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Our Rabbi's Message
July 11th 2008
By Rabbi Aaron KriegelBalak teaches about the possibility of words. Words are the very root of power in this world. Whatever man has succeeded in doing, he has succeeded only because of his understanding of words. Words, however, are not concrete entities. They have fluid meanings, and what you hear may not be what someone else says. The complement you give may be a curse by the person who hears you speak.
If Don Imus is telling the truth, what he recently said about people of color is in his mind a statement defining racism. What I heard when he spoke was nothing but evidence of his own racism. The politics of John McCain and of Hillary Clinton and of Barak Obama often are based upon how Republicans and Democrats hear the words that they are speaking. Rev. Jeremiah Wright holds that when he said Curse America he did not mean what most people heard.
When you hear me say pare, you do not know if I said pare or pair or pear. In modern society bad is good. When I grew up bad was bad. The Hebrew word Shalom, as the world knows form the song, can mean hello and good bye, which means that out of context you cannot tell if the person saying that word is coming or going.
Balak wanted Balaam to curse Israel. When Balaam tried to curse, the words came out as blessings. The words just got stuck in his throat, or came out right, but were understood wrong. Whatever happened Balaam just did not have the proper vocabulary to curse Israel and whatever he said (no matter what he said or would have said) would be understood the wrong way both by Balak and by the Children of Israel.
You see words are not things. They have no definite form, no definite meaning. They can be used and molded by those who hear them, repeat them, and interpret them. For that reason in Judaism, acts are usually more important. Kind acts usually will not be misinterpreted; kind words often lose their meanings
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