Words Creating Worlds

The beginning of our parsha today deals with hatarat nedarim, the release of vows. If a woman makes a vow or oath, her father or husband can annul it when he hears it; if a man makes a vow or oath, he can go to a det din, to ask them to annul it. Otherwise, it is a very dangerous thing. If a person vows that they will never eat meat again, meat to them becomes hekdesh, and breaking their vow is like eating the priestly food! The Talmud strongly discourages people from making vows, as we can never foresee what will come. I once was asked, just before Yom Kippur, to annul someone’s vow who had swore they wouldn’t eat cake again; how could they not eat cake at their own birthday party? But once a vow has been made, it has the force of a Torah prohibition.
There are two types of vows discussed. A neder is a vow not to partake of something; the item itself becomes prohibited to me. A shvua, an oath, prohibits me from doing something—it makes me forbidden. The Mishnah tells us that an oath or vow can be said even in non-technical language, any language which implies a vow IS a vow. So if I swear off cake, even without saying the word neder, I have made a vow, and am forbidden from eating cake! If I say to my spouse, “I swear I won’t touch you again,” I am forbidden from my own spouse!
What is amazing about this is that the human word can hold so much power. The torah, in 30:3, says “lo yahel devarecha”—which rashi explains as “your words shall not become hullin, profane. Human language is sacred, and by violating what one has said, one has violated its sanctity. But how can a word have so much power, to make something prohibited to me?
In Bereshit, when God creates, he creates through language. God says, “let there be light,” and there was light. So how did this command get fulfilled? The traditional understanding of this is that the word itself—or, light- became light. Divine speech is the essence of the universe. God speaks ten times in the creation of the world, and these 10 utterances are the metaphysical basis for all of creation.
Sefer yetzira states, “22 foundation letters… He permuted them, weighed them, and transformed them, alef with them all and all of them with alef, bet with them all and all of them with bet, they repeat in a cycle and exist in 231 gates. It comes out that all that is formed and all that is spoken emanates from one name.” (SY 2:5) The 22 letters are the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. In other words, all of reality comes from permutations of the Hebrew letters of divine speech, in combination with each other. The letters from the ten utterances of bereshit combined with each other to form the spiritual basis of everything in the universe. Everything at its core is really divine speech, clothed in apparent physical garb.
This is why we say in pesukey, Baruch she’amar vehaya haolam, Blessed is the one who spoke and the world is—the moment of divine speech was the moment of creation.
If we can focus on the divine in everything, and ignore the physical garment, we could theoretically see the letters of divine speech. Rebbe Nahman of Breslav tells a story of a young man, probably himself, who fell asleep at the shabbes table, and when he woke up, the bread on the table was replaced by a pile of letters. This story, the story of the bread, was successfully hidden for 200 years, because experiencing divine speech means standing on the level of Moses, who experienced revelation directly from God. The image is a spiritual core of divine letters, garbed in an illusory veil of physicality.
Human language, too, and especially Hebrew, shares in the creative power of divine language. King Solomon says in Proverbs, “Life and death are in the hands of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). According to Isaac Luria, every word we speak creates an angel above, either a friendly angel or a prosecuting angel. According to the Zohar, our words of study and prayer actually create new worlds:
Zohar 4b
IN THE BEGINNING. R. Simeon opened his discourse with the text: And I put my words in thy mouth (Is. LI, 16). He said: ‘How greatly is it incumbent on a man to study the Torah day and night! For the Holy One, blessed be He, is attentive to the voice of those who occupy themselves with the Torah, and through each innovation made by them in the Torah a new heaven is created. Our teachers have told us that at the moment when a man expounds something new in the Torah, his word ascends before the Holy One, blessed be He, and He takes it up and kisses it and crowns it with seventy crowns of graven and inscribed letters. When a new word of wisdom is innovated, it ascends and rests on the head of the “Zaddik, the life of the universe”, and then it flies off and traverses seventy thousand worlds until it ascends to the “Ancient of Days”. All the words of the “Ancient of Days” are words of wisdom comprising sublime and hidden mysteries. When that hidden word of wisdom ascends there, it is joined to the words of the “Ancient of Days”, and together with them enters into the eighteen mystical worlds, concerning which we read “No eye hath seen beside thee, O God” (Ibid. LXIV, 3). From there they roam and fly to and fro, until finally arriving, perfected and completed, before the “Ancient of Days”. At that moment the “Ancient of Days” savours that word of wisdom, and finds satisfaction therein above all else. He takes that word and crowns it with three hundred and seventy thousand crowns, and it flies up and down until it is made into a sky. And so each word of wisdom is made into a sky which presents itself fully formed before the “Ancient of Days”, who calls them “new heavens”, newly created heavens, hidden mysteries of supernal wisdom. As for the other innovative words of Torah, they present themselves before the Holy One, blessed be He, and ascend and become “earths of the living”, then they descend and become absorbed into one earth, whereby a new earth emerges through that renewed word of Torah. This is implied in the verse, “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I am making, rise up before me, etc.” (Ibid. LXVI, 22). It is not written “I have made”, but “I am making”, for he makes them continually out of those new innovations and mysteries of Torah. Further, it is written, “And I have placed my words in thy mouth, and with the shadow of my hand have I covered thee, to plant a heaven and to lay the foundations of an earth” (Ibid. LI, 16). It does not say “the heavens” [i.e. which already exist], but “heavens”.
It is a beautiful image; you can take it as literally or figuratively as you want. Every word of torah we innovate flies up and becomes a new heaven, a new world. Just like God can create worlds through speech, we can create worlds through speech.
Even if you don’t believe the world is literally created by language, the world we experience is created by our language. We can deeply impact the world we live in through our attitude and our speech. We can create worlds with our speech.
There is an interesting passage in the Mishnah, tractate Berachot, discussing behavior of the shaliach tzibbor. If the shatz says “modim modim” (thank you, thank you) he is silenced. One explanation is that he appears to be praying to 2 entities. The Baal Shem Tov’s explanation is that actually, he’s only praying to god, but by saying it twice he makes it seem like the first word didn’t work, like it didn’t ascend. In reality, every word ascends to heaven. Every word we say creates a world.
One of my favorite childrens’ books, growing up, was the little engine that could. It is a story about a group of dolls who need to make it over the mountain before the children awake; a parade of engines, which clearly are capable of the trip, either say they cannot or are unwilling to do it. One of those is a rusty old engine, who says he simply cannot do it. The hero is a small engine, far smaller than any of the other ones, who has a positive attitude, and repeats “I think I can I think I can” until she makes it over the mountain.
Our speech has a profound impact on our attitude and ability to accomplish something. If I say “I can’t do something” or “that’s beyond me,” I reinforce my belief that I can’t do it, and find myself unable to do it. My language is even more important than my attitude, because it shapes my attitude. It’s okay to be insincere, if I’m skeptical but speak with positive attitude and conviction. If I have a difficult goal, then saying I can do it actually helps accomplish it.
We also create labels with our speech, which can either become something to hide behind, or something to rise up to. I once heard someone say, “I eat pork, I’m conservative.” Besides the fact that they didn’t know what Conservative Judaism was, it became a convenient label, shielding them from having to reconcile what they did with what the Torah says. But labels can also be something that makes us live up to them. If we wake up in the morning and say thank you god for giving me a holy soul, then we need to make sure we live up to that, and lead a life which reflects carrying a spark of the divine.
We can profoundly affect other people with our speech. One of the most insidious forms of abuse is verbal abuse, which is incredibly hard to identify decisively. When a parent or guardian repeatedly tells a child they’re worthless or bad, they can start to believe it, and they end up acting in worthless and bad ways themselves. Negative words can kill someone’s spirit.
We can also create a positive, loving world with speech. In a relationship that has stalled, or fallen into a cycle of fighting and arguing, saying “I love you” can jump starts the cycle of love. What messages do we give to our family members, our loved one? What kind of a world do we create for them?

The story is told of a woman whose husband frequently insulted her. She would respond angrily, which in turn provoked an even more offensive response, resulting in a spiral of back-and-forth shouting and name-calling. Exasperated, the woman consulted with her Rabbi, who gave her a curious piece of advice. He said that each time her husband said something hurtful to her, instead of responding, she should take a hammer and bang a nail into some surface.

And so, that day, when the husband insulted the woman, she didn’t say a word. She went upstairs with a hammer, and banged a nail into a wall. When he insulted her again for doing something so foolish, she again banged a nail into a wall.

This went on for several weeks, until finally the husband wanted to know what was going on. The wife told him about the Rabbi’s suggestion, and showed him the approximately 100 nails in the wall.

“I offended you so many times?” the husband asked.

“Yes,” the wife confirmed. “Each nail is another time you said something hurtful to me.”

“Well,” the husband said, “it should work the other way, as well. Every time I say something nice to you, you should remove a nail from the wall.” The idea sounded reasonable, so the wife agreed.

Sure enough, the husband starting showering his wife with compliments. He praised her for her meals, her appearance, and her personality, told her how much she meant to him and said that he loved her. Each time, a nail came out of the wall. Finally, the day arrived when the last nail was pulled out.

“You see?” the husband said. “It’s all fixed now. The nails are all gone.”

“Not quite,” the wife replied. “Yes, the nails are gone – but look at all the holes that are left in the wall. They still need to be filled.”
Our words can destroy, or heal, our relationships.
Rabbeynu Yonah says that when a Jew sanctifies his mouth, it becomes a cli sharet, a vessel sanctified for holy use in the temple. We have the power with our language to sanctify God, to build a sacred space for the divine on earth, to create angels, and even to create new heavens.
We can create worlds with our speech. May we all create worlds of love, of believing in ourselves & in each other, of understanding & appreciation, of forgiveness.