The Simplest Teshuvah – The Greatest Impact

When we create a building, we use materials.  

When a chef creates a meal, he uses ingredients.  

When a programmer creates an application, he uses code.  

How did God create the world? God created the world with words. He created something from nothing by speaking.  

He gave the power of speech to the species He made in His own image. We are the only species on earth that can communicate via words, and the only species on earth that can take the resources of His world and remold them. 

There has never been any animal civilization. There has never been any social, cultural, or technological advancement among animals.  

Only among the one type of living creatures that can speak have things progressed materially, medically, intellectually, and in countless other ways.   

Embedded inside speech is the power of creation. 

The Great Danger 

Speech also contains the power of destruction. Our misuse of this great gift caused our great exile almost 2,000 years ago. 

Our great tragedy came about through baseless hatred. What caused this hatred? We misused our words to insult one another, ruin reputations, destroy lives, and stir up so much rage toward one another we became easy prey for our Edomite adversaries.  

The same happened in our time. The tragedy of October 7 also came about through baseless hatred. We were so venomous with our words towards one another, anyone reading the local paper could see we were an easy target.  

Unfortunately, one of our enemies was doing just that. Yahya Sinwar, may his memory be erased, read every piece of Hebrew news he could get his hands on. He knew how bad our speech was getting. He could read the level of hate we were generating against one another.  

He saw that we were too busy looking at each other, rather than him and his people, to protect ourselves. The Ayatollah of Iran and the heads of Hezbollah weren’t reading the insults we were hurling at one another. Sinwar, who could read Hebrew and did voraciously, knew.  

He was the only one who attacked us on that day, and he did it with the confidence in knowing how bad our words became. 

God gives the entire world basic instructions on how to use His gift: Do not curse His Name with the words He gives you. For the Jewish People, He gives us many more ways to use His gift to us with volumes of laws governing proper speech between fellow Jews.  

Words are, by far, the most destructive force for the People of Israel – because they are also the most powerful force! 

The Power of Peace through Words 

Hashem gave us speech to bring His light to the world: 

• He gives us speech to pray.  
• He gives us speech to learn Torah. 
• He gives us speech to raise the spirits of the sick, the poor, the orphans, and widows.  

He gives us speech to love one another.  

Learning and practicing the laws of loshon hara are very admirable, but even before there is something you can accomplish with your speech: 

Stop speaking naughty words.  

Eliminate profanity from your speech.  

Do everything you can to purify the gift Hashem reserved only for you among the other 10 million beings on His earth by keeping the sewage from the sweetness of every syllable that gives God joy in His creations.  

The next time you hear a celebrity say something that boils your blood, tone down your reaction. The next time a political leader you can’t stand pledges to do something awful, wait a second before telling your friends what you think. 

The next time you are hanging out with “the guys,” your best friends, and your soulmate, and you feel really comfortable, put in the effort to switch out every saucy or stinky word with a replacement.  

The Gemara warns that the sin of obscene speech is often used to relate to acts that He calls an abomination. As a result of misusing our tongue, the young of Israel die, the cries of widows and orphans go unanswered, and even a decree of seventy good years upon a person can be canceled.  

For every bad, God does infinitely greater good. If the punishments are so severe for our verbal crimes, imagine what the reward is for each time we are ready to spit something out and we restrain ourselves! 

Imagine the benefit to ourselves and each other, if we started to relate to other people using language that lowers, even erases, the flames of hate that words can create. What a tikkun for the sins that kept us off our land, destroyed our great Temple, and kept us down for so long.  

What a reversal of Divine fortune such a small change can initiate.  

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, millions of sunflowers, and Matilda, our local camel. David‘s Israeli startup, 300 Marketing Solutions, is a lean marketing agency for startups and small businesses that creates and promotes SEO-optimized ROI-driven to the right audience on LinkedIn to make your business the star of the show.