Don’t Play with Guns

Translated from Rabbi Arush’s feature article in the weekly Chut shel Chessed newsletter. The articles focus on his main message: “Loving others as yourself” and emuna. 

Whatever They Tell You – Do The Opposite! 

“I was told that eating a specific food can help me with the problem that I have. What does the rabbi say?” 

“If you ask me, don’t eat that food. And not only that – everything that they tell you is good and a segulah, even ‘spiritual’ acts – if you ask me, don’t do any of it, and even do the opposite; just pray and you will experience salvation!” 

“But, Rabbi, what harm is there in it? I can pray and also do the segulah…” 

“You should know, my dear student, that only prayer brings about all salvations, and when a Jew finds himself depending on anything else besides prayer, that already weakens and even takes away his faith in prayer. His prayers won’t be the same anymore. If you truly want a salvation – you must depend solely on prayer and then you will put all your strength and all your efforts into the one thing that can help you and save you!” 

Your Weapons 

The main problem that all of us have is that we don’t know the tremendous power we have in our mouths! The mouth, speech, prayer – they are extremely powerful. There is nothing that cannot be achieved with prayer. Whoever holds onto prayer can always make a difference, even when it seems that the situation is hopeless. As the Gemara says: “Even if a sharp sword is resting on a person’s neck, he should not prevent himself from praying for mercy”¹. And Rabbeinu’s wording was, “Speech has much power, for one can whisper on a barrel of fire (a gun or a canon) and prevent it from shooting.”² 

Rabbeinu says that the main weapon of a Jew is prayer. Prayer is a weapon. Weapons have tremendous power. Anyone who understands the extent of the power of speech – certainly guards it carefully! And if speech is a powerful weapon, then talking irresponsibly and speaking nonsense and foolish things is playing with a loaded gun – a danger to life. 

Our Sages said: “a covenant is made with the lips”³. All Jews are in the habit of being very careful not to say anything negative, chalila vechalila, because the results of any misplaced sentence, even when uttered unintentionally, can be catastrophic, Rachmana litzlan. 

Rabbeinu says that one should be very careful “not to utter a word of evil, chas veshalom… even if he says it jokingly and has no intention of doing it, even so, this speech is very bad for him and can force him, chas veshalom, to do what he said, even if it did not come from his heart, and was only spoken as a joke…”⁴ 

This is even more true when it comes to evil and flawed speech and lies and all kinds of disputes and hatred – these are truly lethal. As the Gemara says that lashon hara (destructive speech) kills three – the one who speaks, the one who listens and the one about whom the words are said.⁵ It is like taking an automatic rifle and spraying bullets in all directions. 

Hashem Will Fight for You and You Will Be Silent 

This is all relevant especially now, in the month of Adar, which is an acronym for rosh  devarcha emet (“the essence of Your word is truth”). During this month, more than any other month, it is important to watch one’s speech diligently and to make sure that one says only words of truth. We have explained in several places that a lie is not only when someone says something that is not true, but rather anything that goes against Hashem’s will and the Torah is a lie. And casual speech is a lie, because a lie is something meaningless – as in shav (falsehood) and tafel (insipid, tasteless).  

All the miracles of Purim and the vanquishing of Amalek took place in the merit of guarding one’s speech^6. Therefore, only descendants of Rachel, who remained silent, and Shaul, who did not reveal that he had been anointed, and Esther, who did not reveal her nation and homeland,⁷ as Mordechai told her – were able to bring the geula (redemption). 

And especially when we want to assure ourselves of great salvations in the coming Purim by speech and prayer, as we mention every year and as we have written at length in the new and recommended booklet, Simchat Purim (not yet in English), we must guard our holy speech with greater vigor and might. 

None of His words Will Remain Unfulfilled 

This is connected to our parasha (weekly Torah portion) in a few ways. 

First of all, the name of Moshe Rabbeinu, alav hashalom, isn’t mentioned in it! It is the only parasha since Moshe appears on the scene in which he is not mentioned. Chazal explain why that is so: After the Sin of the Golden Calf, when Hashem wanted to destroy Yisrael’s enemies (euphemism for Yisrael themselves), Moshe said to Hashem that if He won’t forgive the Jewish People, He should erase Moshe’s name from His book⁸, in other words, from the Torah.  

And even though Hashem did forgive the Jewish People in the end, and the condition was not fulfilled, still, what came out of Moshe’s mouth had to happen in some way. So, it happens in our  parsha Tetzave where his name is not mentioned. Because whatever comes out of a tzaddik’s mouth must become reality, as the Gemara says, a sage’s curse, even if the reason for it does not exist anymore, and even if it was conditional, must come true⁹! 

The Mouth – The Western Candle 

Secondly, our parasha begins with taking pure oil, crushed from olives for light, to kindle  the lamp every night, which is a continuation of the previous parasha, in which we read about the making of the  menorah.   

The holy Torah is eternal and is relevant to every Jew, wherever he or she is. And that is why Rabbeinu hakadosh said that every Jew must light and kindle his personal menorah with pure olive oil. 

What is our personal menorah? 

The menorah is the head, as the holy Zohar says: “The menorah of the head”, which has seven holes, parallel to the seven branches of the menorah: the mouth, the two ears, and the two eyes, and the two nostrils. Six of the arms are pairs – like the six branches – but the mouth is the main thing in the menorah and is called “the face of the menorah”, about which it says: “toward the face of the menorah shall the seven lamps cast light”. That is why Rabbeinu mentions the mouth as the first thing. And Rabbeinu says that by consecrating the branches of the menorah and kindling one’s own personal menorah, one can merit the Divine abundance¹⁰. This Divine abundance is sechel (intellect) and the knowledge of Hashem. These comprise all faith and all the holy feelings that a Jew feels when he senses the flavor of Torah and mitzvot and Shabbat, and the light of the holidays and the light of Purim. 

Rabbeinu says further, that when a person consecrates his own menorah, he receives peace in the home and a holy home. This is not optional; rather, it is an obligation. We all want a holy home and holy and successful children, and nothing comes for free. The tzaddikim merited what they merited because they consecrated themselves and their candles. 

A Complete Vessel 

Everything starts from the mouth! When a person makes sure that his mouth is holy, he is lighting the middle and main branch that illuminates and influences all the other candles and consecrates them. The mouth stands for emunah (faith), as Rabbeinu Hakadosh says,  that the emuna is dependent on a person’s mouth. Everything  depends  on emunah, and emunah depends on the mouth, and from there all  of life is lit up.  

When a person consecrates his candles, he is not only illuminating his own life, but it is the way of light that lights up and illuminates the outside too, as Chazal say about the menorah. The menorah is not for the Holy One, Blessed Be He, who is the Light of the World and has no need for the menorah’s light. Rather, the role of the menorah is to illuminate and reveal and spread the emunah and the daat  (knowledge) to all human beings. 

Now we are right before Purim and Shabbat Zachor. It is important to remember that the main weapon in the war against Amalek is our prayers. In the first Amalekite war, the main part of it was Moshe’s prayers, about which it says, “his hands were emunah  (held true) until sunset”¹¹ and the Targum says that they were spread out in prayer.  Chazal say that all success in the war was dependent on Moshe’s arms, as all of us know. 

And our way too, to merit the light of Purim and all its immense salvations is via prayer and the complete faith in the power of prayer, so that we should concentrate all our powers on prayer, only on prayer, and particularly prayer on Purim, which always bears fruit. 

And this is precisely the time to consecrate our speech so that the vessel called mouth and speech will be perfect and through it we will truly come closer to Hashem and illuminate the entire world. 

Editor’s Notes: 

¹ Tractate Barachot 10a:32 

² Likutei Moharan II, Torah 96 

³ Tractate Moed Katan 18a and Tractate Sanhedrin 102a 

⁴ Sichot HaRan (in English: Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom), Lesson 237 

⁵ Tractate Erchin 15b 

⁶ Likutei Moharan 2:74 — Rebbe Nachman connects the defeat of the “Amalekite shell” (the kelipah of doubt and arrogance) to the purification of speech and joy  

⁷ Binyamin, King Shaul, and Queen Esther are all descendants of Rachel:  

• Binyamin was aware of the sale of his brother Yosef but remained silent about it for years to avoid causing his father Jacob further pain or shaming his brothers. Additionally, when Joseph’s silver cup was found in his sack,  Binyamin remained silent and did not protest his innocence. 
• King Shaul was privately anointed as the first king of Israel by the prophet Samuel, Saul met his uncle, who questioned him about his journey. Saul told him that the lost donkeys had been found but “did not tell his uncle what Samuel had said about the kingship” (1 Samuel 10:16). 
• Queen Esther strictly followed the command of her cousin Mordechai to “not reveal her kindred or her people” (Esther 2:10), maintaining this strategic silence even under pressure from King Ahasuerus.   

⁸ Shemot (Exodus) 32:32 

⁹ Tractate Makkot 11a 

¹⁰ See The Seven Candles for further explanation 

¹¹ Shemot 17:12