Speech
A Message for Parashot Tazria-Messora 2018
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Although the laws regarding sara’at (leprosy)
are detailed at length throughout Parashot Tazria and Messorah,
the cause of this plague is never once mentioned. The Hakhamim traced
its source to the sin of lashon hara – evil talk. They thus understood,
for example, that the verse “Don’t let your mouth defile your flesh”
(Kohelet 5:5) refers to sara’at,[1]
and that the word “messora” (leper) can be broken down to its root of “mossi
shem ra” (one who speaks badly about others).[2]
A messora is furthermore envisioned by
the Hakhamim as the paradoxical embodiment of a “living dead person.”
Noticing Aharon’s description of Miriam when she was plagued by leprosy – “Like
a dead person who when he comes out of his mother’s womb, half his flesh is
eaten away” (Bemidbar 12:12) – they stated: “a messora is considered
dead.”[3]
Piecing matters together, the integrated
message of the Hakhamim seems to be that the improper use of speech is a
cause for death. Indeed, the Talmud relates that Rava crafted a golam –
a human-created life-being – and sent it to R. Zeira. R. Zeira attempted to
talk to the golam. To his astonishment, he found that it did not respond
and lacked any ability to speak. R. Zeira was thus unimpressed with Rava’s
“speechless” creation and deemed it worthless.[4]
His reaction implies that the value of a human being’s existence is measured by
their speech.[5]
In his book How Language Began, Daniel
Everett took note of mankind’s dominance of this world. He speculated that our
strength is so solid that if dinosaurs were still alive today, humans would
kill them for trophies, eat them, or put them in parks and zoos. Everett
described humans as “the apex predators of all time on this planet,” and
attributed our advantage over all other species to speech. He wrote:
“Because humans can talk they can plan, they can share knowledge, they can even
leave knowledge for future generations.”[6]
Steven Pinker similarly wrote about the
importance of speech to human life in his book The Language Instinct. He
described the difficulty of imagining our lives without speech, suggesting that
if you were to find two or more people together anywhere on earth, they would
probably soon be exchanging words. Pinker sensed speech’s essential role in our
lives in the devastating effects of aphasia, a brain injury that causes loss of
language. In mild cases of aphasia, a painful void emerges from the loss of speech,
while in more severe cases family members feel that the whole person is lost
forever.[7]
Returning to our analysis of the messora,
let us take note of an essential part of the messora’s prescribed
“treatment”:
All the days that the affliction is on him …he shall dwell
apart – outside of the camp shall his dwelling place be. (Vayikra
13:46)
This socially-secluded state is parallel to
that of a mourner of death:
Let him sit alone and be silent. (Eikhah
3:28)
Humans have the unique capability to build
communities, cultures and societies with their speech. Depriving them of speech
means stripping them of human life. A mourner experiences the death of his
loved one by temporarily living in a quasi-state of being. And the messora,
who has perverted his use of speech, is destined to discover the true essence
of his life-determining capability to speak by experiencing its fatal loss.
Nessiv (R. Naftali Sevi Yehudah Berlin)
noted that the extent of a being’s demise is inversely related to its potential
for elevation. A rock is forever a rock. A plant, however, possesses a greater
potential for elevation, and therefore decomposes when it is stripped of its
ability to grow. An animal’s demise is even more extreme than a plant, as the
loss of its life causes the stench of erosion and rot.[8]
It follows, therefore, that a human’s loss of their elevated ability to
appropriately speak lands them in an unimaginably deficient state of being.
The Hakhamim drew a line from improper
speech to death through their descriptions of the messora. They were
aware of the integral role of speech to human existence and taught that the
value of our lives is determined by the use of our tongues.
[1] Vayikra Rabah16:5.
[2] Arakhin 15b.
[3] See the Commentary of
Rashi ad. loc., s.v. “ke-met.”
[4] Sanhedrin 65b.
[5] This was noted by R.
Moshe Shapiro z”l, as cited in MiMa’amakim: Vayikra (Jerusalem,
IS, 2015), pg. 159 fn. 1.
[6] Daniel L. Everett, How
Language Began: The Story of Humanity’s Greatest Invention (New York, NY,
2017), pg. 15.
[7] Steven Pinker, The
Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (New York, NY, 1994), pg.
3.
[8] R. Naftali Sevi Yehudah
Berlin, She’ar Yisrael (Jerusalem, 2008), pg. 271 (chap. 5). Cited in R.
Aryeh Leibowitz’s The Neshamah: A Study of the Human Soul (Nanuet, NY,
2018), pg. 17 fn. 9.