Omer Day 32
This week’s reading, Emor, discusses the laws which pertain to Kohanim (priests), and
various laws which relate to sacrifices. These are followed by a lengthy discussion of the
festivals. The portion concludes with the story of a blasphemer who was put to death.
I want to read part of a single verse from our Parsha:
Lev 21:1 And the LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron
It is the name of our parsha that I’d like to talk about. Emor – Speak.
This is based on a teaching by Tali Loewenthal (contributing editor at Chabad.org)
The Torah provides spiritual guidance to each individual in every age. This guidance is
relevant whether we live in the Iron Age or the Cyberspace Age. Human nature, human
problems and human potential remain the same. The Torah comes from God to explain
and help us fix problems and develop our potential to its highest level of possibility and
beyond.
Every word of Torah has this power, including the name of this week’s Torah reading.
The name in Hebrew is a single word: Emor, or “Speak!
Of course, this single word is actually part of a sentence where it has meaning in a
context. But as the name of the entire portion, honored as such by many centuries
of Jewish tradition, it also has a significance of its own. So we can ask: What is this
word “Speak!” telling us to do? To speak about what? When and why should we speak?
The imperative statement “Speak!” seems to contrast with statements by the Sages in
favor of not speaking very much, such as “Say little, but do much,” “the best thing for a
person is silence,“ and so on.
The implication is that there is a certain kind of speech which is to be recommended
whole-heartedly. What is that? The Lubavitcher Rebbe investigates this question by
examining comments by various Sages on the topic of speech.
There is an ancient Jewish idea that speech has an effect beyond the simple event in
which A said something to B. The very fact that the words were pronounced has a certain
significance.
A negative example of this is the case of malicious speech, slander, termed in
Hebrew “lashon hara.” The Torah forbids speaking slander, and it is also wrong to listen
to slander. In addition, the Sages tell us that slander has a bad effect on the unfortunate
person about whom it is uttered. Quite apart from the practical effect of the words,
such as the defamation of character, the fact that they were said openly in some way
legitimizes their content.
By contrast, says the Rebbe, there is tremendous positive power in praise and in speaking
well of people. The favorable words bring out the positive potential in the other person.
The Sages tell us to “judge everyone for good,” which is generally understood to mean
trying to find an excuse for their negative behavior. A further possibility is to find a way
to praise the person. The spiritual effect is that this helps to enable the person’s good
qualities, which are hidden deep within him, to come to the surface.
The Rebbe links this idea with the fact that Maimonides tells us that a wise
person “speaks always in praise of others and never speaks negatively about people.”
The wise man knows the power of speech and uses it to the best advantage of others. His
positive words constantly encourage people and spiritually have a good effect on them.
But don’t we all already know this? We didn’t need a Jewish sage to tell us what most
likely all of our mothers told us more than once, “If you can’t say something nice about
someone, then don’t say anything at all.” We all just need to listen to our mothers!
This is the kind of speech that the very name of our Torah reading is advising: speak
praise of other people! It is good advice for parents, teachers, friends, spouses, neighbors:
in fact it is good advice for everyone – and, it’ll make your mother proud of you.
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