July 2014

The Power of Our Words

This week is the one-year anniversary of my marriage to Jeremy and, besides counting my blessings, the
occasion has gotten me to think once again about the place of vows and commitments within Judaism. While there’s a great deal to the subject, one generalization is that our tradition has always accorded extraordinary power to the spoken word, especially when the name of God is invoked.

One early illustration of this is in Genesis 27 when Jacob, with his mother Rebekah’s help, dresses up as his brother Esau, and tricks their father Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing Isaac intended for Esau. When Esau and Jacob realize what has happened, they weep together. Ever since I read the story as a little girl, I wondered: Why couldn’t Isaac just say he made a mistake, that his words were intended for Esau, and that he was taking back the blessing? Apparently, at least in biblical times, the words were deemed to have an almost magical authority of their own. Once uttered, the speaker lost the power to retract them.

In one of the Torah portions this month, Parashat Matot, the Torah prescribes rules for oaths and vows. The Torah teaches that oaths between people and God cannot be broken, and generally discourages people from making hard-to-keep vows in the first place. In Talmudic times, the sages realized that there needed to be some mechanism to absolve people from vows that became impossible to fulfill, and permitted annulment by a Beit Din (rabbinic court) of three rabbis. And, ever since the Middle Ages, Jews have chanted the Kol Nidre prayer on Yom Kippur night, asking that we be absolved from any vows we make during Yom Kippur or in the coming year that we cannot keep.

We have certainly come a long way from the days when using the name of God always involved an
unbreakable commitment. Today, “I swear to God” is more likely to begin such sentences as: (a) “Mom, I
didn’t eat the extra chocolate-chip cookie,” (b) “No officer, I wasn’t speeding,” or (c) “The check is already in the mail!” Even if we don’t want to go back to the old days when words had a supernatural power of their own, our tradition has something important to teach us about taking ourselves and our promises seriously.

I know that there are times – like my marriage vows – where I want my words to have the power to create a sacred, life-long bond, knowing that in the Jewish tradition our words help create our reality. We want to be (or become) people with enough faith in ourselves and God to make very serious commitments. Yet, most of the time, though I want to set ambitious goals and intentions, I try not to make hard promises when I am not sure I can fulfill them. I invite you to do the same. Next time you feel inclined to promise or swear, if you aren’t sure you can deliver, perhaps instead share your hope as a goal or an intention. When we are careful with our words, we have more integrity.

My blessing this month for us is this: When we make commitments, may we be both courageous and realistic, motivating ourselves to do our best, but also letting each other know when we are not sure if we can follow through.

Finally, when we use our words for prayer, let us give ourselves license to tell God who we want to be and how we hope the world will change, and humbly promise to do our best to make it so.

Rabbi Margie