Beneath the 6 days of creation, beneath the first human beings, beneath the origins of our world that the Torah describes as we begin Bereshit, there are words. God creates the world with words; God speaks and things appear. (The word abracadabra, used in the magic world to indicate something magically happens, comes from the hebrew words אברא כדברא - avra k’dabra - meaning “I will create as I speak.”) The first job that human beings are tasked with is naming the animals. There is power to giving something a name - it’s an intimate relationship created through language, through words. And then, we know, human beings are lured through words to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree.
In this very first parashah of the Torah, when we begin the reading again, we are reminded of the power of words. But it teaches something more than “words matter” (which, of course, they do). We are now in our new year, after the holidays, and getting into a rhythm. We are figuring out how the internal work we did over the holidays might apply to our life. We may have made promises or commitments based on our actions, and our Torah this week reminds us that we can also make commitments based on our words. Like in Bereshit, our words, just like God’s, have the potential to create realities. We have the ability to mimic God, to be partners with God in creation, through the speech that we use.
There’s a midrash that depicts God creating and destroying several worlds before God decided to create our world. We are similarly able to create and destroy worlds with our words. We can embarrass people or lift them up, we can bless people or curse them, and we can listen to the words of others or we can ignore them. The underpinnings of our Torah, of our world, is language, and our speech sets the foundation for the worlds we create, as well. As we begin the Torah again, may we be inspired to use the words that we have for good. May we create and not tear down, may we build up and not destroy.
