The Pursuit of Peace

This past Friday, I was driving home after a tough week of unnecessary drama and stress. I put on my favorite song to cry to. (Don’t we all have songs that we gravitate towards in our moments when we feel the urge to sob or to dance?) And, to no surprise, after the first few seconds played on my speaker, I began to weep, like I had never cried before, as I heard the words: מי האיש החפץ חיים אוהב ימים לראות טוב. נצור לשונך מרע ושפתיך מדבר מרמה. סור מרע ועשה טוב. בקש שלום ורדפהו. Who wants life, a man who loves his days to see good in others? Protect your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking untruths. Veer from evil and embrace good. A person who seeks peace and chases after it.

My heart broke from the haunting tune that carried the question, Who among us values life? In other words, Which one of you wants good for others, sees the good in others, and chooses to spread kind words—not evil ones?

We’ve all had our share of hurtful experiences with words and sentences that rip us apart. As a matter of fact, the various issurim in the Torah on hurting another individual are centered on the verbal, such as אונאת דברים (inflicting another with words) and מדבר שקר תרחק (stay away from words of lies).

As I sang the words, I felt pain. Dovid HaMelech specifically chose the words מי האיש, “which one of you, which man…?,” a phrase that we see in other contexts of Jewish literature: In Mishlei, Shlomo HaMelech writes אשת חיל מי ימצא? A wonderful, superior woman—who can find her?

Any question that starts with מי implies the rarity of the description in the rest of the sentence. When our husbands sing ?מי ימצא at the Shabbos table, they’re praising us for being above and beyond any other woman—in sewing, cooking until midnight, and caring for the children as well as many others in the community. (Or at least, it’s the man’s custom to do so.)

Another example of this characteristic מי? is actually apropos to this time of the year, when Chanukah is about to spin around the corner, and when we already hear that scrumptious sizzling sound of a thousand calories!

During the times of the Greeks, when many Jews were entranced by their glorified culture and converted to their religion, Matisyahu cried, מי לה׳ אלי? Who is with me for Gd? A question which, grave by nature, sought those rare individuals to rise to the occasion and to fight against a time of Shemad, a time of religious persecution.

So when I echoed the words מי האיש, I cried for the one reason that is, how so many fall short and continuously don’t understand the tremendous damage we can do by opening our lips.

Dovid was specifically intentional in the words מי האיש, calling for those rare individuals who are up to the test of watching their tongue and earning something great. It’s sad, because we see the destruction that occurs from negative words—whether they are true and violate the issur of lashon hora, or whether they are false and violate the issur of motsi shem ra—and that people still choose to head down that path.

With this essential question, Dovid searched for the few simple-minded individuals who truly treasure the sacredness of human life and run after only peace and loving kindness. And these are the ones who, til this day, the eternal Torah recruits, in Dovid’s name, to bring happiness and healing to our communities.

On this subject: Rav Yisroel Meir Kagan, an enormous Torah figure and scholar of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nicknamed himself the Chofetz Chaim after the words: Which man desires life to see good things, and not bad? Rabbi Kagan’s life mission was to bring awareness to the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, which he was able to reach with his prolific writings and speeches, of the severity of damage we can cause one another through our language and expression.

Harnessing the words of King Dovid and the many commands of the Torah, the Chofetz Chaim taught us our obligation to stand like a bulwark against evil speech, as we say נצור לשונך מרע, protect your tongue from evil, ושפתיך מדבר מרמה, and your lips from speaking words of distortion. The word נצור comes from the noun צור, as in אין צור כאלוקינו, there is no Rock like that of our Lord, which connotes the strength and stubbornness we must have against this temptation: We must stand against the treacherous waters that can easily sink another—as stationary as a cliff, unbudging from its position.

From witnessing the destruction of a word, we can also learn its beauty. מכלל לאו אתה שומע הן, From a negative value, one learns a positive one. Just as Rabbi Akiva saw the ashen ground of the Beis HaMikdash and exclaimed to his peers, “Stop crying! This is a good sign! If the vision of evil came true, that means so will the vision of good and redemption!”

Let’s not focus on the ruins but instead on how we can uplift and create fortresses. Right before Shabbos, two weeks ago, I had received the greatest sign from Heaven, the best comfort anyone could have given me, after difficult week number one. To my surprise, I received a late afternoon phone call from the Rosh Yeshivah of my school.

“Hello Mrs. Abramowitz. We need your advice. I’m here with the rest of the principals in our administration for a meeting. We need your help with a particular kid in your class, who’s a tough nut to crack. We heard you’re the only one who’s having success with him. What’s your secret?”

Underneath my palm tree and in my sandals, I offered some ideas to all the men on speaker phone, sharing with them my basic implementations of behavioral reinforcement with this specific student, as I stressed to the hanhalah an overall message:

The kid is very sweet, I told them. Yes, he does have some issues, but he’s able to work on them with a lot of extra love on my end. He knows that he can trust me and that I trust him, and I have intentionally built that kind of relationship with him since day one. And most importantly, the boy feels that I believe in him and that’s what raises him upwards and helps him believe in himself.

After they all thanked me and I hung up, I wiped away the small tears in my eyes. This phone call was the biggest nechamah to me after a week of destruction—how one person can decimate another in one quick blow is beyond me—since it was such clear proof of how I handle things differently, proof of how I choose to uplift people, especially children, instead of knocking them down and deflating their worth.

That is, no matter how cruel another individual or set of individuals can be to me or the ones I love, I show that I myself am different. I don’t ruin people, I don’t break a person’s spirit. I use my words with the intention of building people up, and that’s what makes me a hero of my own story, especially as an educator.

We have so much power in the words we use, and in those we don’t. HaShem encouraged me with this idea right before shabbos, as if He were giving me a great, big hug, telling me, “Don’t despair, Este. Stop crying! You are good. Just like people tried to destroy and deconstruct this week, today you showed how without much effort, you do the opposite without question.” And that’s what makes me great, as well as everyone who choose to be an איש or an אשה in responding to Dovid’s cry to wave the banner of shalom throughout the bleak skies of our communities. We must cherish the value in each person—young and old—and believe in his or her precious neshamah.

Recently, I read a (less known) story of the Chofetz Chaim. He was once asked to dedicate a Jewish cemetery in a town he was visiting. The people who requested this of him posited that if he spoke of the importance of keeping Shabbos as a prerequisite to be buried amongst other Jews, the Chofetz Chaim would inevitably motivate the many people in town who did not keep this mitzvah to start keeping it.

The Chofetz Chaim refused to accept this assignment on two accounts: Firstly, he had never officiated at a cemetery dedication, and it wasn’t his custom. And more importantly, he could not bring himself to state a law of Jewish burial which people generally didn’t keep to—an idea that he felt wasn’t true or accurate in the practical observance at the time. However, he felt responsible for declining a potential opportunity which could help many individuals repent. So in his stead, the Chofetz Chaim sent his talmid Reb Kalmanowitz, who was happy to deliver the speech.

At the dedication ceremony, Kalmanowitz had the crowd transfixed with his fiery words on the gravity of Shabbos observance. Later that day, the Chofetz Chaim saw a group of men walking up the pathway to his house. He signaled to Kalmanowitz, warning him that there were people approaching who were probably angered by his speech.

The talmid nervously opened the door and to his shock, the group of men thanked him for his words of inspiration and also expressed their need for help. There were eight men, all of whom were barbers. After they had been moved by the speech earlier that day, they had gone to their employer telling him of their decision to take off every week for Shabbos. The employer reasoned that there were ten men in the union, so if the other two weren’t joining them in this, he would have no choice but to fire those who weren’t complying to a full work week.

Now, the eight barbers were beseeching Reb Kalmanowitz to persuade the remaining two to keep Shabbos, so that they wouldn’t all lose their livelihood. After he succeeded in inspiring the two to join the others in their Shabbos observance, Kalmanowitz brought them to his teacher to present him their new and beautiful dedication to Shabbos.

Once Kalmanowitz arrived at the Chofetz Chaim’s door with the ten ba’alei teshuvah in tow and explained to him the events of the day, the Chofetz Chaim immediately stood in awe. With tears in his eyes, he said, “What an honor it is to stand before you. Can you please give me a blessing?” He continued to explain that most religious Jews unintentionally violate some nuance of halacha on Shabbos throughout their lives. “But you, on the other hand, you are ba’alei teshuvah. Repenting in this particular mitzvah makes it as if you kept all the Shabbosim in your lives perfectly. And for this reason, I want a blessing from such greatness.”

In addition to the Chofetz Chaim’s principle of only speaking the truth and Kalmanowitz’s powerful words in this story, we also understand how a person—and even a towering figure like the Chofetz Chaim, arguably the greatest of his time—can see such value in another individual, who had done the most basic sin yet has an amazing soul. We must learn from him and from the pasuk מי האיש how to see the good—לראות טוב—and say the good, and how to elevate people rather than destroy them.

In this light, HaShem gave us five senses—see, hear, touch, taste, and smell—for good use. The sense related to our mouth is the most prominent, as the Torah writes in Bereishis that HaShem breathed into us a רוח ממללא, which is defined as our power of speech, separating us from the animals and other lowly beings. That is, our senses were given to us in order to be used for elevation. In this way, we must emulate HaShem’s ways and breathe into others life, just like He did into us, and in that merit, we not only desire a good life (החפץ חיים), we receive it.

A final note: The Gemara in Kesuvos 17a brings an exchange that Beis Hillel had with Beis Shamai. There is a dictum to beautify a kallah in her chosson’s eyes and to say the words, כלה נאה וחסודה, What a beautiful and lovely wife!

On this subject, Shamai argues with Hillel, saying, “Isn’t there a lav in the Torah of מדבר שקר תרחק, stay away from lies? So if the bride is ugly, we should lie and call her beautiful?” Hillel responds, without missing a beat: If a man brings home a ware from the market which is beautiful to him, would you then go and diminish it in his eyes? The Gemara then concludes with the principle תהא דעתו של אדם מעורבת עם הבריות, a person’s nature should always be with the people and for the people. A human spirit is sacred and so should our words be sacred, whether they are true or not. We must cherish how fragile we each are.

The pasuk that Shamai mentioned above ends in the words ונקי וצדיק אל תהרוג כי לא אצדיק רשע, the innocent and the upright shall not be murdered because I will not vindicate an evildoer. Obviously, in this context, the Torah is referring to verbal behaviors; that is, physical violence is not relevant here. Rather, the murder this pasuk talks of is the murder we’ve all experienced when another person splatters our soul against the wall like a cheap tube of paint—as if we are a worthless nobody. And for this individual, HaShem cries out, You will not get away with this, because all my children are precious to me!

So when I heard the beautifully chilling song in my car last Friday, it reminded me how I myself must process my own words so carefully, because I saw how much damage another person had done with their own. Because I want to help others and not hurt them, I must quickly and unwaveringly tape my lips, zipper them up, and add on a double Velcro!

This song reminded me of something else: There are those who circulate disgusting words like some repulsive strand of saliva from one mouth to the next—and then there is me. I want to be that האיש, that האשה which through painful cries, Dovid HaMelech yearns to recruit for Klal Yisrael—to uplift them in every way possible, and to believe in every single child and in every single adult.

And all those men and women who bravely and resolutely raise their hand in answering the king’s question, are promised not only a life of blessing and salvations, but a life of shalom, something which holy people are constantly seeking to create.