The Blogs: A Palindrome Every Society Needs

Have you ever heard of aibohphobia?

It’s the fear of palindromes—words that read the same forward and backward. Look closely at the word itself, and you’ll enjoy the irony: aibohphobia is a palindrome!

You cannot afford to “suffer” from this phobia in this week’s parsha, Shelach (outside of Israel). In the final section, we find a palindrome. It’s in the famous paragraph mandating the mitzvah of wearing tzitzit (fringes) on a four-cornered garment, the basis for the tallit (prayer shawl):

וְנָתְנוּ עַל צִיצִת הַכָּנָף פְּתִיל תְּכֵלֶת

“They shall put (ve’natnu) upon the fringe of each corner a thread of blue.” (Numbers 15:38)

The word ve’natnu is a Hebrew palindrome. What you put in is what you get back.

The values we project into our society are the values that return to us.

A society that grants dignity, justice, and freedom to others will live in dignity, justice, and freedom. But a society that builds itself on oppression and violence will eventually be shaped by them. The machinery of oppression does not only destroy the oppressed; it corrodes the oppressor.

When we wrap ourselves in a tallit every day, it’s a physical reminder to uphold freedom, equality, and human dignity for all. Otherwise, those fringes are reduced to meaningless rags—a blatant betrayal of the tallit itself.

Shabbat Shalom.