sholem aleichem,

With Hashem’s help, I recently “completed” Pirkei Avos with a chavrusa (return to us and we will return to you!) Throughout the text, our teachers of blessed memory instruct us on the importance of silence and of taking care with the words we do speak.

We are told to “be careful with … words” (twice), to “speak little but do much”, that “nothing is better for a person than silence”, to “not say something that cannot be understood”, to argue [only? ideally?] for the sake of heaven, and that Torah is acquired “through proper speech … by one who makes a fence about their words … by one who listens”.

Orchos Tzaddikim, an anonymous 15th-century mussar text, titles its section on speech “The Gate of Silence”. There, it offers a division of speech into 5 categories (which I learned about from R Amy Eilberg): (1) commanded speech, (2) “warned against” speech, (3) loathed speech, (4) beloved speech (R Eilberg’s translation), (5) permitted speech. While the details can get tricky, the categories of commanded, “warned against” (i.e. forbidden), and permitted speech seem fairly clear. There are things we must say, things we must not say, and things we can choose to say (or not).

But what are loathed and beloved speech?

“Loathed” speech, the Orchos Tzaddikim explains, is “speech that contains no transgression, but [also] no benefit.” On the other hand, “beloved” speech is “speech that praises good deeds and censures evil deeds.” Unlike loathed speech, they explain, beloved speech has a benefit in it: it praises good deeds so that people will do them, and censures evil deeds so that people will avoid them.

With these goals in mind, I think we can take “praise” and “censure” as just two examples of beloved speech, not a comprehensive classification. Defined generally, then, speech is “beloved” when it actively seeks to increase good and decrease harm, to create a better world and to encourage people in that pursuit.

In our haftorah this week, Isaiah says to “speak to the heart of Jerusalem”. “Speaking to the heart”, Ibn Ezra explains, “always means to [speak in order to] remove despair and anxiety over the past.” As another example, he points to Yosef who speaks “to the heart” of his brothers when he tells them not to fear him (Bereishis 50:21).

The Hebrew of “to speak to the heart” is לדבר על לב. Outside of our context in Isaiah, we could translate this also as “to speak on the heart” or “to speak about the heart”. I’m tempted to call this heart-speaking for short: speaking to someone’s heart, from our own heart, about the heart of a matter. Expanding on Ibn Ezra’s commentary, heart-speaking seeks to remove suffering, create connection, encourage hope.

Now, heart-speaking is not synonymous with praise or comfort; it need not be solely positive. Censure, as we learned in Orchos Tzaddikim, is a category of beloved speech. But for censure to be heart-spoken, it must be given over in love to a beloved, in order to relieve their despair and encourage them to return to the aligned path.

I’ve been practicing meditation for around two years, with an engaged Buddhist sangha in the Plum Village tradition. In May, I asked them “how can I offer someone loving rebuke?” One answer I received was to wait to rebuke until I could feel love for the one I was rebuking, until I could choose words that benefit us both.

In other words, to wait until I could heart-speak it.

There are times in Judaism where censure is commanded speech, and it may not be possible to wait. We are required to protest the wrong actions of our communities and such protest may be time-sensitive. If there is ongoing or imminent harm, for example, we must act, even imperfectly, to address it.

But in the ordinary course of life, the categories of beloved- and heart-speech ask us to at least consider if we can wait to speak until we can speak in love. They encourage us to take the time to choose words that, even in censuring, transmit strength and courage, relieve despair and anxiety, cultivate love and understanding, prefigure the world to come.

And “one who comes to purify is aided”. If we practice heart-speech when it is at all possible, with Hashem’s help we might build the skills to do so in more challenging and time-sensitive circumstances.

So how can we practice beloved heart-speech?

One suggestion is, literally, to practice: to gather a small group of trusted friends, and practice speaking and listening together. My Buddhist sangha does this weekly and I can feel my habits of speech changing through this practice, albeit slowly and imperfectly.

Or: In my last dvar, I quoted the Alter Rebbe of Chabad’s teaching that everything, even a stone, is full of Hashem, is literally a piece of God. Earlier in that same work, he teaches a practice (hisbonenus) through which a person can draw out and reveal the natural love and awe for Hashem that is ever-present (but hidden) in the heart: "a person needs to contemplate in her thought on the greatness of the Endless…that [the Endless] fills all worlds and surrounds all worlds…”

So perhaps a person who wishes to strengthen herself in beloved speech could try hisbenonus on the literal divinity of the person she wants to talk to, how this person is full of and surrounded by the light of the Endless, how they are an entire world unto themself, how their essentially pure nature cannot change and cannot fall.

It is not so easy, but with Hashem’s help I hope to try.

A tkhine to close our learning:

Compassionate One, You whose speech created the world, grant us the strength and wisdom to speak to each other as beloveds. Bestow on Your people, the students of Your prophets, the prophetic spirit of Your speech that “uncloses the source of all meaning”, carries “fire to the soul”, and evokes “our lost dignity”. Help us to speak in order to remove despair and anxiety, in ourselves and in others, to speak words that are “entirely of benefit” and not at all of harm.

Good shabbos beloveds,

ada

p.s. The tefilah at the end is based on two sources not cited within the dvar

(1) Heschel:

In our daily experience words are used as means to convey meaning. In the Bible to speak is to act, and the word is more than an instrument of expression; it is a vessel of divine power, the mystery of creation. The prophetic word creates, shapes, changes, builds, and destroys (see Jeremiah 1:10).

When man speaks, he tries to communicate some particular meaning; when the prophet speaks, he uncloses the source of all meaning. The words of the Bible are sources of spirit. They carry fire to the soul and evoke our lost dignity out of our hidden origins. Illumined, we suddenly remember, we suddenly recover the strength of endless longing to sense eternity in time.” (God In Search Of Man, Ch 26).

(2) Orchos Tzaddikim, who also divides speech into four categories: entirely harmful, harmful to one side, neither harmful nor beneficial, entirely beneficial.