For the sin which we have committed before You with an utterance of the lips.
And for the sin which we have committed before You by impurity
of speech.
For the sin which we have committed before You by
foolish talk.
And for the sin which we have committed before You by
scoffing.
For the sin which we have committed before You by speaking evil
of another human being.
And for the sin which we have committed before You by
causeless hatred.
Val Kulam Elohai Slichot, Slach Lanu, Mochel Lanu,
Kaper Lanu,
There is some ferocious
language in the Torah reading from a couple of weeks ago – Parashat Ki Tavo
That is to say, there’s a
little bit of lovely language – if you do good and follow God’s commands God
will bless the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your soil and your basket and kneading
bowl will be blessed and enemies will flee before you – which sounds nice.
But if you do not hearken
to the voice of God, the Torah goes on to say; damned be your basket and kneading
bowl, dammed be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your soil. God will
strike you with consumption, with fever, with dehydration, with blight, with
jaundice. These things will pursue you until you are destroyed.
Which is less nice.
And in one of the most –
no – the most brutal verse, I think, in the entire Torah, the famine that will
sweep the nation, it is claimed, will be so severe that, even the tenderest
among you will resort to the cannibalism of
their own children.
Language, in Judaism, counts.
Language has what, in
Hebrew, is called Mashmaut a concrete reality. Language has power.
So much so, that the very
Hebrew word for a thing, an object, Davar, is the very same as the
Hebrew word for a word, Davar.
So much so, that the
mechanism of creation, in Judaism, is speech – And God said, “Let there be
light, and there was light.”
There’s a remarkable coda
to the awful verse in the Torah reading from a couple of weeks ago, buried in Josephus’ The Jewish War.
Josephus, once a Jewish
General protecting the Jews from the Romans, wrote a thousand years after this
verse in Deuteronomy comes to be. He writes about the Roman siege of the Temple
in Jerusalem and he describes a famine so severe that the kneading bowls and
the baskets are indeed damned, and even that there is a parent so desperate in
their hunger, that they commit this unimaginable cannibalism of their own
child, just as the Book of Deuteronomy prophesied.
In so many ways, there’s
nothing that could possibly be said about something so awful, but, the thing I
feel, reading Deuteronomy and Josephus and God help me, the news and everything
else, is that the Russian play write, Anton Checkov’s, most famous rule is
somehow at play.
"If in the first act [wrote
Checkov] you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it
should be fired. Otherwise, don't put it there."
Somehow it feels that the action of invoking in strident speech
a loaded gun, even if it were only meant as to terrify, or persuade, or keep us
far from mistake, it feels like that action has somehow presaged that gun going
off.
Language has Mashmaut.
I wanted to talk about this since before the murder of Charlie
Kirk on 10th September, or the Unite the Kingdom rally in Central
London on 13th September. I’ve wanted to talk about this since before
October 7th as well as almost every day since. This stuff has been
causing pain and fear for too long.
I wanted to talk about this in the context of my own in-tray,
the sort of emails that come in, not so frequently, but too frequently, that
cross a line between seeking to disagree with what I have to say – always
welcome – and into a world of strident discourse that is designed not to engage, but instead disparage with a level
of hatred and aggression that veers away from a disagreement and into the
personal.
Here's a quick tour of the greatest hits of my own in-tray.
There was the time I thought an unknown number calling my
phone might be a pastoral matter – I tend not to answer phone calls from
numbers I don’t recognise. So, I answered, only to hear someone scream their
accusations that I was responsible for the genocide of Palestinian babies.
Or the time, I wrote something about something – I can’t even
remember, I don’t think it was particularly pointed at all – and someone, a
Jew!, responded that they hoped I felt guilt for the responsibility for the
murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim at the Jewish Museum in
Washington. To be clear, Lischinsky and Milgrim were murdered with no
justification and certainly not by me.
Or the time when I dropped a politically engaged member a note
ensuring they knew that our local MP was coming to speak at New London in the
run up to Rosh Hashanah.
And the member wrote back this way,
Thank you for mentioning the
event with Rachel Blake MP next week. I must admit that my utter hatred of this
horrific Labour government runs so deep within me that I have no interest in
anything that a politician willing to hold the Labour whip has to offer.
It was the phrase, “utter hatred” that caught my attention. It
made me think of the connection between Chekhov’s law about pistols on the wall
and the language in Deuteronomy and Josephus and then Charlie Kirk and, I don’t
know who even remembers Jo Cox at this point. It reminded me of Jo Cox of
blessed memory. And Yitzhak Rabin of blessed memory – Oh, I really hope we
haven’t forgotten about Yitzhak Rabin.
It has to stop.
All of it, from the left, from the right, from the so-called lovers
of Israel and the so-called lovers of Palestine, from the supporters of Labour
and the supporters of Reform and everyone.
It has to stop.
We have to stop using and valorising the sort of strident language
that isolates, intimidates and belittles the very humanity of people who take
views other than our own.
Even if the positions other people take seem to us obviously
wrong, so obviously cruel and unjustifiable that it seems to us so obviously
justifiable to use the most strident language we can, it has to stop.
Even if we find ourselves in a society where those who express
themselves carefully are accused of being dull or uncharismatic, and those who
use language to whip up emotions draw our attention, it has to stop.
We have to take back control of the language we use and the
language we permit to exist before us as if language has Mashmaut – physical
corporeal power – for indeed language has Mashmaut.
We need to start treating language as if, every time we use
strident language, we hang something on the wall in Act One of a Chekhov play.
Here are the three problems with this sort of strident
language.
The first is that the language we use has a life of its own
once it leaves our lips. There’s a cute story about the Rabbi who wished to
teach some poor kid who spoke ill about some other poor kid about the Jewish
principle of Lashon HaRa, evil language. The Rabbi told the kid to find
three down pillows, bring them to the top of a mountain and pound the pillows
until the feathers flew away in the wind. The kid does as asked, looks at the
Rabbi as if to say – “Is that it?” and the Rabbi tells the kid to go and find
every feather and bring them back and return them to their pillowcases.
Language has a life of its own once it leaves our lips. It
might be that my ideal audience can cope with my strident language. It might be
that 99.9% of my audience are going to hear my strident language and realise
that I mean no physical harm towards those I critique. It might be that only a
person affected by mental illness or trauma could possibly understand my
strident use of language as justifying physical harm. But that 99.9% is not
enough. Not even close to being enough.
The second and third reasons to avoid strident language when
speaking about those with whom we disagree are connected. They are that we are
likely to be both wrong and make things worse, rather than better. I think it’s
helpful to think about this in the context of Teshuvah. When it comes to my own
failings and errors, I tend to think of myself as basically a decent and
reasonable person whose errors, even the bad ones, are slips that deserve to be
forgiven. But when I think of the failings and errors of those I disagree with, I
tend to think of them as entirely corrupted by their failings. But the truth is
that these other people think of themselves as reasonable people, too. I’ve met
many, many people in my life who think of themselves as reasonable if
occasionally errant – even if I think they are acting most unreasonably.
I might even be one of them. I don’t know if I’ve ever met a true sociopath. It’s both fair and sensible to treat those
with whom we disagree as we would wish to be treated ourselves. No-one’s going
to change when backed into a corner and belittled.
I’m not recommending we start hugging terrorists. I’m not
recommending naivete, but if we want a society that is more cohesive, more
kind, more generous of spirit, we have to stop the strident use of language to
attack those with whom we have disagreements. We have to stop hanging pistols
on the wall. We have to speak about, even the people who hurt us and who we
disagree with, as if they are complex human beings with their own
self-perceptions of reasonableness. It’s not going to help to keep pushing ‘them’
away from ‘us.’
I’m talking about a fundamental commitment not only to change the
way we talk ourselves, but also in the way we treat the speech of others.
There’s an idea that goes around that the people who ‘speak
well’ are the people who are capable of wrecking a sort of scorched earth
demolition of their opponents. These are the clips that wander around our
social media algorithms and inside our minds. These are the sorts of
spokespeople we just wish we could have more of, on our own side, of course.
And they speak so forcibly, how could they possibly not result in our case
being considered absolutely correct? That doesn’t happen, of course. Those who
disagree with us continue to disagree with us and often even more vociferously
and painfully. We are going to have to relearn an approach to language that is
careful, gentle and makes space for disagreement. We’re going to have to learn
how to listen, to explore and test out our arguments in discussion.
Language is the greatest gift we possess as human beings.
It’s the greatest responsibility. It’s capable of causing the greatest amount
of damage.
It’s also the best tool we have if we want to mend, to bring
compassion, to offer hope.
Here’s a resolution for us all – as we go through this day,
and as we run through that list of speech-related sins we thump our chest to be
freed from - use language as if it had Mashmaut – for indeed, it does.
And may this year come to us all in peace,
Chatimah Tovah
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