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Good morning

It seems like reading a newspaper, watching the news or listening to the radio might need a health warning these days. This week, in just one newspaper, on just one day, different politicians were quoted calling those they disagree with, ‘lunatics’, ‘crazy’, and ‘imbecile’.

I wonder if what happens to me, also happens to you? When public figures use such mocking, aggressive and confrontational words, I retreat. I feel as if there’s a predator and so I hide. I become passive, depleted and dispirited. I limit my own possibilities by saying, ‘I can’t change this’, or even ‘I can’t do anything at all’. I then become a bystander - listening, watching and hearing without feeling I can respond. And in turning away, I might give the impression that I don’t take the speaker seriously - that I think they won’t actually do what they’re threatening to do. I unintentionally give them permission to continue, unchallenged.

When I hear such extreme language, every day, I can also try to protect myself by entertaining the idea that of course I would never do that. But history repeatedly proves that we all have the capacity to be extremely cruel - without being the ‘monsters’ that people are accused of being in war, domestic violence or drunken brawls.

And then there’s a danger in another response to incendiary language which is to say – look what she can get away with – I can try out that terrible language and behaviour myself.

The casually extreme language to which we are exposed evokes in me the primal feeling of upheaval and so I turn to my trusty companion, the Torah, to help me navigate my inner chaos.

Judaism describes humans and God as sharing the formidable capacity to bring creation and change into our world through a seemingly simple instrument - our voice - the ability to speak, to use words that change reality.

The Talmud describes God creating the world with just ten phrases, and as God spoke each phrase, the chaos started to calm and creation unfolded, the light separated from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

God modelled for humanity that words are powerful beyond the experience of the unseen emanating from our mouths. Judaism teaches that it is for all humanity to continue the work of creation every day through our very careful choice of words which - yes - have the capacity to destroy but also to create – even whole worlds.

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