Words matter. Words have meaning. Words created our universe.
Hashem created the world through ten verbal pronouncements beginning with His declaration that “there should be light” and concluding with His announcement that Man should “procreate and inhabit the world.”
Thousands of years later, Hashem crafted a moral and religious foundation for all humanity through the Aseret Ha’Dibrot, first spoken and afterwards carved into stony luchot. Both our physical world and our spiritual experience were fashioned through divine words.
Hashem gifted humans with the capacity for creative speech, similar to His. Though many animals communicate, they do so in a very rudimentary manner. They convey to one another basic survival needs such as feeding, migration, protection from predators, mating and reproduction, and territorial marking. Some even enjoy basic social interactions. Unlike animals though, humans employ complex language to communicate abstract ideas, share emotions, express imagination, build deep emotional bonds and form communities and societies.
We think in words. We articulate our thoughts through the language we employ. The richer our vocabulary, the more nuanced and precise our thinking. Words clothe our ideas.
For centuries, humanity was deprived of the basic right to freedom of speech. With the advent of democracy, we were granted this freedom and the divinely- endowed potential of Man was unleashed. The manner in which we wield our tongue and use our speech reflects our elevated and noble status as the masterpiece of creation.
Creative Language
We behave most similarly to Hashem when we employ language to create new realities. Jewish law empowers us to utilize language to take personal oaths and to partially reshape the legal landscape. Through nedarim and shavuot halacha authorizes us to employ personal oaths to obligate charitable payments, pledge korbanot or even prohibit items which are permissible for the general public. Just as Hashem created this world through speech, we are empowered to partially re landscape our own personal world through speech.
This powerful tool of language can be mishandled or not fully respected. To ensure that creative language is taken seriously, the laws of nedarim were not delivered to the general population, but first to the nesi’im or tribal leaders, who were tasked with conveying these laws to the general population, while emphasizing the importance of language. These leaders could better appreciate the gravitas of language.
Language forms the basis of our reality and is the cornerstone for both personal identity and human interaction. Without clearly defined language, our experiences become muddled, and the fabric of our communal life unravels.
Do Words Mean Anything?
The modern world has profoundly disrupted the meaning of language. The philosophy of post-structuralism asserts that meaning is not fixed but fluid and unstable. Meaning is based on cultural, historical or situational factors. What we consider to be “true” or “real” is influenced by power relations and social constructs. This post-modern approach views all truth as subjective and relative.
This theory has deeply influenced our definition of morality, gender and society. Additionally, it has deeply affected the way modern culture views language, and in turn, the way it uses language. Poststructuralists argue that language does not reflect any objective or absolute reality but that the meaning of words and texts is always in flux, influenced by context and interpretation.
Words do not reflect any essential truths and there is no objective or absolute reality underneath our words. Once language is no longer viewed as absolute, but merely a product of social constructs, words, symbols and phrases can easily be bent and twisted to assume new meaning based on differing social attitudes and cultural filters.
To summarize, post structuralism denies any objective meaning or reality, instead viewing everything as contextual. As a consequence, language has no absolute meaning but can be “assigned” meaning based on context and culture.
This subjectivist view of reality, meaning, and language undermines the possibility of objective knowledge, making it impossible to distinguish between credible and non-credible claims. No single interpretation or truth is deemed more valid than another. Likewise, if all perspectives are equally valid, it is impossible to argue for objective morality, absolute justice, or ethical standards.
Samuel Johnson, the 18th century English writer, lexicographer and critic, who explored the meaning of language commented,“ Words without meaning are nothing but empty vessels.” Our world has become littered with empty vessels.
Linguistic Disfigurement
The recent eruption of antisemitism has been fueled in large measure by this modern philosophy. Words that are meant to convey specific meanings are being distorted to reflect ideas entirely divorced from reality. Our enemies are twisting and misrepresenting words, using them as weapons against us.
Israel is roundly accused of maintaining an open-air prison in Gaza. We closed this border to protect ourselves against murderers who never hid their intent to murder Jews and on October 7 acted upon that intent. We have always allowed abundant goods and services to flow through Azza. Tragically, many resources were diverted to construct the machinery of death.
A prison is only effective if every side is walled off. The Egyptians haven’t allowed Gazans to cross their border, but no one accuses them of complicity in this “imprisonment.” Nothing in Azza even resembles a prison, but in a world of ambiguous language, any term can be redefined to signify something entirely different from its true meaning. After all, there is no objective or underlying reality. Just place a hashtag near the phrase “open-air prison” and see how many likes you receive from a disenchanted Gen Xer.
Our haters accuse us of operating an apartheid state. Yet, every citizen in Israel, regardless of race, religion or gender enjoys full legal rights. There are Arabs and Muslims on the Supreme Court and in the government. In fact, many Muslim countries are much closer to being apartheid states, as Jews and Christians there face severe cultural and religious restrictions. Yet the odious term of “apartheid” is baselessly lodged at the only full-blown democracy in the region. Why bother examining the meaning or origin of a term when it can be indiscriminately used in any way someone chooses? Suddenly every music performer, cultural influencer and Ivy League college sophomore is a world expert in the institutionalized racial segregation which plagued South Africa in the latter part of the 20th century. Welcome to the theater of the absurd where hate masquerades as knowledge.
We are being prosecuted in the halls of justice for committing genocide. Israel has the military capacity to eliminate every Gazan citizen if it chose to, but instead has done more to protect its civilian population than any army in the modern era. The population of Azza has nearly doubled since 2007, when Hamas maniacs took control of the region and began to pose a threat to us. Hamas openly speaks about annihilating every Jew, yet we are falsely accused of this crime. Words have become hollow, and speech has turned into a political charade.
It is no coincidence that the hollowing of language and the erosion of meaning are being driven by modern academia. This community has deeply embraced postmodernist views on meaning and language, and this war showcases the absurdity of language drained of meaning.
This war is also a cultural struggle over truth and over language. Do words matter? Do words mean anything? Do our words reflect reality? Without foundational truths and without absolute meaning to our words, society will collapse. We will suffer the same fate as the Tower of Babel, a culture which lost its language and suffered the rupture of communication. Our tower is crumbling. Hopefully, we can save language and save our culture.
The writer is a rabbi at the hesder Yeshivat Har Etzion/Gush, with ordination from Yeshiva University and a master’s in English literature from CUNY. He is the author of Dark Clouds Above, Faith Below (Kodesh Press), which provides religious responses to Oct. 7.
