Paying Attention to Words

Rabbi Melanie Aron

December 8, 2001

When Shifrah was small, and I was holding her in my arms when talking to someone else, she would take her hand to my cheek and draw my face to her, so I was giving her my full attention. Students in a classroom have other ways of drawing your attention to them. Sometimes they accomplish this by giving great answers or being outstandingly helpful, but sometimes they use clowning around or other outrageous behavior as a way of making you focus on them alone.

A text doesn't have hands to pull your face towards where it wants your focus, but it does have ways of drawing your attention to certain places. Using unusual words, or using the same word more than once, are ways of letting the reader know that something important is going on. Shoshana focused this morning on the brother's turning against Joseph and mistreating him. I would like to rewind back just a little bit and go back to the introduction of the conflict.

As the situation is set up, the text draws our attention to certain aspects of the story that it wants to make sure we don't miss. One of the first things we learn about Joseph is that as a teenager, he brings bad reports of his step-brothers to his father.

"At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers, as a helper to the sons of his father's wives Bilhah and Zilpah, and Joseph brought bad reports of them to their father."

The Hebrew text uses an unusual word- et dibatam- a word with an unknown root, usually translated report. What are these evil reports that Joseph brings to his father? We don't know. The sentence begins by describing the work Joseph does as a shepherd's apprentice and so we wonder. Is he reporting on sloppiness in the work of the other shepherds, his brothers? One commentator writes: "He accused them of neglecting the flocks and not caring for them properly. All this at a time when this enterprise represented the major source of their income and wealth." I'm not convinced that this is the key to the story. Though Laban and Jacob had conflict over the flocks, this type of business matter is not usually the Torah's main focus.

Another commentator looks for the clue in the mention of the sons of his father's wives Bilhah and Zilpah. What Joseph must have been doing is reporting on how the sons of Leah lorded it over the sons of the two maid servants Bilhah and Zilpah. Well that sounds good. It paints a more favorable picture of Joseph. But I don't see it supported in the text. There is no evidence later in the story that the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah felt any more sympathetic to Joseph. In fact it was the sons of Leah, Rueben and Judah who argue at least that Joseph should be put in a pit or sold rather than killed on the spot. Also the pronoun makes it sound like the criticism were particularly of the sons of the handmaidens and not about them.

Perhaps then what's important about these evil reports was not their content, but just that Joseph was a tattletale - it was the reporting itself that created the problem, not the content per se. Ramban for example insists that everything Joseph reported was true, but still it was said in a way to create conflict.

As we read along in the story, the next thing we learn is that the situation deteriorated to such an extent that his brothers- lo yachlu dabro leshalom- another unusual way of saying things in Hebrew. His brother's couldn't talk to him in peace. Was it that whenever they spoke, it ended in quarrelling? Was it that the brother's resentment was so great that they wouldn't respond even when Joseph spoke peacefully, civilly to them? One commentator said, "it got to the point that they couldn't stand the sound of his voice".

Finally, the text tells us that the brother's hate Joseph al chalomotav veal devarav. Because of his talk about his dreams- or more literally because of his dreams and because of his words. Dibah, Dabro, devarav- cognate words perhaps, all relating to the spoken word, drawing our attention to the power of words.

In America we teach our kids: "Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me". And it is important that our children learn not to be reactive to every tease- a lot of attention getting activity can be minimized, merely by ignoring it. But Judaism doesn't really agree with this minimization of the power attributed to words.

In Jewish culture words matter a lot. As part of our religious heritage we are taught that creation was accomplished by ten utterances. The ten commandments are not called in Hebrew aseret hamitzvot, literally the ten commandments, but rather aseret hadibrot- the ten words or the ten speakings. Words matter a lot in secular Jewish culture as well. We talk a lot and have even developed arguing into a recreational activity. We recognize that words have reality and power, and we try to be conscious to use them kindly.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav taught: How can you ever say, "it was only talk, so no hard was done"? Were this true then your words of kindness would also be just a waste of breath.