The past few weeks have reached historic lows. I feel distressed and raw inside. The feelings resemble ones I’ve experienced before during times of great loss. Then, however, I could react naturally and honestly with no fears of retaliation but rather with hopes (and some certainty) that my heartache would land upon compassionate hearts and in understanding minds. Today, I feel no such confidence. Friends, I’ve lost freedom. We all have--regardless of your beliefs. I mourn its loss. I fear its loss. This loss is different than the others because now my words and heartache must be self-censored. If I won’t do it, they will. And, we all know who the “they” are. In good faith, we’ve shared our lives, our dreams, our pictures, our dinners, our milestones, our vacations, etc., on platforms we’d obviously come to trust and like. They seduced us with their charms and turned us into addicts. They lulled us into a false world and a sense of comfort. They sucked us into a black hole. But then they slowly changed the rules and then not so slowly. But now we are in the Matrix and how do we get out? How powerless are we?
But as someone who looks at all things that happen through spiritual eyes inspired by my Jewish faith, I have to ask a vital question that takes priority to all others: Why did G-d allow this to happen to us? What’s G-d’s opinion on words? My query leads me to conclude that we are entirely to blame. Hidden behind flat screens, we’ve become brazen and bold and increasingly disrespectful to each other throughout the years; Gossip, rudeness and character assassination are our brazen creations without regard to how we are betraying the holy power of speech, the tool with which G-d created the world: “And G-d said, let there be light….” We however, have not used our words to create but rather to destroy. We express ourselves with arrogance and with no regard for consequences, neither personal or societal or spiritual--and in impractical venues at that. We set the social media networks on fire with our ire, but how many have expressed their acidic sentiments, many completely just, in letters to our elected leaders, corporations, financial institutions, religious or community leaders, etc. Cherished readers, we had the power to create light, but we chose darkness. Yes we had the power, for if we didn’t they would not be censoring us now, would they? Words are the key to freedom.
In this week’s Torah reading, Va’era, G-d sends Moses on a mission to liberate the Jewish nation from Egypt. Does G-d arm him with bows and arrows? No! G-d tells Moses to go talk to the Israelites and to Pharaoh. Talk!? After spending 210 years in a land not their own, 116 of those years shackled and enslaved, G-d wants Moses to talk his way out of Egypt? That feat would be hard enough even if you had the oratory skills of Prime Minister Netanyahu or President Clinton, but Moses had a speech impediment. Moses beseeched God to find another messenger for his divine mission because he was “not a man of words.” But it turns out not having words, even as God’s chief spokesman, is not a disqualifier. And so God tells Moses: "Who gave man a mouth, or who makes [one] dumb or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? So now, go! I will be with your mouth, and I will instruct you what you shall speak.” In fact, we learn that when Moses received Torah from Sinai his speech impediment was cured. Let that be a lesson to us all. When we wrap our tongues around the “right” words, decent words, G-dly words, our message comes out just perfectly and it also hits its mark. But we need to give G-d something with which to work. Profanities and hatefulness are not vessels worthy of G-d’s intervention or blessing.
There is a belief in Judaism that each person is allotted a certain number of words in this lifetime and thus it’s incumbent upon each of us to use them wisely, keep them clean of slander, gossip and curses. G-d records our every word as does Alexa and our other devices but with greater efficiency. One day those words will all be played back and then more than ever, we will hate the sound of our own voice. We will condemn ourselves for the things we said and also for the times we didn’t speak up in prayer and in kindness, and even in peaceful protest. We must speak up and speak out in the right venues. We too now are in the same conundrum as the Israelites. Do we choose to stay in slavery and in silence because that’s what we know and where we are comfortable, what we’ve become used to? Or do we make a mass exodus from the platforms whose initial wooing and cooing have now led to our woes and consider us foes?
We can’t forget that the Israelites, too, did not heed Moses’ words. Wrapped up in their slavery, they could not fathom there was actually a way out. They showed no faith in God and had descended into such depths of impurity that they were almost not worthy of being saved at all. They became so accustomed to their servitude that most did not want to leave Egypt. Have we become willing slaves too? Only 1/5th of the Israelites left Egypt, those reluctant to leave died in the plague of darkness. How fitting! Will we succumb to the chains imposed on us and die in the darkness too? I won’t. We must peacefully fight for the light, for without it, we are all dead men. May G-d help us all!
A Facebook friend wrote on his wall that we cannot be censored because we can still talk to G-d. That is very true. But, is G-d still willing to listen? Don’t wait too long. Speak up in prayer and in purpose. If we are suffering the pain of censorship, then G-d didn’t like what we were saying and/or how we were saying it. G-d punishes measure for measure (middah kneged middah). Use dignified speech to save the word: personally, professionally, and politically…in all realms. Yes, I know what your thinking--but alas, their turn will come too, and soon. Dear antagonists who loudly rejoice over our silencing, it behooves you to study history: Soon they will come for you and there will be nary a voice remaining then to speak up for you.
“First
they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for me—and there
was no one left to speak for me.”
