kohelet (3:1-3) says that “there is a time for every matter under heaven: a time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to destroy and a time to build.” Language is an amoral tool. It is up to us to fix our sights upon birth and healing and building up the world around us.
I ask you this… what would the world be like if each of us paused more often before speaking to consider if our words are to be creative ones? What if we examined our speech, endeavoring to eliminate, or at least minimize, the destructive words, the words best not uttered aloud? Try it for a week, or even a day. How might such an experiment affect our most sacred relationships and our most mundane daily interactions? Again, the Torah and its greatest prophet can be our guide. Moshe, the reluctant leader demurs from speechifying, instead relying on his brother Aaron for much of the Exodus narrative. He is a man of selective speech for whom words are precious. But, as Kohelet also says (3:7): “[there is] a time to be silent and a time to speak.” After years of wandering, as the Israelites draw near to the banks of the Jordan River, as our ancestors stand on the threshold of the Promised Land and on the verge of becoming a nation, Moshe decides that it is time to raise up his voice. The final book of the Torah is entitled D’varim, “words,” and it is the great speech of Moshe’s life. In speaking those final words, Moshe engages in the ultimate creative endeavor, he charges a people to walk in God’s ways (Deu.13:5), eschewing evil forces and seeking out the good, the constructive and the kind.
We Americans also have been wandering of late. Our path has been obscured, the way forward unclear. The economic recovery is slow-going, politics and politicians as unpopular as ever. Fewer seem as open as they were just two years ago to the power of the spoken word. But we should not forget that, at its best, language is a gateway to empathy, a mechanism for creating ideas, partnerships, and even new worlds. Is oratory enough? Of course not. Is language important? Yes. There is a time for every matter under heaven… a time to be silent and a time to speak.” Let’s make sure that when we do speak, we remember to make our words worthy – not of a celebratory dance, not of a hora perhaps, but of the divinity with which the gift of speech was intended in the first place.