In tribute to Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, my Rabbi during my time at Yeshiva, whose lifelong devotion to the sanctity of speech—reflected in his works, such as Guard Your Tongue, and rooted in the teachings of the Chofetz Chaim—continues to guide and inspire.

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A man once came to a sage, burdened by the weight of a spoken word.

“I regret what I said,” he admitted. “Tell me how to make it right.”

The sage replied: “Go, buy a bag of seeds. Scatter them in the streets, across the fields, wherever the wind carries them. Then return in a week.”

The man obeyed. He scattered the seeds and came back a week later.

“I’ve done it,” he said.

“Good,” said the sage. “Now go back and gather every seed.”

The man looked at him in disbelief. “That’s impossible. The wind has already taken them. Some have surely taken root.”

“And so it is with words.”

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In Parashat Tazria–Metzora, the Torah traces this descent with precision.

Exile does not begin with rebellion; it begins with something far smaller—barely perceptible, easily dismissed.

Like the wind, speech does not remain contained.

It begins in the Garden, not with defiance, but with a question that introduces doubt: “Did G-d really say…?” By the time the fruit is taken, the internal boundary has already weakened.

It continues with Miriam, where a subtle remark about Moshe introduces judgment that should not have been voiced. What is spoken privately becomes visible publicly—and separation follows.

It deepens with Korach, who takes hold of a fracture already exposed and gives it voice and structure. Beneath it, jealousy begins to surface. What begins as tension becomes challenge, and challenge becomes rebellion against leadership itself.

It reaches its full force with the Spies. Their report contains elements of truth, but it does not remain within truth. They exaggerate: “a land that consumes its inhabitants.” They saw themselves as “grasshoppers,” and projected that smallness outward. Fear is released into the nation—and what began as a whisper now carries far beyond its origin—until an entire generation is lost to it.

The Zohar teaches that speech is not merely descriptive—it is formative. Dibur is the faculty through which inner reality is given expression and shape. Just as the world itself was brought into being through Divine speech, so too human speech does not merely reflect reality—it participates in its creation.

What we have seen is not only consequence, but creation.

The prophet Amos writes:

הַיּוֹצֵר הָרִים וּבוֹרֵא רוּחַ, וּמַגִּיד לְאָדָם מַה שֵּׂחוֹ“He forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his speech.”(Amos 4:13)

Mountains remain fixed. The wind does not. It carries what is placed within it far beyond where it began.

They do not remain where they are spoken.They travel—and take root in places unseen.

We imagine we can retrieve them, as though speech were still within our control after it is released.

But once spoken, they are no longer ours.

They are seeds scattered to the wind—taking root far beyond where they were sown.

A whisper may seem weightless—until we see what it carries.

שבת שלוםוראש חודש טוב

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)