Parashat Tazria: The Power of Words
It is a two-hundred-year-old English rhyme that every child knows from the school playground ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.’ I was fortunate not to be one of those poor kids who was bullied, possibly because I always stood up for myself and was not averse to getting into a scrap to prove it. Did the names hurt? Of course, but I wasn’t going to let the bully know it. You can recover much more quickly from a minor physical wound than the psychological damage inflicted by a well-aimed barb. Words hurt and nasty words really hurt. We, the original ‘People of the Book’, understand the power of words. Chapter five of (Pirkei) Avot that we will begin reading after Pesach on Shabbat afternoons as part of the Mincha Service tells us that ‘B’asara ma’amarot nivra ha’olam. – The world was created with ten utterances.’ The Chief Rabbi ( https://chiefrabbi.org/all-media/words-create-worlds/ ) quotes the Mishna which asks the question (of) why it