Words as Weapons
Israel, and by extension the entire Jewish people, are fighting not one enemy but two. The first chooses traditional weapons: guns, knives or explosives. The second combatant utilizes more avant-garde artillery: words. In our current era of easy internet access, instant messaging, blogs, and mobile phones, the old adage, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” has taken on new meaning. Bullets and bombs have limited scope, misinformation and propaganda do not.
This second battlefield has opened a new front. Until now, one could expect news companies to present biased coverage against Israel. After all they are only interested in ratings, and anti-Israel slant sells. But that governments, among them western democracies should countenance blatant hatred and calls for the complete destruction of a fellow country has Jews wondering: Do they not realize that if we go, they will soon follow? What happened to simple self-preservation?
Perhaps, the cause of Jew-bashing lies not at the door of the non-Jewish world, but ours. Compare this to what Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman (1875-1941) once noted on another matter, “It is really quite amazing how the Jewish people have forever suffered from blood-libels.
The rule is that any falsehood which does not contain at least a small kernel of truth cannot endure. (Sotah 35a) Yet these libels do persist! Undoubtedly, it is a punishment, measure for measure for some sin in our past…I would venture to suggest that the blood libel is an expiation for the sin of Joseph’s brothers who dipped Joseph’s coat into animal’s blood and tried to pass it off as human.”
I am afraid, that here too, we must look closer to home. The recent Biblical readings speak of a spiritual malady brought on by evil gossip. The person afflicted - with physical symptoms often described as leprous - was the metsorah because he was a motzi shem ra: a person who spoke disparagingly about others.
Evil speech is more than a serious offense. Here is how Maimonides summarized it: There are three transgressions for which a person is punished in this world and has no share in the World to Come; idolatry, illicit sex, and bloodshed. But evil speech is as bad as all three combined. Thus whoever speaks with an evil tongue is as if he denied G-d…Evil speech kills three people; the one who says it, the one who accepts it, and the one about whom it is said. (Hilchos Deos 7:3)
Is it truly so bad? Consider these examples. In the early 13th century, a bitter dispute broke out between devotees and critics of Maimonides. For the former, he was one of the greatest Jewish minds of all time. For the latter, he was a dangerous thinker whose influence led people to abandon the commandments. There were ferocious exchanges. Each side issued condemnations against the other. There were sermons and, of course, counter-sermons. For a while French and Spanish Jewry were convulsed by the controversy. Then, in 1232, Maimonides’ books were burned by the Dominicans. Just one decade later, following the Disputation of Paris, Christians burned every copy of the Talmud they could find. It was one of the great tragedies of the Middle Ages.
Was there a connection between the internal Jewish struggle and the Christian burning of Jewish books? Undoubtedly! Perhaps Christians were simply able to take advantage of the split within Jewry? More likely, the Dominicans utilized the Jewish accusations of heresy against Maimonides, to level their own charges.
Recall the vicious war waged against the Chassidic movement by their opponents, the misnagdim. Indeed, they went so far as to provide false testimony and forged documents. The result: the Czarist authorities imprisoned the first Rebbe of Chabad, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi. (1745-1812) This willingness to defame our fellow Jews was why the Malbim (1809-1879), Chief Rabbi of Rumania was taken to the border and released on condition that he never return. The more ‘enlightened’ Jews incited the civil authorities against him when they portrayed the Malbim in posters as a benighted traditionalist opposed to Jewish assimilation. In consequence the Jews of Bucharest lost their religious rights.
Such shameful speech of Jew-against-Jew has forever been a bane on our community. Its perpetrators have long been identified in
are how they are referred throughout our literature and history, and tradition has it that they were never shown the mercy afforded other ‘sinners’.
For a people of history, we can be bewilderingly obtuse to the lessons of our past. Time and again, unable to resolve our own conflicts civilly, we have slandered our opponents to the government. This always led to disastrous results for the entire Jewish community, not just the accused. Though the literature of Rabbinic Judaism is filled with argument, the various Sages in the Talmud always respected each other. Indeed the school of Hillel would teach their opponents’ views before their own. (Eruvin 13b) Despite this, Jews have continued to excoriate, denounce, and excommunicate those whose views they did not understand or accept. With this we convey the impression that Judaism is narrow-minded, incapable of handling challenge, and a religion of unprovoked diatribe instead of reasoned debate. One weeps for a people who would rather speak about each other than to each other.
Of what are the accusers guilty? Of speaking evilly. Yet words have consequences. Why then do we wonder about this week’s Durban II conference in Geneva on racism, which boiled over into outright anti-Semitism? One has to read no further than the vicious attacks of prominent Jewish writers against other Jewish groups whose verbal broadsides and fulminating fusillades provided the ‘goyim’ with plenty of
ammunition. So when Jews from Neturei Karta denounce Israel, when Jewish politicians in Israel renounce Pollard, when so-called kosher organizations pronounce kosher slaughterhouses guilty before anyone has examined the evidence, and when Jews in America announce that it is the Jewish moneymen who have single-handedly destroyed the American economy, start worrying. The nations of the world are taking notes.
When words are no longer sacred to us, they are more easily abused by others. Indeed, it seems as if entire sections of our vocabulary have been hijacked. Thus, Jews are the new anti-Semites; Israel is an apartheid state, Arab terrorists are freedom fighters, and settlers are illegal occupiers. George Orwell said it best:
What an astonishing insight that leprosy - that disfiguring disease - is a symbol of evil speech. We are truly disfigured when we use words to condemn rather than communicate. In diminishing our opponents, we diminish ourselves. The message of the Metsorah is as pertinent now as it was in the days of Moses. Linguistic violence is no less deadly than physical violence, and those who afflict others are themselves afflicted. Words wound. Insults injure. Evil speech destroys communities. Ultimately, if we let it run rampant it will destroy us all; the one
Language is G-d’s greatest gift to humanity. We must use it to heal, not harm.