Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
Print Edition

To be a master over your own mouth

Clean Speech Colorado calls us to our humanity

The way the world works is that the holier something is, the more dangerous it is. It is more dangerous because it’s always more in the crossroads. So the holiest thing we have is speech, and therefore it’s the most dangerous. With speech you can either go all the way down or all the way up. There are more people that kill with words than with weapons. Even animals can kill with their hands, you don’t have to be human being for that. To kill with words, you have to be a human being.

— Shlomo Carlebach

Clean Speech Colorado:

It’s not just our polarized political climate. It’s not just the disturbing decline in civility. It is not just the routinization of insult. It’s not just the culture of comeback — scoring a point rather than stating a thought. It’s not just relationships, and how they are built or destroyed. It’s not just foot-in-mouth. It’s not just a snide comment that tarnishes a person or a slanderous comment that destroys a person.

The Jewish focus on avoiding slander and gossip is about all of these, about making life pleasant and productive, about protecting human dignity. The Clean Speech Colorado campaign launched in November is about all of this, but not just this. Clean Speechpoints to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The human being is a human being because it can talk. The “image of G-d” that Genesis speaks about as the nature of G-d’s creation of the human being is the power of speech. Words don’t just do — strengthen or weaken or edify or sully the human being. Words are — they define the human being.

The book of Proverbs 16:1: “A human being is a human being because it can prepare the heart.” Or not. Words that come from a prepared heart define one kind of human being. Words that range from vulgar to brilliant but do not emerge from a prepared heart define another kind of human being. Words, holy and dangerous, can take one all the way up or all the way down.

That is what Clean Speech Colorado is all about: what kind of human beings we wish to be.

There is a written Torah — written words. There is an Oral Torah, literally, torah she-be-al peh, “the Torah that is given to the master of the mouth” (Carlebach). To study, to read, to hear or to teach Torah is to become a master over one’s own mouth.

When, however, we are not the masters of our own mouths, we hurt people and harm the Torah, simultaneously. Clean speech is not just a matter of being nice. It is a matter of tending carefully to our own soul, our own humanity, our own power of speech.

We know of no other community effort in Denver Jewish history that has enlisted such a large variety and number of sponsors and participants as Clean Speech Colorado. We have here a 21st-century prism of the scope of the classic work on clean speech, Chofetz Chaim. Its publication some 150 years ago addressed a world of emerging mass communication. This, of course, has only grown exponentially since. Hence the even greater need to focus on the way we communicate today — the need to focus on our fundamental humanity.

Chofetz Chaim is a book, not a sentiment. It is a list of specifics, not a generality about good intentions. It is Jewish — a way to achieve a better society via definitions, laws, scenarios and subtleties. Sometimes, it is imperative to reveal harmful information even if most of the time it is imperative not to. Under what circumstances? Questions such as these are why there is a learned, accessible book, Chofetz Chaim, why it is necessary to delve into it, why Clean Speech Colorado is not merely an aspiration but a curriculum.

We urge our readers to participate in the Clean Speech Colorado curriculum, to become daily students, to take a few minutes a day to become acquainted with the Torah’s laws of slander and gossip; their definitions, their importance, their applications, and their exceptions. The goal is to learn how not to kill with words. How to become our best selves. How to use our Divine image, our power of speech, to become masters over our own mouths.

Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News




Leave a Reply