The faculty of speech does not seem unique to humankind.
Dolphins have a rather sophisticated language. And a whole
host of other creatures, great and small, from the birds in
the trees to the ants in the ground, have elaborate modes of
communication that scientists are only beginning to learn
about.
Yet, the Jewish Sages have for centuries taught that the
human being is distinguished from other species precisely in
this power of verbal expression. According to tradition, the
physical world is divided into four strata of existence: the
Mineral, the Vegetable, the Animal and -- the Speaker. In the
Jewish view, speech is so unique to mankind that man is
identified by this faculty.
Their typification of man as the Speaker certainly cannot be
attributed to ancient man's ignorance of nonhuman language,
for the Sages were not at all ignorant of it. The Midrash
records that King Solomon knew the language of birds and
animals. Why then, do the Sages insist on identifying man as
the speaker, when speech does not seem to be at all unique to
man?
One could argue that human speech is far superior. Dolphins
may be highly intelligent mammals, but their system of clicks
and whistles are hardly in the same league with English or
French. When was the last time anybody named Flipper said
"Give me liberty or give me death!" or "J'Accuse!"
The argument is less than satisfying, however, since it
reduces the difference to a matter of degree rather than a
matter of kind. And in the Jewish view, man is not just a
more articulate version of something that can jump through
hoops; he is a completely different -- and higher -- order of
being.
It is a world-view which stands profoundly in opposition to
prevailing notions of humanity's ranking in the ecological
chain. Whereas the average Darwinian-influenced
environmentalist may view man as an exceptionally
intelligent, versatile and all-too-often destructive link in
the chain of life; the Sages perceive him as the crown of
Creation and its purpose, however much he may abuse his
exalted position. Such a radical viewpoint needs
explanation.
That explanation may be found in the approaching festival of
Pesach. The word Pesach itself is layered with meaning. It
refers to the sacrificial offering of the same name which
Jews are commanded to partake of when the Temple stands in
Jerusalem. It also refers to the miraculous way in which G-d
skipped over the houses of the Jewish people in Egypt at the
time of the climactic 10th plague, the Slaying of the First
Born. The Sages reveal to us yet another, lesser known,
meaning, however, as a word compounded from Peh and
Sach -- a talking mouth. Evidently, the power of
speech is somehow intrinsically bound up with the inner
meaning of the festival. But how?
In order to answer that question, we first
need to understand more deeply the genesis of man. Man
consists essentially of two component parts: a soul and a
physical body. The faculty of thought corresponds to the
spiritual part, the soul; the capacity for action
corresponds, of course, to the body.
When G-d created Man, and blew into him the breath of life,
He conjoined those two parts. In the Targum Onkelos,
man's creation is described as the creation of a
"speaking spirit."
Speech is perceived not as just an increment of thought, nor
as mere accompaniment to physical action; rather it is the
product of that conjunction of the spiritual and the
physical. It is the fine isthmus between the world of soul
and the world of matter. The exercise of man's moral free
will consists in the struggle to enable his spiritual
component to prevail over the physical; for reason to
dominate his animal drive. Thus, more than any other faculty,
speech is identified with man's moral free will, because
speech has its existence precisely there, in that interface
between the higher and lower parts of man. The organs of
speech -- lips, teeth and tongue -- are either servants to
the soul or slaves to the selfish body.
On the seventh day of Pesach, we read the Song of the Sea, an
expression of joyful triumph at the Splitting of the Red Sea
which occurred seven days after the exodus from Egypt. The
Torah records for all time that moment of exultation when the
whole nation of Israel passed miraculously through the Sea,
to be followed by the Egyptian hosts who plunged to their
deaths after them.
Our Sages teach that even a humble maidservant saw at the sea
on that day a vision that even great prophets never attained.
For in this world, in which the wicked so often prosper and
the righteous so often suffer, the triumph of right is a rare
occurrence. It is really in the next world that things will
be set right and a moral reckoning made. Only there should we
really expect the wicked to receive their well-deserved
punishments and the righteous their well- deserved reward. In
the meantime, life is an ongoing test of faith in G-d's
wisdom and justice.
At the Splitting of the Sea, however, even the most ordinary
person was privileged to witness that rare event -- a whole
nation redeemed in the fulfillment of a centuries-old Divine
promise and, at the same time, the downfall of their
persecutors.
The Sages discuss, too, the precision with which the
Egyptians were judged. The most wicked suffered the longest
and most painful death, their very bones breaking and torn
apart; while the less wicked suffered less. Each according to
his evil. The Jewish people witnessed not only their national
salvation, but a salvation imbued with perfect justice. It
was a revelatory moment in which the justice normally
reserved for the next world was brought into this world of
injustice. It was the revealed interface of the spiritual
with the physical; of soul with substance.
And that is why the response to the event was song. For what
is song but an inspired form of speech; and what is speech
but an expression of that same conjoining of two opposite
worlds, of the eternal with the temporal.
And now we have the answer to the question we started with.
Man is distinguished from other creatures by his faculty of
speech. This does not mean that he possesses language and
others don't, for G-d has endowed other creatures with their
own wonderful means of communicating. What it means is that
Man's gift of speech is possessed of a moral dimension. And
that is something not shared by any other creature, whether
great or small.
This article was adapted from Pachad Yitzchok, Pesach,
Ma'amar 15.
