Sacred Speech Series

Jewish Family Education with Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel said to Tavi his servant, “Go out and purchase a good cut of meat for me from the market,” so Tavi purchased tongue for him. Rabbi Shimon then said to him, “Go out and purchase a bad cut of meat,” and again Tavi returned with tongue.

Puzzled, Rabbi Shimon asked, “What is this, that when I said to purchase a good cut of meat, you bought tongue, but when I said to purchase a bad cut of meat, you also bought tongue?”

Tavi responded, “Good comes from it and bad comes from it. When it is good, there is nothing better than it. When it is bad, there is nothing worse than it.”

The significance of speech as the agency of creation is established at the dawn of time: “In the beginning…God said, ‘Let there be…’ And it was so. And God saw that (it) was good…”

Although the language of Creation itself is God’s alone, humans were also uniquely created with the divine power of language, according to Rashi.

Along with cattle and beasts, humans are called “a living soul,” nefesh chayah, the renowned biblical commentator explains, “but the nefesh of man is the most highly developed of all of them, because to him was granted understanding and speech.”

The Torah itself makes this point abundantly clear in its opening chapters. Without language, how would the first humans have made sense of God’s commands to “…fill the earth and master it…”? How could they have comprehended the prohibition, “…but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it…” or the consequence, “you shall die”?

Why would humans instinctively engage in naming existing creations? “God brought (the living creatures) to the human to see what he would call them…”, or dream up symbolic names for new ones: “This one shall be called woman (isha), for from a human (ish) she was taken”?

In all of creation, only the human has the power of language.

Among the many lessons to be gleaned from the Creation narrative, the most profound is the preeminence of language itself.

“With words God created the universe…(and) through words He communicated with humankind,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed. Therefore, in Judaism, “language itself is holy.”

Holy by design and holy in purpose, language is set apart, distinct from the rest of creation. They are God’s communications to humankind.

But what about language in the world, among people? The Bible is filled with myriad examples of the wise use of language.

Joseph forgave his brothers with words. The prophet Nathan spoke a parable that inspired King David to repent his evil actions. King Cyrus decreed that the Jews be allowed to return to Judah and rebuild the Temple.

Despite its holy nature and purpose, however, language can be distorted and misused.

Korach and his band complained, boldly challenging Moses’, Aaron’s, and God’s authority. Jephthah rashly vowed to offer a battle-victory sacrifice for which his daughter became the victim.

Haman accused Shushan’s Jews of not obeying the king’s laws and suggested it wasn’t in the crown’s interest to tolerate them, nearly resulting in genocide.

The perversion of language isn’t just a minor wrongdoing, Sacks warns. “Taking something that is holy and using it for purposes that are unholy…is a kind of desecration.”

During Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Gregory Maguire noticed his “deeply held (pacifist) convictions were swayed by words like fascist and Hitler in describing the Iraqi leader.”

“I was dismayed by my brain melt,” he explained in a 2008 interview. So he set out to examine how language, and built-in word associations in particular, can cause the formation of opinions such as perceived evil, create a mob mentality, and marshal brute force against individuals and groups.

His exploration led him to write the fantasy novel Wicked, a reimagined adult version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

“It explains how Elphaba, who was born with unnaturally green skin, came to be known, unjustly, as the Wicked Witch of the West,” notes culture commentator Olivia Haynie, a tale of persecution and discrimination that many writers have noted is particularly Jewish.

The idea that “brain-melt” can be instigated by single-word associations and word context isn’t so far-fetched.

Researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky discovered that human reliance on mental shortcuts to speed up reasoning results in a remarkable sensitivity to how things are presented or framed, often overruling logic or rationality, Dr. Steve Rathje writes.

“In other words,” Dr. Melissa Hughes adds, “focusing on how something is said — or framed — can result in overlooking what is being said, which is the objective data we need.”

For example, study participants who read short passages about city crime described as a “beast preying” on the city concluded it should be addressed through punishment, while those who read about crime described as a “virus infecting” the city were more likely to support criminal reform, regardless of attitudes about crime and punishment on pre-study surveys.

The German word fluchtlingswelle (wave of refugees), often used to describe Syrian refugees from civil war, led citizens to demand the building of dams and protective walls.

By framing modern Israel as “a model of settler colonialism,” the genocidal dispossession of a native people by a European people, the facts and nuances of Jewish and Middle East history are swept under the rug.

This mental shortcut has resulted in calls for the elimination of the Jewish state, particularly notable recently on college campuses.

Never take language lightly,” Sacks cautions. Language is holy, and its wise use is a holy undertaking. Using it for unholy purposes is a desecration. One might even say it’s wicked.

Resources to share

In a rare switch from books this month…

Wicked, the movie. The musical film is, in the words of Israeli writer Hen Mazzig, “not just a spectacle of song and dance; it is a profound allegory. Beneath its spellbinding melodies lies a narrative as old as humanity itself, the story of scapegoating, dehumanization, and the moral cost of branding someone as ‘other’. It is, in essence, a deeply Jewish story.” Although rated PG, it is 2 hours, 40 minutes in length. The original novel Wicked was authored by Gregory Maguire, a reimagined version for adults of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Six13 – A Wicked Chanukah. A newly-released Chanukah parody video by the groundbreaking a cappella vocal band Six13 uses a Wicked medley to reenact the historical tale of the Maccabees, feature Chanukah traditions, and emphasize the commitment of the Jewish people. It’s an audiovisual treat that can be enjoyed by all ages! For additional commentary, see Lior Zaltzman’s Kveller article Six13’s Wicked Hanukkah Parody is Haunting but Uplifting.

To read the complete January 2025 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.