I remember, fifty nine years ago, I was listening to a shiur from Reb Shimon Shkop, the Grodno rosh yeshivah. He was admired, Rebi Shimon Shkop; his sefer Shaarei Yosher was admired greatly and he was in America then. It was almost sixty years ago but I remember it like yesterday. He was standing and saying – he was a beautiful man, Reb Shimon Shkop; he was like a prince with a big white beard and he was saying, “Vos iz de pshat in a neder? What does a neder mean?” It means, how does it work?
So he said a neder is a tefillah, a prayer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu that He should bestow an issur on this object. I remember he was saying it so beautifully, so clearly. You’re davening to Hashem that He should make this and this thing forbidden to you. And Hashem listens! That’s the idea here! The words that come out of your mouth are so important, so impactful, that Hashem acquiesces and something that was permitted to you is now ossur mideOraysa. Because of your words it becomes forbidden to you min haTorah.
A Powerful Vort!
Now how it works exactly, all the details, you have to sit and study Mesichta Nedarim. You have to learn the technicalities, the lomdus. It could be that others understand it differently, that it’s not a prayer, that it’s something else. But however it works, whatever the mechanics are, what we see is the power of a person’s speech; how powerful is the mouth of a human being.
That’s what the possuk tells us in this week’s sedrah: יעשה ככל היוצא מפיו ...׳ איש כי ידר נדר לה – If a person will take a vow to Hashem ... whatever comes out of his mouth he should do (Bamidbar 30:3). Instead of ‘according to all that he said’ it says ‘according to all that came forth from his mouth’ in order to emphasize the importance of opening the mouth to speak. Of course, the Sages learn from this expression that a neder is not affected by thinking but by speaking. But at the same time we are also being made aware of the weightiness of the words that a person says with his mouth. Here you are, a little man on this little earth, and you open your little mouth and it has the greatest of ramifications. It’s remarkable the effect that a person’s words have.
Guard Your Tongue
Everyone knows the principle of אל תפתח פה לשטן; we are warned not to open our mouth to speak of bad things happening (Brachos 19a). That’s a Torah principle; a Jew always speaks of happy things. He won’t speak of dangerous possibilities unless he adds a prayer to Hashem, “Hashem yishmirenu” or “Hashem forbid”.
For example, a man shouldn’t say to his wife, “If one of us dies, then I’m going to Eretz Yisroel to settle.” It’s a goyish way of speaking. Or to say like a boy asked his rebbe when they were learning Bava Kama; he said, “Rebbe, if an ox would gore you, how much would the owner have to pay?” Jews don’t talk that way. It’s the Torah way, to be careful with what is יוצא מפיך; not to verbalize unfortunate scenarios.
But the question is why? What does it matter if I said those words? So you’ll think maybe that it’s not respectful, it might hurt a person’s feelings. It’s true, it’s a good pshat, but that’s not the whole story. Because from our Sages, from stories in the Gemara, we see it’s more than that; we see that it’s because your words might come true. Your words are so powerful that they might cause it to be.
Now, of course, that’s a concept that is foreign to our minds – it’s just words, we think – but we have to sit at the feet of our Sages and listen to them. And they’re telling us that a person’s words are very powerful; so powerful that they reverberate and have an effect on the universe.
