Sermon Archives

No Words

אין מילים

There are no words. In Hebrew as in English, the phrase signals our awareness that we are confronted by a circumstance that confounds are ability to understand using our usual conventional words. More times than I can count in the past ten months, I have said to some of you here “there are no words” and as we have been saying that to one another, Israelis have been saying אין מילים.

אין מילים…אבל יש מילים.

There are no words…but there are words.

Rachel Korazim, a renowned educator and lecturer of Israeli literature summarized the poetic output of Hebrew literature since the outbreak of the war, in a presentation I attended earlier this summer in Jerusalem with this provocative opening:  אין מילים…אבל יש מילים. There are no words. But, there are words.

A few days earlier I had seen and heard the absence of words first hand when I watched an Israeli TV journalist struggle to  interview the mother of a young woman, one of the “tatzpaniot” who is still being held hostage. The journalist said, “I can’t wish you a “boker tov” and so I will just say “boker.” I can’t greet you, she was saying, with a conventional “good morning” because no morning, afternoon, or night, can be “good” so long as our hostages are held in captivity. The ability of language and its euphemisms and niceties and courtesies has failed because the reality has become so awful that it does not allow us to use language to evade a reckoning. 

But, there are words. Rachel Korazim shared poems that had been written in the aftermath of massacre and war that use language to find meaning and express grief even when there is no meaning to be found and the grief has seemed beyond our ability to express it. Many of the poems themselves grappled with the inadequacy of language itself.

The immigrant poet Mikahel Zats wrote:

Once again
I feel like an immigrant child. 

Pretending that I understand 

Nodding in agreement
Shaking my head in disagreement 

But everyone around me

Is speaking another language 

One that I relearn anew. 

עִבְרִית שֶׁל אַחֲרֵי
הַשִּׁבְעָה בְּאוֹקְטוֹבֶּר.

The Hebrew of after…the seventh of October.

The poet Lital Kaplan imagined a mandatory update to spoken Hebrew in her poem titled “Home Front Command’s New Regulations for Small Talk”

The poem concludes:
וּבִמְקוֹם הַתְּשׁוּבָה הַשְּׁגוּרָה בשִׁגְרָה,

עָלֶיהָ הֻטַּל וֵטוֹ חָמוּר שֶׁבַּחֲמורִים:

"אֶצְלִי הַכֹּל בְּסֵדֶר",

יֵשׁ לְהָשִׁיב -

"הַכֹּל בַּסֶּדֶק",

וְהַמַּקְפִּידִים בְּדִבְרֵי אֱמֶת יַעֲנוּ -

"הַכֹּל בְּשֵׁבֶר,

הַכֹּל בְּשֵׁבֶר"

Instead of the common response

It is now forbidden by a strict veto to say
“I’m fine”

Instead one should respond
“Everything is cracked”

And thsoe who are meticulous to speak truth should answer
“Everything is shattered”

אין מילים…אבל יש מילים.

The first four chapters of Megilat Eicha,, Lamentations, that we will read on Monday night  are written in alphabetical acrostic. But the letters Ayin and Peh are reversed in chapters 2, 3, and four. There are academic theories, supported by ancient stone inscriptions as well as additional pieces of evidence,  that suggest that Peh and Ayin were in the reverse order in the most ancient forms of the aleph bet. But see significance in our perception when reading Eicha that the acrostic is in the wrong order. Writing a lament, whether Megilat Eicha, traditionally ascribed to Yirmiyahu himself, or writing one of the kinot that we recite on Tisha b’Av evening and morning, is to place one’s trust in the ability of language itself to create structure. The more elaborate and baroque the poetry and its medieval meter and rhyme scheme, the more the poet turns to language to construct edifices with words to compensate for the destruction that we mourn. 

This season has seen new Kinot written to commemorate the destruction of the Jewish communities of the south. The best one of them is called Kinat Be’eri. It was written by Yagel Haroush and is modeled on the kinah we recite to commemorate the destruction of the Jewish communities of the Rhineland during the First Crusade. We will chant it together before we leave shul on Tisha b’Av evening. I hope you will all be present.

אין מילים…אבל יש מילים.

This season has also seen new “midrashim” composed that make use of this classic rabbinic genre to make sense of the current reality. For the past decade Tamar Biala has collected and published two volumes of contemporary midrashim composed by women. The collection, known as Dirshuni represents a creative and stimulating example of how ancient texts can be studied with love and devotion in ways that bring forth new insights and new perspectives. During the past months of war, Tamar collected and published new midrashim that use familiar stories from Tanakh and rabbinic literature to shed light on contemporary concerns. This afternoon Sara will teach some of these midrashim that were composed during the war. These midrashim speak to our moment with devastating power. Sara briefly described one source to me from those that she is planning to teach this afternoon and within seconds the two of us were in tears, reaching for a tissue box as we sat at the dining room table this past Wednesday evening. 

אין מילים…אבל יש מילים.

Sefer Devarim opens with a simple statement that raises big questions.

אֵ֣לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר דִּבֶּ֤ר מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶל־כׇּל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל

These are the words that Moshe spoke to all Israel…

The entire book represents a series of grand speeches delivered by Moshe, in public, during the final days of his life. 

How did Moshe become a man of words?

In Sefer Shemot Moshe describes himself as being afflicted with a debilitating stutter and goes so far as to describe himself as:
לֹא֩ אִ֨ישׁ דְּבָרִ֜ים אָנֹ֗כִי גַּ֤ם מִתְּמֹול֙ גַּ֣ם מִשִּׁלְשֹׁ֔ם

I am NOT a man of words. What transpired between Moshe moving from לֹא֩ אִ֨ישׁ דְּבָרִ֜ים to אֵ֣לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֗ים from someone who was not a man of words to someone whose words flow with eloquence and passion and beauty at the end of his life. 

It’s possible to say that Moshe was not being sincere in his self-deprecating statements early in his career. But making up excuses to God seems like it would be an ineffective and foolish tactic. 

Another possibility is to note, as R. Elai Ofran does, that throughout Tanakh, leaders are evaluated by their actions and the deeds they accomplish and not by their words. Greek heroes and Shakespearean heroes alike offer soliloquies before dramatic actions. Biblical characters accomplish without speeches. Only after a Biblical character’s active career is over do they indulge in speeches. 

But I want to suggest that Moshe’s turn to language and words in the final week of his life represents a moment that is tragic and poignant and also familiar to us. At the end of his life he saw great success in his mission but knew that there would be profound failure ahead. He had done all that he could do on behalf of his people as a liberator as a teacher and as our greatest advocate. There are no words that could contain all of Moshe’s love and all of Moshe’s concern, and all of Moshe’s warning, and all of Moshe’s mourning for the failures and devastation he foresaw. 

אין מילים…אבל יש מילים.

But in the recognition that language was insufficient, Moshe nonetheless composed words and the truly wondrous thing about Sefer Devarim is that the words that Moshe spoke become endorsed by God and make their way into the Torah. Rav Tzadak HaKohen of Lublin saw Sefer Devarim as the bridge between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. And indeed the wondrous nature of the Oral Torah is that the debates and discoveries and insights of human beings can become part of the Torah.

This continues. The words that are uttered in the wake of unspeakable events, the words that are composed to make sense of senseless acts, the words that are shared after an event that defies words can all become Torah.  On Tisha b’Av we turn tragedy into Torah and on Tisha b’Av we use Torah to provide some modicum of refuge in a profoundly broken world. 

I do not believe anyone is questioning the relevance of Tisha b’Av this year. We have thousands of new reasons to mourn. There are additional pages that have been written in the tragic history of the Jewish people. Let’s come together and allow our mourning to take voice in words and may those words become Torah that in time will bring comfort to a world in such need of comfort.