Words, Words, Words!
A Sermon for Erev
Rosh Ha-Shanah 5778
Sept. 20, 2017
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
A few nights ago I had a disturbing dream. I dreamt I was surrounded by a storm of words,
indistinguishable, one flowing into the other, swirling around me like leaves
whipped up in an autumn wind.
In retrospect, I am sure that this dream reflected images I
had just seen of the hurricanes in Florida and Houston, and my panic at not
having a single High Holy Day sermon written yet. In my dream, there were so many words—which ones
should I use? What themes would I speak of this year? I was trapped between the
blank pages and the flood of words and thoughts that whirled about me in my
dream.
In the following days, I started thinking about the central
image of my dream: words. I thought
about the power of words. Simple words,
complex words—words that codify our knowledge, words that make all human
culture and civilization possible. Where would humanity be without language and
words?
Words are how we communicate with one another. We learn about one another, about our past
and present from words; we use words to imagine and shape the future.
Words express our needs, our thoughts and our feelings, and
they register our reactions to events that take place around us.
Words free us from the drudgery of the ordinary, offering us
escape into worlds of imagination, make-believe and fantasy.
Words govern our lives with rules and laws, and they offer
instruction and guidance when we are lost.
Words give form to concepts and ideas. Words are the substance of knowledge. With words we learn to understand the
mysteries that surround us, and thus to conquer our fear of the unknown.
Words give us joy, laughter, and tears—sometimes all at
once.
I once remarked to my father, of blessed memory, that he
seemed to save too many newspaper and magazine clippings, some of them going
back decades in time. My father
responded, “What can I do?? I love words.”
I now realize that I must have inherited this love from him. I love words and the paths that they lead me
on. I love playing with words, listening
to their rhythms and rhymes. I love
figuring out how words evolved through the ages and how they arrived at the meaning
they hold for us today.
Personally, I love puns and word play. One of my favorite passages in all literature
is from Hamlet, Shakespeare’s play about the man who sought justice by means of
words. In Act II, Hamlet is reading a
book when he encounters Polonius, chief counselor to the king. When Polonius asks Hamlet what he is reading,
the prince answers, “Words, words, words.”
He then goes on to engages Polonius in some clever and witty wordplay,
twisting, turning and tweaking the words Polonius speaks, until Polonius comes
to believe that Hamlet has lost his mind. When you take the meaning out of
words, Shakespeare seems to tell us, there is nothing left but chaos and
madness. When communication breaks down,
civilization fails.
Words can turn empty and meaningless. They can become false and turn into lies. And words can be vicious and hurtful, when
they are filled with wicked intent and used to evil purposes.
We first learn of the power of words in the Torah’s story of
Creation. It is with words, after all,
that the world is created. The Big Bang
may have brought matter into being, but it is with words, “Let there be light,”
that God brings order into the chaos. In
chapter 2 of Genesis, God shares this creative power with human beings, not by
giving us fire (as in other mythological stories) but rather by giving us the
gift of language. By commanding Adam to
give animals the names by which they will be known for all time, God empowers all
human beings to catalogue and categorize the world around us, to bring purpose
and order to the chaos we perceive, to shape and reshape reality in our own
image, according to our own knowledge and understanding.
But just as words can create, so can they also destroy. Only a few paragraphs later, in chapter four
of the book of Genesis, Cain and Abel, the first set of siblings in the world,
have words with one another. We never
learn exactly what was said, but whatever it was, the words were forceful enough
to lead Cain to kill his brother Abel, the first murder in recorded human
history.
As the Good Book says (Proverbs 18:21): death and life are
in the power of the tongue.
Little has changed in the millennia since Creation. Today
words can still create, teach and inspire; and they can still also destroy, hurt
and leave behind deep scars.
Maybe it’s because of the anonymity associated with social
media, or maybe because of the power Facebook has given us to judge others
quickly and without much thinking—with a simple emoji, with a thumbs up or a
thumbs down; or maybe it’s because of MTV and other facets of pop culture,
which cater to our baser instincts. Whatever the reason, in the past few years
we have seen vile words, words meant to hurt, mock and insult, become the new
norm. Even the recent race for the highest and most prestigious office in the world—the
Presidency of the United States of America—became a disgusting display of indecency,
dishonesty and bullying.
Then, in the wake of the elections, new words appeared—Alt-Right,
Alt-Left, the Antifa—words that shed light not only on the deep social,
economic and racial rifts that are tearing our nation apart, but also on what
the extremists on both sides have in common: hatred, prejudice, and—yes, you
guessed it—anti-Semitism.
After Charlottesville, the White House issued words that
seemed to show moral equivalency, words that obfuscated the difference between
prejudice and tolerance, between hatred and acceptance. Later statements tried
to back off from this failure of vision and leadership, but something was still
missing. Amidst all the tumult, finger-pointing and shouting, not a single word
of apology, not a single “I’m sorry” was spoken—not for Heather Heyer, whose life
was so cruelly cut short in Charlottesville; not for the nineteen who were
wounded and injured by the man who deliberately rammed his car into the
counter-protestors; nor for the thousands and thousands all over the world,
whose traumas were reawakened by the once-again-rising specter of racism,
misogyny, homophobia and anti-Semitism.
A shocking silence.
But there WAS response.
It came from the streets, as in Boston, where, a week after
Charlottesville, forty thousand people marched across town and gathered at the
Boston Common to drown out the voices of bigotry and prejudice. Response came from other cities as well, where
people came out to protest against the hatred.
Response is also found in our machzorim, our holiday prayer books. Here we find words that our
people have called holy: Words that teach us how to love one another; words
that instruct us to act with charity and compassion; words that remind us that
saying “I’m sorry” doesn’t make you less of a man, and that to forgive actually
makes you more like God. Here we learn
about humility, and about the genius implanted within each and every human
being, the unique challenge given each of us by God, and the opportunity we all
have to participate in tikkun ‘olam,
the repair of our world.
The central image of Rosh Ha-Shana is Sefer ha-chayim, the Book of Life.
In this book, we are told, our life story writes itself. Each word we think, utter or act upon is
registered on its pages. But then, so
are the many lost opportunities, the many missed chances to make it a good
story, to imbue it with purpose and meaning, to give it a happy ending.
As we go through the next 10 days, reflecting upon our life
and the direction it’s going in, let us remember that until the last day, until
our last breath, we have the power to repent, to turn back, to get back on the
right path. Words do have power—but we have power over the words we use to shape
our lives and the world around us.
Pen in hand, let us take control of our life-story and make
sure it turns out right. One day at a
time, one breath at a time, one kind word at a time. The story is ours to
write, and today we get to begin a new chapter.
L’shanah tova
tikatveivu—may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life for a year of
goodness, of peace, of life, love, health and prosperity. Amen.
© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman
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