Sermon: Parshat Beresheet

“The Power of the Spoken Word”

Metuchen 2008 / 5769

Rabbi Gerald L. Zelizer

On this Shabbat of Beresheet, in which we begin our beginnings again, I want to begin again. I want to give you my “stump speech.” Why is a speech a “stump speech?” – because it is the essential message, of a candidate, or in this case, a rabbi. After delivering sermons in this congregation for so many years, I think I have heard most of the jokes about sermons. I’ve even made a few my own. Like the one about the rabbi who sees a man sleeping in the front row. His wife is next to him. The rabbi tells the wife, “Madam, please wake up your husband.” To which she responds “You put him to sleep, you wake him up.” Or the paraphrase of W.H. Auden, who was actually speaking about college professors. “A clergy man is one who speaks through someone else’s sleep.” Or the one I’ve said myself: “I am like an anesthesiologist. The difference is, I can’t wake them up.” Or, the time when I fell asleep during my own sermon, and kept right on talking!”

The first question I take up with my senior students at JTS, especially in an age when electronic communication is paramount, does the oral sermon have much value any more? The subject has even recently drawn some academic interest. The American Jewish Historian, Jenna Joselet, wrote in a recent column in The Forward Newspaper a kind of birds eye history of the sermon. She points out that Rabbi’s sermon had great value to the immigrant generation of our parents and grandparents because it demonstrated to “Greenhorns” that their rabbi could speak perfect English and also that one could be religious and worldly at the same time. This was important to the immigrant generation. But, in this day and age she argues, dialogue and written electronic conversation from the rabbi to the congregant may have a greater value.

So what is my “stump speech?” To the contrary, the spoken word , the sermon – is of great value to the modern rabbi and his congregation – if done right.

Actually, I think that the hesitancy about the spoken word – including the humor, is a broader issue. It reflects a general cynicism about the spoken word in general, especially as contrasted with the written word. We are especially sensitive at this season of an election when we hear an surfeit of spoken words, some quite eloquent, some awkward, some which are either attack oriented or promises which are not kept.

Even the voice media such as radio and television subtly acknowledge the vulnerability of spoken words. Did you ever notice for example, that radio stations that report the news, frequently change speakers? This practice is not because of the speaker but because of the listener. The person who listens can only handle so many words from the same voice.

There is another reason why we are suspect of the spoken word - not only because of too many words, but the realization that if there are moments in our lives when words are inadequate to express what you and I feel. In the most sublime moments of life, as Dante wrote “Our vision surpasses our speech.” Consider for example your first look at your newborn child or grandchild. Whatever you said in words like “Wonderful,” “A Miracle,” or even “Wow,” was inadequate to really capture the depth of your feeling. Your “vision surpassed your speech.” In the most painful moments of life, too, spoken words are usually inadequate. Greeting for the first time someone who has just lost a dear one to death, whatever you say is considerate and kind, but you know and they know that the words are inadequate. In a house of shivah, especially in the most tragic circumstances, an embrace or silence may convey what spoken words cannot.

So why do I return to this subject on this Shabbat when we Jews return to our written word? Why do rabbis continue to formulate words? Irrespective of the humor, why do laity expect rabbis to speak in addition to writing? How often I hear the spontaneous invitation “Rabbi, won’t you say a few words?” What do I tell my students who shall serve as the next generation of rabbis? Because Judaism, indeed in today’s Sidrah, is counterintuitive. In Judaism, the spoken word, prior to the written word created worlds. What do those first words of Genesis say?: God spoke “Let there be light.” God spoke “Let us make man in our image,” etc. To the extent that the Midrash on Genesis embellishes this insight with the succinct statement “BAASARAH MAAMAROT NIVRA HALOLAM” – “With ten words the world was created.” Our prayers say “BARUCH SHEOMAR VEHAYAH HALOAM” – Praised is the Lord who spoke and created worlds. Why do prayers add, “KI HU AMAR VAYEHI”-God spoke and it came to pass. In contrast to our humor, in contrast to our contemporary skepticism, the notion of Judaism is that could are created, both globally and personally, because of the spoken word.

The very written Torah that we begin today was spoken long before it was written. The Torah Shel Baal Peh preceded the Torah Shebichtav. Communism was an intellectual exercise in the minds of Marx until Lennin spoke it publicly. The Zionist movement was only written prayer  in the Siddur until Theodore Herzl moved people through the spoken word. and psychologist’s tell us that many are auditory learners, not visual learners. And consider – do you want your diagnosis from your physician conveyed to you be email, or conveyed in a personal conversation?

Of course the flip side is that spoken word is powerful to destroy worlds is as potent as to build them. Consider in this election campaign, some of the verbal attacks from candidates. It was not what they wrote but what they spoke.

So the Midrashic punctuation of the fact that in Genesis “BASARAH MAAMAROT NIVRA HAOLAM” – “With ten spoken words the world was created” is not by chance.

Let me finish with a favorite quote which was written about the spoken word. It frames the value of the spoken word not in contrast to the written word, but to an even more succinct of communication, pictures. It goes something like this: You say that “one picture is worth one thousand words?” (I have added a few of my sentences to the original.) You give me one picture and I will give you:

“A sonnet by Shakespeare

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

The 23^rd Psalm read at a funeral

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Days of Infamy radio speech announcing the attack on Pearl Harbor

And I would add in our time the last words uttered from the towers and airplanes to the loved ones on the ground who would survive them.

And if you still have a few words left over:

The recitation of the Shma prior to death.

Yes, those words are in written form now. But the  the Gettysburg address, and the 23^rd psalm, and Roosevelt’s radio speech, and the good- bye messages from those on 9-11, and the Shma were spoken before they were submitted to writing.

AFAIK – “As far as I know.

CYT – “See you tomorrow may be necessary for the “text speak” of small keyboards and maximum speed.

But it was with ten spoken words the world was created. Don’t minimize the significance of spoken words, from your spouse, from your business associate, from your physician. Yes even from your rabbi. And that is my “stump speech” to my students, and to you my congregation, as we begin over, and as I once again begin a new cycle of sermons on the Sidrot of the Humash in 5769.