Yom Kippur 5776
I've been grieving over the past few days over some words I said that I can’t take back. I yelled at my teenager in the most unseemly way. It was surprising enough to both of us that the teenager said, “Irwin, what is this really about?” And we were able to have a nice little meta-conversation that we don’t usually get to have. Although my stupid pride – or stupid shame – kept me from adding other pieces of the picture, like: your brother left for college yesterday and I’m really sad; and it’s almost Yom Kippur and I’m full of self-doubt . In any event, the immediate outcome of all of this was by all appearances okay. I apologized. He accepted my apology. But I was left haunted by my own words, wishing, like we all do, that I could take them back, and try the whole moment over again.
Because words are powerful. Torah tells
us that this world came into existence through words (Psalms 33:6). God said, “Light!” and there
was light. And then onward through a whole week of directives, with heaven,
earth, tree, bug and human appearing one after the other, like exclamation
points at the end of each of God’s sentences.
Our mystics understood words to be
sources of power. Combinations of letters could force God’s hand. Words
inscribed in clay could raise a golem to life or consign it back to the dust. In
the kabbalistic view, the structure of our whole reality rests not on atoms or
waves but on 22 Hebrew letters, like how in the Matrix movies reality is a projection
of binary code.
Jews believe in the power of words.
That’s why we have a Yom Kippur prayer like Kol Nidre, where we try to undo
them. We say, Release us from our vows.
Let our oaths be not-oaths and our promises be not-promises. The Kol Nidre
prayer arose in times when Jews were sometimes forced to make oaths of fealty
to king or cause or god not of our choosing. But I think it’s equally as
powerful as a lament over our own, everyday misuse of words. We ask for our
words to be nullified, for them to be reeled back in as if they were never uttered.
We know that can’t happen. But we pray that at least the damage we’ve unleashed
can somehow be stemmed.
Words are powerful and they can hurt in
a million ways. As kids we used to say, “Sticks and stones can break my bones
but names will never hurt me,” an adage that is an obvious lie. Because years
later, the broken bones of our childhoods are healed. But the wounds from the names
we were called, from the taunts of our tormentors or the fault-finding of our loved
ones, continue to haunt us and to hobble us. My worst childhood memories do not
involve fists, which I was reasonably good at dodging. The memories that haunt
me are about words. There are a million examples. But I’ll just share that when
the high school band, within a litany of cutesy year-end awards, voted me “biggest
fruit” and this was read aloud by the band director to the band, the damage
included an end of my musical life until I was coaxed back in my thirties.
Words are powerful.
And words are cheap. Now more than
ever. I open my computer and am met by hundreds of emails; mostly ads; aptly called
spam – both tasteless and treyf. By
the time I get up from my screen, I have wasted hours of my “one wild and precious
life”[1]
on thousands of words that do no honor to this world and make no effort to.
The truth is that I love words. I studied
linguistics for years. Words can tell you history much like fossils or the
rings of a tree can. You can guess at migrations and cultural contact and
technological developments and the evolution of metaphors that become so
commonplace we don’t even notice that they’re metaphors.
Words are brilliant. And I think they
deserve better than how we have come to use them. I think they have the right
to convey something of substance, whether it’s love or hope or wonderment or
consolation or important information (of course) or song or respectful disagreement
or even playful nonsense. They obviously can
carry other kinds of content, but I don’t think they like it.
In my first, short-lived lawyer job, I learned
that my words were for hire. They had a kind of economic value whether or not I
actually agreed with them. And as I assembled strings of words to help defend
polluters or Savings & Loan looters, I felt both my unhappiness and theirs.
Compared to that, my career as a singing
drag queen was a dream. I could say anything! Fling words into the air in song
and in jest, making people laugh. I would know before I said it how each word
would land. In the Kinsey Sicks, we would use our words to poke fun at power,
to point out injustice, even to make fun of funny things about words themselves.
How lovely was this! But there was an occupational hazard too. I became – and
still am – a little too quick with the sarcastic quip. See, the culture prizes
ironic humor because we live in a cynical time. No one expects much good to
happen. We expect to be laughed at if we speak from our hearts. So we speak
indirectly, ironically, with a certain roll of the eyes embedded right into the
syllables. I do value being funny. But I’m learning that it’s not always good
for me to lead with it. Because I have too often let loose an automatic, not
fully thought-out sarcastic comment and as the words leave my mouth I’ve seen
them look back over their shoulders at me with disapproval.
Now wouldn’t it be nice if our words had
veto power? If they could refuse us if they disagree with the purpose we’re
putting them to. What if I opened my mouth in anger at my kid or unthinkingly
in sarcasm and found that my words weren’t even there, that they had absconded to
some margarita bar somewhere on the far side of my cerebral cortex, waiting for
me to chill out. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Sadly that’s not the case. Words seem
to show up for duty, no matter how dirty the deed. And that always surprises
me. When some bub says to a presidential candidate, “We have a problem in this
country; it’s called Muslims…when can we get rid of them,” I wonder how words
can even contain such ugliness. How is it that they don’t shatter at its touch,
like searing tea poured into glass, leaving shards of broken syllables
scattered on the floor.
And then in those “We have a problem in
this country; it’s called Muslims” moments, we wait with hope for the candidate’s
courageous riposte. Words that will put a halt to the hate mongering and redeem
the moment and our morality. And the right words are there, in the bullpen, powerful
words, real sluggers, saying, “Pick me! Pick me! Send me in.” But instead, the politician
responds: “We’re going to be
looking at a lot of different things.” Using words to say nothing but only to wink
back at hate.
Now it’s easy to
condemn this particular pair of interlocutors. That particular moment was high
profile and is still on our minds. Be aren’t we all guilty – I know I am – of
leaving the right words in the bullpen when they’re needed? When someone speaks
hatefully about Muslims, or patronizingly about African Americans, or makes a
cheap joke at the expense of transgender people or fat people or Jews or some
other easy, popular target. All those times that we leave our good words un-deployed
– those are moments for which we need to make teshuvah. And to hope that the Kol
Nidre prayer can reel back in not only our harsh words but also our
complicit silences.
So I’ve decided
that for me, 5776 is going to be the year of Right Speech. The year of the Good
Word. Since last year, the shmitah
year, represented the shabbes of a
seven-year cycle, this year must represent the first day of Creation, the one
in which God first spoke; the day in which words first had consequence. So here
are 3 Jewish principles that I’m going to offer myself, and you by association,
to guide my tongue.
(1) Be like Hillel: kind and humble in your
speech.
There’s a famous
story in Talmud of a long-raging dispute between the School of Rabbi Hillel and
the School of Rabbi Shammai.[2]
A heavenly voice suddenly intrudes into the assembly and says eylu v’eylu divrei Elohim chayim. “Both
these and those are the words of the living God.” Meaning that your adversary’s
words might also come from a holy impulse, even if you don’t agree with them.
Seeing that possibility can shift your feelings in any conflict. But there’s
more. The heavenly voice continues, announcing that despite the holiness of
everyone’s words, the School of Hillel wins. “Why?” asks Talmud, and goes right
on to answer. “Because
they were kindly and modest and spoke about their opponents’ view before their
own,” unlike the School of Shammai, which had been known to go out of their way
to scold Jews for the way they kept the law. So, Principle #1: be like Hillel.
Let your words be kindly and modest.
(2) Keep me from Lashon Hara
The idea of lashon hara, of evil speech, is an old
one in Judaism. It focuses less on speaking meanly to someone, which mostly we
all try to resist, and instead on speaking meanly about someone behind their back. Sometimes it is subtle. It can
take the form of a joke. Or even just a tone of voice.
I do this more
than I’d like to admit. It’s terrible and cowardly and so inviting because
there isn’t a huge risk of being caught. And we can’t really pretend that it
doesn’t hurt the person just because they’re not hearing it. It paves the way
for other people to judge or mistreat them. And it hurts us too. It makes us more
and more practiced at being uncompassionate; and I do not want a neshomeh that is practiced at being
uncompassionate. So, Principle #2: keep off the lashon hara. If saying something about someone makes you feel
gleefully guilty, maybe you actually don’t need to say it.
(3) Silence is an Option
Sometimes in all
of our struggles figuring out what is the right thing to say and what is the
wrong thing to say, we forget that not
saying is also available to us. That silence isn’t just absence of sound;
it has heft and substance. Psalm 65 says, “God, to you silence is tehilah – praise.”[3]
Silence is in itself a psalm. Psalm 46 says, “Be still, and know that I am
God.”[4]
So maybe once,
instead of delivering the well-timed quip, I might opt instead for silence. Profound
things can happen in the silence. We can more readily relocate our Hillel-like compassion
and humility. And sometimes, in the silence, if we listen, we can hear the kol d’mamah dakah, the still, small
voice. The deep intuition or the angelic encouragement. What we stand to gain
in our silence is sometimes far greater than what we stand to gain by opening our
mouths, certainly by opening our mouths in anger or annoyance. And the soul-space
that your silence opens up in you is now a new vessel to receive the light of
the Shechinah. And doesn’t that sound
nice? So Principle #3: Consider Silence.
So with these
three principles and more as I stumble upon them, I enter this year of Right
Speech, this year of the Good Word.
In Torah, in the
Book of Numbers, there is a moment when an angel with a sword appears in the
path of a prophet on his way to curse the Children of Israel. I want that. I
want that app. May I be blessed when I open my mouth with a curse at the ready,
that an angel appears before me. No sword necessary. The angel is enough. And
may it stop me from my errand.
May I put my
words to good use. And may I hold them with the care that I might hold a beloved
child. And may I hold the child with the greatest care of all.
Wishing friends and readers a g'mar chatimah tovah.
