"Please excuse me for coming late to your shiur,"
Yossi said apologetically to R' Yitzchok. "My employers
invited a representative from the National Insurance to speak
to us workers about their rights. His talk took longer than I
expected, which is the reason for my lateness. What he said
was very important, but he succeeded in getting me all
upset."
At the look of surprise on R' Yitzchok's face, Yossi
continued, "I asked him about the rights of an employee who
suffered an injury on the way to work. So what does he say?
`Well, that's an important question. Look here, let's suppose
that you broke your leg on the way to work . . . ' That was
enough to throw me off and make me lose my capacity for
attention. I was very perturbed. I felt like telling him to
use himself as the guinea pig in his example, but I held
myself back. I think it was very impolite of him to say such
a thing to me directly."
"Yossi, you are so right!" said R' Yitzchok. "A person is
obligated to be sensitive to the feelings of his fellow. When
a speaker, or anyone carrying on a conversation, wants to
present an example of something negative or unpleasant, he
shouldn't use the second person as his subject. In fact,
Chazal taught us this element of sensitivity in a far more
extreme case than using the other person as the subject of
that unpleasant case in point.
"The gemora in Shavuos 36a tells of R' Kahana
who taught a mishna to R' Yehuda. The mishna
quotes a verse as an example of a curse. `May Hashem strike
you!' said R' Yehuda to R' Kahana.
"`Kaneh!' he hastened to rebuke him (meaning: Rephrase
that -- use a kinui -- so that it refers to others,
not the person he was directly addressing). `Say: May Hashem
strike him.'
In another instance, a Sage read a verse in Tehillim
(52:7) to his master, which included the words, `Hashem
shall destroy you forever.' Said his Rebbe, `Kaneh!'
In other words, he ordered him to reword the verse to the
third person, in which it would say, `Hashem shall destroy
him forever.'
"We thus learn that it is permissible, even necessary, to
change the wording of a mishna or a posuk to
the third person in order to avoid using the direct second
person form of address in the case of a curse. Apparently,
Yossi, your speaker did not learn this gemora."
"I understand now," said Yossi, "why it is customary not to
call up someone to the Torah for the readings of the portions
of the tochochoh, for these are curses. Instead, the
reader reads them himself; he recites the blessing before and
after the reading. I can imagine the feelings of a person who
would be standing by the bimah while those terrible
curses are being read off!"
"In our shul," noted R' Yitzchok, "children are
accustomed to crowd around the bimah opposite the
reader. But when we reach the portion of the curses, a dear
Jew by the name of R' Zvi makes sure to remove the children
from their place, for the same reason."
"I remember now," said Yossi, "that Chazal sometimes speak of
punishments or harsh decrees `upon the enemies of Israel'
when they are really referring to troubles that Jewry itself
is facing. But they rephrase it so as not to directly
attribute bad things to Jews, themselves."
"That's true," R' Yitzchok corroborated, "but that example
touches upon another possible facet of speech which requires
great caution because of its inherent danger. A slip of the
tongue or an inexact expression of a great man can be
fulfilled at its face value despite the fact that he did not
intend it that way. The gemora in Kesuvos 23a
tells that Shmuel complained derogatorily about the slack
vigil that was kept over captive women. His father rebuked
him and said, `If these were your daughters, would you speak
so disparagingly, as well?' It then goes on to say that this
utterance was like `an error issuing from the mouth of a
ruler.' Consequently, Shmuel's daughters did end up in
captivity.
"We find a similar instance in the Torah. When Lovon pursued
Yaakov in order to retrieve the stolen idols, Yaakov said,
`Whoever is found to be in possession of those idols shall
not live!' Lovon did not find the idols which actually were
hidden by Rochel among her belongings. But the sentence which
Yaakov uttered was fulfilled by her dying prematurely on the
road to Beis Lechem. Speech has a tremendous power and the
greater the person who utters a statement, even
inadvertently, the greater its impact and its chance of being
carried out; it is verily like a bomb that explodes, killing
even when the intent was far from the thoughts of the person
who uttered it.
"Anyone who is aware of this dynamic power follows with dread
the developments with Yaakov's sons as they return from
buying food in Egypt for their families. They tell their
father about the gentile ruler, viceroy to the king, who
treated them cruelly, imprisoned their brother and demanded
they bring their youngest brother - - an order that was
almost impossible to fulfill. It was only natural that the
elderly father, suffering along with his sons as they tell
their sad tale, should curse that heartless, wicked gentile
ruler who had framed his innocent sons.
"But if it had come about that the `wicked ruler,' who was
none other than Yosef ben Yaakov, had died like his mother
from an inadvertent curse of Yaakov, how different would
Jewish history have turned out! Yaakov's restraint and
caution in speech were, perhaps, the result of his bad
experience with the utterance he made to Lovon.
"The gemora in Moed Kotton 18a tells of Shmuel
who went to offer condolences to his bereaved brother. Seeing
the latter's overgrown nails, and thinking that it was not
forbidden for a mourner to cut his nails, he asked, `Why
don't you cut your nails?' His brother replied, `If you were
a mourner, would you be so callous about your mourning as to
cut your nails?'
"This was like an inadvertent slip of the tongue uttered by a
great man. It was not long before Shmuel found himself
sitting in mourning. When his brother came to console him, he
said angrily, `Were you not aware of the covenant of the
lips, that whatever is uttered has the power to come true?
Why weren't you more careful with your words?'"
"That is frightening!" said Yossi. "A man can say something
without meaning it -- and those words have the power to kill
or bring misfortune upon another! And this applies even to
those who are close to him and whom he loves dearly and only
wishes the best for them! Now I don't know how I will avoid
breaking my leg, as a result of what that speaker said to
me."
"I don't think you have anything to fear," R' Yitzchok
reassured him. "Have you noticed that all the stories
involving dreadful results from spoken words happened to
great people, from Yaakov Ovinu to the great sages of the
gemora? These are figures who generally weigh every
word they say; in fact, their speech constitutes part of the
written and oral traditions of the Torah! This is why all of
their words carry such impact. I hardly think that the
speaker from the National Insurance falls in that
category!
"Incidentally, by the same token, the great import borne in
every single word uttered by great mean, even without
specific intent, can also affect things for the good! The
example given in the gemora for this can be found by
Avrohom Ovinu. He goes to Mt. Moriah with his son, intending
to offer him up as a sacrifice. He tells the two men who
accompanied them to wait at a certain point until they
return.
"His wording is thus: `I and the youth will go and prostrate
ourselves and we will return to you. This needs
clarification, for at that point, Avrohom expected that he
would return without Yitzchok. But his unintentional phrasing
turned out to be accurate for he did return with Yitzchok.
"And this is also the `covenant of the lips which does not go
unrequited.'
"We do not presume to be great men whose every word is
fulfilled by Heaven. Nevertheless, we learn from here how
great is the power of speech, of even a single word.
"Let us, then, be very cautious at the simple courtesy level
of our speech, and be sensitive and considerate of other
people's sensibilities, not to attribute to another what we
would not wish upon ourselves or what is hated unto us, even
at that higher level of impact which might be misinterpreted
by the listener, even when it is clear that the speaker
certainly had no intention of meaning it literally."
