Inner Redemption Series - 04 Redeeming Your Speech

The Exile and Redemption of our Speech

We have so far discussed the exile and redemption of our actions and emotions. We will now progress to discussing the exile and redemption of our speech.

In our speech, there are three factors:

1- The amount of speech we talk.
2- The content of the speech we are talking.
3- The manner in which we are talking.

1) The Amount of our Speech

With men, speech is mainly meant to be used in learning Torah, and Chazal state that the main part of exertion in Torah is through verbalizing it.[1] Regarding women, Chazal state that “ten measurements of speech descended onto the world, and nine of them were taken by the women (the other ten percent went to the men).[2]

This is in the general sense, and in the individual sense, Regarding the amount of speech that we talk, Chazal reveal that every soul has a certain amount of words it will say when it comes to down onto This World.

If we would know the allotted mount of words on this world for each of our souls, it would be easier for us to utilize our speech correctly. But since we do not, we either speak too much, or too little. Either of these situations is an “exile” to our speech.

No one can tell us how much we need to speak, and how much we don’t. But we can be aided by the words of the Ramban, who wrote: “Think before you talk, about what you will say.” When people don’t think before they talk, they can talk limitlessly, and this is especially true since speech moves freely, as the Chovos HaLevovos says that the tongue is the lightest part of the body and therefore moves very quickly.

1a) Thinking Before You Talk, About What You Are About To Say.

Therefore, the truthful way to go about speaking is to first think about what you will say, as the Ramban says. In addition, you should also think before you talk if it will be forbidden speech or not. And even if it is not forbidden speech, it may just be extraneous talk which you don’t need to speak.

Before talking, ask yourself: Am I speaking something permitted, or forbidden? Also, am I speaking about something necessary, or something that is not necessary? If it is necessary, it is usually also the will of Hashem that you speak those words, but if you do not need to talk, Hashem must not want you to say those words.

However, this is difficult to do if you get a phone call and the like, when you can get into a long conversation and you weren’t prepared beforehand to think about what you want to say. Women can find this especially hard, because since they do a lot more talking, if they would always have to think about what they are about to say before talking they would find that it makes their conversations boring and tedious.

Long conversations between most people, which usually contains forbidden speech such as lashon hora and other evil speech (Rachmana litzlan- may Hashem save us from this) can basically be labeled as the “exile” to our speech. Let us then learn about how to redeem our speech from its state of exile.

1a) Setting Amounts of Time For Your Conversations.

The first thing we can try doing for this is to set a time for the conversation. Make boundaries for the conversation and in this way, the speech will be somewhat controlled.

1b) Allowing Another Person To Talk.

Secondly, as you are talking to another, try to also listen better to the other person, by giving him\her spaces in the conversations where he can respond back to you and have his\her say.

Most people when they are talking will keep talking and they don’t give the other person a chance to say what he wants to say. This is an obvious lack of derech eretz (basic manners), but here we are addressing an additional point. We recommending here that one should try to listen better to the other in his conversations, not only for the purposes of maintaining derech eretz, but because when you listen to another, you have your own quiet time to think about what you want to say, and then you gain the advantage of thinking before you talk.

The more you practice listening and giving another person a chance to speak, the more you strengthen your power of thought, and then you will find yourself able to think before you talk about what you should say.

1c) Lessen The Pace of Your Talking.

In addition, we should speak slower and not so quickly. When people talk quickly, they can’t think as much about what they are saying. When you talk at a drop of a slower pace, you are calmer and you can think better about what you are saying.

Some people talk too slow, some people talk at an average pace, and some people talk so fast that you can’t process what they are saying. Every person needs to slow down his speech a bit, so that he can be able to think about what he wants to say before he says it.

1d) Take Breaks While Talking.

Besides for this, a person should also give ‘spaces’ in his talking, deliberately stopping his speech every so often, so that he can allow himself to think while talking. And when another person talks to you, before answering him back right away, take a few moments to think about what you want to say.

Understandably, we need to go about all of this in a way that is not extreme. If we talk too slowly, our speech may lack life to it, and it may be unpleasant to others. We need to use this sensibly and we need siyata d’shmaya for it – to talk slowly to others and to think before we talk and when we talk, but in a way that is not causing discomfort to others.

2) The Content and Manner of Our Speech

The second factor of our speech is what we speak about – the content of our speech.

2a) Learn The Laws of Speech. Jews all over the world learn two halachos a day of sefer Chofetz Chaim, the laws of forbidden speech. This is the first thing a person should do: learn the sefarim that discuss the laws of speech, what is permitted to say and what is not permitted to say, etc.

Our Sages state that lashon hora means to “speak evil”. The exile of Egypt was under the wicked rule of Pharoah, from the words “peh ra”, “evil mouth”,[3] for Pharoah’s mouth spoke evil. (In contrast to this, our redeemer, Moshe, was the mouth who spoke holiness, and which took us out of the exile involving evil speech, peh ra, Pharoah). Speaking evil is thus the personification of the exile of Egypt, and on a personal level, when one speaks evil words, this is an exile to his power of speech. Thus when one leaves behind evil speech, he has a “redemption” to his speech.

2b) Avoid Negative Talk. Even more so, even when a person is not saying lashon hora, but he is simply being negative in his speech, such as by talking about problems and things that are not good, this is also a form of “lashon ra” - it is ‘evil’ speech in the sense that it is negative kind of speech. We should try to keep our speech positive. Sometimes we also need to speak about things that are negative, but we need to train ourselves that most of our speech should be about positive and happy things.

Many times people meet each other and they are conversing, even if the conversations do not contain lashon hora (gossip), motzi shem ra (falsely slandering others), and words about machlokes (strife and dissension), people will tend to speak about their various problems and issues. People often speak about their problems with their financial situation, their health, their marriage, their children, the bad weather, etc. This is the usual tone of the conversation – about problems in their personal lives. Most speech that people speak with other is about the problems, issues, and stresses that they are facing. When a person mainly speaks about his problems, this is also a form of “peh ra”, a mouth that speaks negativity.

Sometimes a person needs to unload to another person about his problems, and indeed, Chazal advise this. “A worry in the heart of man – speak it over to others.”[4] Speaking to another person about our problems may help solve the issue, but we know that even simply unburdening oneself to another about our problems feels relieving and helpful to us, even when we don’t find a solution to our issue.

But in spite of this, this should not become the main form of our speech. Often when people start talking about their problems, it is all that they will talk about all day. It is as if he is stuck in the mud and he keeps churning it in all day, without pulling himself out of the mud. We need to train ourselves as much we can to avoid speaking about our problems and issues, and to focus our speech on things that are positive.

2c) Avoid Talking About Other People. Additionally, Chazal state that one should not praise other people to others, because this leads to speaking about his faults.[5] Simply talking about another often leads to saying something negative about him. Therefore, we also need to avoid speaking about other people in general. Just like you don’t want others to speak about you, don’t speak about others. If you do need to talk about what another person did, try not to mention the name of the person. It’s unnecessary. Say what happened, but don’t say the name of the person who was involved.

There is a story told about the Pnei Menachem, one of the previous Chassidic rabbis of the Gerrer dynasty. Someone came to him and said that there are many surgeries taking place in his family, and he would like a blessing from the Rabbi. The Pnei Menachem said to him, “By the Shabbos table, do you ever discuss other people?”

The person replied, “Yes…”

The Pnei Menachem responded, “Do you take apart other people in your discussions, dissecting everything they do and say?”

The person responded, “Yes.”

The Pnei Menachem said, “Because you take apart other people and dissect every aspect of them in your conversations, Hashem is causing your own family to become dissected as well, through surgeries. If you stop ‘dissecting’ other people in your conversations about them, the surgical problems in your family will stop.”

So let us train ourselves, as much as we can, to avoid speaking about other people. This is especially true about Torah scholars and Gedolim and tzaddikim of the generation – you must avoid speaking about them in a way of trying to take them apart and dissect them. Do not discuss anything about them unless you are saying a positive story about them which can inspire someone.

2d) Don’t Talk About Things You Don’t Know About. Another form of exile to our speech is that when people talk for long amounts of time and they speak about many different topics, and they will speak about things that they do not really understand. They will give opinions on all kinds of matters which they are not that familiar with.

This is not only gross immaturity (katnus), and also a great form of exile to our speech. Often if we examine many conversations, we will see that people often state their opinions about topics they are not familiar with. Even when speaking about topics they know about, they are often missing details. For example, when saying over a story, there were details about the story that they didn’t know about, yet the person will say the story as if he knows it well, even though he knows he is lacking much information about the story.

2e) Avoid Meaningless Talk. Another point about the exile to our speech is that in many conversations, even when they are permissible and even when they are not people, are simply senseless talk, with no real content to it.

For example: “I got up at this time of the day”, “I left at this time of the day”, “My child woke me up, and then such-and-such happened”, “I bought this and this item in the store”, “I need to do this and this”, “For Shabbos this is what I am cooking”, etc. Often these conversations contain nothing important. Most speech of people is about things that happened, and sometimes there is something interesting to hear about, but usually it is about this and that, empty from any real content. 

Understandably, there is a basic emotional need we all have to speak with others about different things that happened in our day, whether between spouses or between close friends, but this should be kept to a minimum, so that we should avoid nonstop senseless talk. Couples or close friends can speak with each other about a general outline of what transpired that day, but all of the details are not necessary to speak about.

This is surely the case when people talk all day about politics and the news. They are wasting their days and lives on meaningless things, which are of no gain to them. When people sit talk about all the news that happened that week in every country, it does not help anyone to know any certain person’s opinion about something in the news. Any time that a person speaks about these things, there is almost nothing to be gained from such speech. To be connected to the news through various forms of social media and to hear what happens in every country, taking apart every word the president of this country and another country, and what he meant and what he didn’t mean and what he should have said – this is all empty, meaningless talk which we gain nothing from.

The Rambam says that a Jew who wants to live truthfully should ideally speak only words of chochmah – wisdom.[6] This is a high level, but every person can at least try to bring some words of intelligent, genuine wisdom into his speech. In any of the conversations we have, we can try bringing some novel insight into the conversation, or something wise, and to try to bring some content into it, so that the conversation isn’t totally empty and devoid of inner content. We can bring do this by trying to add an inner kind of thought or an inner kind of feeling about the topic into the conversation, and in this way, the conversation will at least receive some inner content to it and be somewhat meaningful.

Understandably, the words here will apply differently with men and women. Women speak more than men do, but even though that is true, women also need to bring more content into their conversations, and not speak all day about meaningless things. As mentioned, it is a very high level for a person to only speak words of wisdom, but anyone on any level can try bringing in some inner content and meaning into her conversations. We should strive to slowly bring in more and more inner content into our conversations.

In Conclusion

We have described here the exile of speech, and its redemption. In summary, the ‘exile’ of our speech is when our speech lacks inner content to it, and with the more we add real, inner content into our speech, the more we redeem our speech and the more we become a “bar geulah”, one who is connected to the redemption.

In the next lesson, if we merit it, we hope to continue, with siyata d’shmaya, to explain more about this subject of redemption to our speech.

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH THE RAV

Q1: Does all of this include speech in writing as well?

A:Yes, the same concept can apply to expressing our speech through writing. We didn’t speak about it here, but a person can also write a letter full of inner content, or a letter with no real content to it, so there is exile and redemption as well when it comes to our speech through writing. Most of what we said here in this class can apply as well to one who is expressing his\her speech in the form of writing, but some of it does not apply. For example, the problem of talking very quickly does not apply to expressing oneself through writing.

Q2: Can negative talking cause those negative things to happen?

A: Speech can sometimes have effects on reality. The Gemara says that a dream can come true only according to how it is verbally interpreted. Besides for dreams, there is also a concept that speech can have effects on the reality on This World, for it is written, “Life and death are in the hands of the tongue” – therefore, speech can cause things to happen in the reality of the “world of action” we dwell on. This is only to some extent, though, so it does not have a complete, total affect.

Q3: If someone was born with a special gift for speech and communication with others, how should the person use it?

A: This question is a bit complicated, because every person’s life contains many factors. A person needs to be concerned for his external and internal needs, for the needs of his family, for the needs of the community. Within helping out communally, one may have to do for others as well as use his speech in order to help others, according to the abilities that Hashem has given him. There is no general answer to this question, so this question needs to include some more details about the individual, in order for this question to be answered.

Q4: If you have a job where you work with children, which requires you to speak a lot to them in order to give them attention, often you need to speak about random things which are not that meaningful – how should one approach this with the right perspective?

A:A very good question. When one thinks before she is about to talk about what she wants to say, and how to make the other person happy with her words - thinking of what the other person’s needs are and what words the person [in this case, the children you are working with] needs to say in order to feel good and be happy, that is putting content into your words. If you are focused on what you are about to say and then you talk, and your mind is fully present when you talk, you have put some inner content and thought into the words. Although this is not the highest level of speech, in which one is only speaking words of wisdom, it is still a more inner and focused way of talking, and this is a great form of redemption to one’s speech.