Through the course of recent history, Jewish people, have been called many names. My favourite one is “people of the book”.
It is because this name captures the essence of our tradition: look at us celebrating two of the most important lifecycle events, Bat-Mitzvah and Aufruf, around the Torah scroll.
So, probably, it does not come as a surprise that the last book of the Torah which we have started reading from this Shabbat, is called – “דברים” in Hebrew, meaning “words”. Who else, if not the people of the book would call one of their holy books “words”.
And why not? Words play a central role in our life and even our thoughts consist of words. These days, we are surrounded by words on radio, TV, social media, at work and at home.
We learn at the very beginning of the Torah in the Creation story that the world was created with the word.
Ancient Israelites believed that words have a physical manifestation in our world. Once uttered, they materialise in the world. No wonder that the word “דברים” in Hebrew means both words and things. It seems that our ancestors knew how much power words have.
Professor Yuval Harari explains that the development of the language hundreds of thousands of years ago gave Homo Sapiens a huge advantage over other animals on the planet. Our complex and diverse ability to communicate allowed us to be organised in large group and to cooperate on a large scale. As Professor Harari notes: “ants and bees can also work together in huge numbers, but they do so in a very rigid manner and only with close relatives. Chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so with small numbers of other individuals that they know intimately. Homo sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. That’s why homo Sapiens rule the world, whereas ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.”[1]
So words didn’t only help us to survive but also to prosper as a species. The ground-breaking educational research during the 1960’s War on Poverty in America by Betty Hart and Todd Risley[2] proved that words, the number of them and the way they are uttered, can influence people’s future and their achievements.
During their experiments in various schools they realised that the disadvantage of some children started in the first years of their life but they couldn’t understand what exactly caused that gap between children from poor and more well to do backgrounds.
The research identified that children from families on welfare heard about 616 words per hour, while those from working class families heard around 1,251 words per hour, and those from professional families heard roughly 2,153 words per hour.
So a child from a higher-income family would experience 30 million more words within the first four years of life than a child from a low-income family.
In addition to a lack of exposure to these 30 million words, the words a child from a low-income family had typically mastered were often negative directives and words of discouragement.[3]
We have all heard words of discouragement in our lives and you might be one of those people who didn’t draw, sing, play an instrument, dance or become a pilot or prime-minister or footballer because the words of discouragement stopped you from realising your potential or achieving your dreams.
As a university student I learned that famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich never wrote another opera after a condemning article about his first opera in the newspaper Pravda, which was the microphone of Stalin and the soviet government. He carried that article in his pocket for the rest of his life. No one now knows the names of those murderers of Shostakovich’s talent but the world lost all but one of his unwritten operas because of them.
We all know public figures whose careers were ruined because of words, sometimes the accusations were fair and sometimes they weren’t but it is easier to accuse someone than to clear one’s reputation in the aftermath.
Judaism recognises the huge power of words and their ability to destroy. Rabbis compare words to arrows rather than swords because once they are out there you can’t take them back. Rabbinic Judaism also recognised the enormous power of words to inflict deep and irrevocable suffering to people.
A famous story from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Bava Metzia[4] brings our attention to the magnitude of suffering which words can inflict if the suffering could have a physical manifestation in our world.
Rabbi Eliezer was expelled from, what we call today the Rabbinic Assembly, when he disagreed with the rest of the assembly. Rabbi Eliezer was in a particularly argumentative and disagreeable mood in our sugya, in our story, because he knew that he was right. But after he left the Assembly his colleagues decided to exclude him from the union of the Rabbis.
Rabbi Akiva, his student, came to inform his teacher in a very careful manner knowing how upsetting and hurtful the news will be for Rabbi Eliezer. Even though Rabbi Akiva was so respectful and gentle with breaking the news to Rabbi Eliezer, he was able to reduce but not mitigate Rabbi Eliezer’s suffering.
Whenever Rabbi Eliezer cast his eyes over the harvest of barley, olives and grapes, they died. In the ancient world it meant of course lack of food and even starvation. Can you imagine that if every emotional wound or suffering caused by words in the world had a physical manifestation we probably would not be able to survive as a species as we would be starving all the time!
This story from the Talmud teaches us that the consequences of our words on other people and the damage they can cause can be severe, if not visible.
Many of us have emotional and mental wounds under our skin caused by the words of others, sometimes said with intention and sometimes said just without consideration or kindness. Some of us still remember those words, even though it is time to let them go.
Today is the last Shabbat before 9th of Av , תשעה באב, the day when Jewish people will mourn the destruction of both Temples and other tragedies befallen our people in the past.
According to the Rabbinic tradition, Jerusalem surrendered to the invaders and the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat hinam – שנאת חנם- groundless hatred and disagreements among the Jews of Jerusalem. It seems that Professor Harari’s theory does not always work with Jews!
Well, how much did the world change since then? Professor Fran Grace notes in 2011 that “We live in a world marked by physical, mental and emotional suffering.”[5]
It might be because we keep forgetting that we create our reality, our world with words. It might be because we use too many words that kill but don’t use enough words that heal.
Today’s Shabbat in Jewish tradition is called Hazon, Shabbat of Vision. So, shall we together have a vision, that will help us to heal our world and make it a better place?
Shall we imagine the world where we are generous with words of encouragement and support. Where we never say behind other people’s back what we would not have said looking into their eyes.
Shall we imagine a world where we utter words like giving away precious stones, where we deliver constructive criticism to other people from the place of kindness and care. It is because we know about the power of words and that when we hurt others with our words, it is if as we hurt ourselves.
Words have power, let’s use them to create a kinder world together.
[1] Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens, A brief history of humankind, pp.27-28.
[2] University of Kansas
[3] https://childhub.org/en/child-protection-multimedia-resources/ted-talk-improving-early-child-development-words-dr-brenda.
[4] The Talmud, Bava Metzia, 59a-b.
[5] David R. Hawkins, Power vs. Force, p. xiv
