The Mouth is Crucial
Kedushah affects quite a lot of areas. There is holiness of the eyes, holiness of thought, holiness in speech and holiness in deeds.
All of these are important. We won’t succeed in kedushah unless we work on these areas, and without success in kedushah, we won’t succeed in anything. But we will focus on one area, on kedushah of the mouth, holiness in speech.
This area, like others, is not a simple one. There is a lot of depth to it. Let’s start with the words of Sefer Tomer Devorah, as they bring out a key point.
A person needs to be very careful to avoid speech that leads to improper thoughts. Surely, one should not speak in a crude and inappropriate manner. But even pure speech, if it leads to improper thoughts, should be avoided. This is implied by Scripture: אל תתן את פיך להחטיא את בשרך – “Do not let your mouth bring your flesh to sin.” This is warning that a person should not allow his mouth, through its speech, to bring his flesh – the organ bearing the sign of bris milah – to sin. And it says further למה יקצוף האלקים – “Why should G-d become angry?”
If this verse was talking about crude and inappropriate speech, why would it say, “Do not let... bring to sin”? The speech itself would be a sin. Rather, it means that even if the speech is not inherently sinful, because it is pure speech, a person should still avoid it, if it brings him to improper thoughts. The evil result of the speech renders the speech itself evil.
This is a chiddush that I think a lot of people don’t know about. They aren’t aware of this idea, nor do they practice it.
All of a person’s toil is for his mouth.
A person’s mouth has tremendous power. A human being has a lot of faculties: sight, hearing, thought, etc. these are tremendous capabilities. In one moment, a person can see and hear an enormous number of things, and also think many thoughts. The conduit to express everything he sees, hears and thinks is the mouth. The mouth expresses everything that a person is. “All of a person’s toil is for his mouth.”
We need to be aware of the power human beings have. We were created in the image of G-d. With one act, a person is capable of destroying the entire world. If Shimi ben Gera would have been executed when he cursed David Hamelech as the latter was fleeing for his life, this would have destroyed the entire world. [Mordechai, savior of the entire Jewish people, descended from him.] Speech is even more powerful than this. A single word is surely capable of destroying the world.
We can see it is so. If an evil person picks up a sword and decides to kill, maim and destroy as much as he can, this might result in many deaths. But he can’t go on this way indefinitely. He needs to stop in order to eat and sleep. Even if he would take a sword and slay people one after another for twenty years straight, how many could he manage to kill?
By comparison, there was a man who succeeded in killing six million people within a short period of time. How? By the power of his mouth. Hitler gave speeches, and later, commands and orders. This brought many millions to their death.
The mouth is a machine by which the entire world could be killed.
The same is true in a positive sense, regarding kedushah. Gedolei Hador, such as the Chofetz Chayim and the Chazon Ish, were people who sustained the whole world by the words they spoke.
So we see that the mouth, even as an external instrument, has a power that no other part of the body possesses.
Tragedies without Judgment
A few weeks ago, a seventeen-year-old bachur passed away. I went to the family to be menachem eivel. The father and brothers were sitting there, and as I was consoling them, I came to a big chiddush. There is a pasuk that says:
There is a person who perishes without judgment.
What does this mean? How could a person perish unless his demise was judged?
Chazal say it refers to a young man who dies between the age of thirteen and twenty. Before a child reaches the age of thirteen, his death is considered a punishment for the father. The father committed sins, and the son was taken away due to them. After reaching the age of twenty, a person bears the punishment for his own sins.
What about between thirteen and twenty? This is “a person who perishes without judgment.”
When a tragedy happens to a person, one of the things that torments him and makes the tragedy much harder to bear is when he blames himself. A tragedy happened. That’s a fact. צדיק ה' בכל דרכיו וחסיד בכל מעשיו – “Hashem is righteous in all His deeds and kind in all His ways.” We know this. But when a person blames himself, it becomes really, really terrible.
Once I went to be menachem eivel to someone sitting shiva for his son, and during the whole shiva he talked about only one thing: what he could have done to prevent the death of the child. Maybe he should have looked for a different doctor. Maybe he didn’t do enough. Maybe he is guilty of the child’s demise.
Indeed, when something happens to a small child, it is quite possible that the father is responsible for it. I knew someone whose son, when he was little, got in an accident, and some of his fingers got cut off. Before the father passed away, he wrote a last will and testament in which he requested of his other children: Please give special respect to this child, because I am guilty for what happened to him, as Chazal say, that when a tragedy comes upon a person when he is still little, it is a punishment for his father and mother.
So I said to the father of the seventeen-year-old bachur: You should know that Chazal say you are not responsible for his death. There is no guilt on you. Your son is one of those about whom it says, “There is a person who perishes without judgment.”
At the time, I thought to myself: If so, how did the tragedy happen, if neither the father nor the son is guilty? What caused him to die at such a young age?
Then I came to the chiddush. The world operates according to rules. Chazal are telling us that if we see that a young man has died, we need to know that someone or something burnt him up, so to speak.
What force could burn up young Jewish men?
Chazal say: Due to the sin of improper speech, young Jewish men die.
This force of ניבול פה, improper speech, is the only force that can kill a person without judgment. This is the force can burn a person up even without Heavenly judgment.
This resembles the well-known teaching of R. Chayim Shmuelevitz that sins of bein adam l’chaveiro are a fire, and fire burns even if one is not truly guilty, and even if the one who was wronged doesn’t want the perpetrator to be burnt. It is simply the nature of fire to burn. Similarly, Chazal tell us that the power of the mouth is awesome and fearful. It can kill a person even without judgment.
Chazal further said, “Lashon hara kills three: the one who speaks it, the one who accepts it and the one about whom it is spoken.”
This is puzzling. Why should the person about whom lashon hara was spoken be killed for it? What did he do wrong? Nothing, actually. He may be compared to someone who inadvertently walks onto a shooting range. For no fault of his own, he dies due to bullets hitting him.
The same applies to our subject. Young Jewish men die because some Jew somewhere spoke improper speech. This is the awesome power of the mouth. It kills “without judgment.”
Levels of Kedushah
Kedushah is a deep topic. It’s not a simple matter at all. There is purity, there is holiness and there is greater holiness. There are many levels.
Like with every Torah topic, there are two aspects. The negative and the positive; what not to do and what to do. If we get this matter under control, we will bring upon ourselves kedushah and taharah and ascend from one madreigah to the next.
The Torah commands us קדושים תהיו, “You shall be holy,” and the comments of Rashi and Ramban on this are well known. Rashi explains that one should abstain from illicit relations. Ramban says one should sanctify himself even in permitted matters. I heard it said that they are both saying the same thing. A person who abstains will reach kedushah. Abstaining from sin is kedushah. It brings a person to higher levels, to spiritual greatness.
