The nice thing about writing for newspapers is how concise it is. Every word – no matter how short or how long – matters. The Torah is similarly concise. The Ten Commandments, or more accurately the Ten Words, has for example exactly 172 Hebrew words. Today, with the advance of technology, words mean less than they used to. We suffer from an overabundance of words. When you write on a clay tablet, brevity is essential. Chat GPT does not have any such word restrictions. It is up to put our own limitations on what we write and what we say.
This week’s Torah portion, Devarim, means words. According to our tradition God uses human language to communicate with us. The world itself is created with words: Baruch She’amar V’Haya Ha’olam, “God spoke and the world came into being.” It is a good reminder to us today, to be careful what we write and what we say. Words can create and they can also destroy. Let us use our words to make the world brighter and more beautiful.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex