By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal
SAN DIEGO– “Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!
I get words all day through;
First from him, now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?”
So laments Eliza Doolittle in the musical classic My Fair Lady.
Eliza was clearly not Jewish! Jews never complain about words. They are at the heart of our religion, tradition, and culture. This week’s parasha, D’varim (Deuteronomy), begins with words: “These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.” (Deut. 1:1)
Many years ago, the rabbis taught that prophecy was taken from the Prophets and given to children and fools. Since Jews no longer believe in direct revelation, all we have are words.
If Jews question whether something is right or wrong, or they are not sure what a decision should be, we do not “pray on it.” Instead, we read about it. We look to the Torah and traditional Jewish sources for answers and inspiration about contemporary dilemmas. We look to our words for solutions to our problems.
The first day a Jewish child went to cheder (a traditional Jewish school in Europe) the teacher would put dabs of honey on their reading primer. The child would touch the book and lick their fingers. Thus they came to associate learning with sweetness.
So central are words to our tradition that our sages deemed them the vehicle of creation, “Praised is God whose word created the world.” (Siddur)
Today Jews, especially young Jews, are losing their words. Television and computers have supplanted books as vehicles of education and entertainment, and a sentence longer than a “tweet” (no more than 140 characters) can prove overwhelming. Hardly anyone reads a newspaper anymore, and diligent research has been replaced by Google and Wikipedia.
For Judaism to thrive, Jews must engage with words. We must continue to read and study traditional and contemporary sources. Our Judaism must not be defined by what we think we remember being taught in childhood, but by our own diligent pursuit of enlightenment.
Jews must never be sick of words. For Jews, words are the source of knowledge and life.
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Rabbi Rosenthal is spiritual leader of Tifereth Israel Synagogue. He may be contacted via leonard.rosenthal@sdjewishworld.com