Bereshit: our words matter
We live in a world where, increasingly, what we say matters.
Our conversations are more frequently over text, social media, or phone calls rather than face-to-face and that’s becoming a problem. Words on a phone screen are much more easily misinterpreted than those spoken directly, which is why we should be more mindful of what we say — though the majority of us aren’t.
Parshat Bereshit is all about words and language. From the very beginning, we see God speaking things into existence. Light is created because God says it aloud, the expanse above the water is created because He says it, the dry land is created because He says it, and so on.
But more than that, Bereshit allows us to see how words are given meaning. God speaks light into existence and then He calls it day. He speaks the expanse above the water into existence and He calls it sky. He speaks the dry land into existence and He calls it Earth.
In very simple terms, it feels as though God is showing us how meaning can be applied to words.
Later in Bereshit, we see the creation of Adam. After his creation, we read God’s words as he speaks them to Adam: “as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.”
This is a conversation that occurs before Chava’s creation from Adam, however, we know that Chava is made aware of God’s words — or at the very least, a version of them.
In my reading, I noticed how Chava repeats the words to the serpent. “It is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said: ‘You shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die’.” Whereas God never directly mentioned the fruit, Chava believes He did.
It’s a very slight distinction, but it’s my belief that every word of the Torah has a purpose, including this change of phrase. I’m then left with the question: in the Torah’s original Hebrew, why is there a difference between what God says to Adam and what Chava thinks God said to Adam?
I’m not a Torah scholar, nor have I even studied properly, but the answer I came to was that it could be a warning about how we communicate.
Focusing on this instance between Adam and Chava, we see how God’s words are misinterpreted in the retelling between them. Whereas God ordered Adam not to eat of the tree, Chava believes that they are not allowed to eat only the fruit of the tree. She puts a distinction between tree and fruit that wasn’t there.
What if Chava had eaten from a leaf or taken from the bark of the tree because of this misinterpretation of God’s words? I think that there’s a lesson to be learned from Adam and Chava about how everything we say should be clear.
That’s a problem we see in our everyday lives. If I say something to a friend and that friend repeats it to their friend, is the final message the same as the original? Probably not. And when you add social media and texting into the equation, it’s even more difficult to determine the original meaning of what we’re being told. As a result, it’s already easier to misinterpret.
Thousands of years ago, God was already warning us that words have meaning. First, he shows us how he applies meaning to words (light to day, dry land to Earth), and then he shows us that words can be misconstrued.
Now more than ever, we need to be careful of our words and the impact they may have.
