Everyone has experienced the power of words in one way or another: A kind word that soothes a broken heart, an authentic compliment that inspires confidence and motivates success, or a disparaging word that crushes the spirit, potentially leaving life-long scars.

Words can harm or heal, but not just because of the thoughts they trigger.

Judaism teaches that a spoken word holds tremendous power. According to the Torah, the world itself was “spoken” into being by G‑d,1 making reality a kind of cosmic prayer or poem, composed of the Divine word.

In Chasidic thought, once a concept has been articulated verbally, it is drawn further down into existence and, thus, can affect other people beyond the speaker, even at the other end of the world.2 Perhaps this is why Newton and Liebniz are both independently credited with inventing calculus at the same time.

When R. DovBer, the Maggid of Mezritch, would conceive of a new Torah concept, he would make a point of speaking it audibly, even if those present could not understand it. Why? Because speech gives sound to ideas and clothes them in subtle form and matter, which adds a physical dimension to the ethereal fruits of the mind. Thus, through verbalizing the idea, the Maggid would draw it down into the world.3

Interestingly, the Hebrew word for speech, dibbur, is etymologically linked to the word davar, which means thing. That’s because, once articulated, a word takes on a life of its own and becomes a tangible reality, a thing that exists in dimension, form, and resonance.

The notion that words are the medium through which ideas become things is rooted in centuries of Kabbalistic teaching and based on a metaphysical understanding of the beginning of the Torah in which, as mentioned, G‑d speaks the world into being. Based on this understanding, the Sages developed and continuously refined a heightened sensitivity to the power of speech that runs through every facet of Jewish thought and practice, including liturgy, the binding nature of oaths, and the spiritual repercussions of gossip.

For instance, the Talmud4 teaches: “Gossip slays three. The speaker, the listener, and the person being spoken about.” We can easily understand why the ones speaking and listening to gossip are punished, but why is the one about whom gossip was spoken negatively impacted? The answer, according to Chasidic teaching, is that the gossip spoken about them draws forth the negative traits that are within them.5

If the gossip would have remained unsaid, the negative trait may have remained dormant within the person and never have been aroused or expressed. Conversely, when we speak positively about a person, we draw forth their positive traits from a state of potential into articulated reality.

Such is the power of the spoken word to affect others on both existential and energetic levels.

Along these lines, the Torah instructs us not to curse a deaf person,6 even though he cannot hear the curse. This prohibition is not just about exhibiting refined and moral behavior as an end in itself, but, as the following story vividly illustrates, about the actual impact of the spoken word upon its subject even when it goes unheard.7

Once, two men had a quarrel while in the Baal Shem Tov’s synagogue, leading one man to shout at the other that he would “tear him to pieces like a fish.”

Hearing this, the Baal Shem Tov told his pupils to gather round, hold hands, and stand near him with their eyes closed. Then he placed his holy hands on the shoulders of the two disciples next to him. Suddenly, the disciples began shouting in great terror: They had seen that fellow actually dismembering his disputant, just as he had said.

Every word has an effect—either in physical form or on a spiritual plane that can be perceived only with higher and more refined senses. This presents us with a profound amount of both power and responsibility in respect to the way we use our words. Are we seeking to build or destroy, to uplift or put down, to unify or divide, to bring peace or to sow conflict? For, truly, these are the actual stakes and potentials that exist within each and every word we speak.

In sum, beyond how words make people think or feel on intellectual or emotional levels, there is also an inherent power and potency to them, which, once articulated, endows them with a life of their own. As the famous American poet Emily Dickinson8 once wrote:

A word is dead when it is said

Some say—

I say it just begins to live

That day.

The Big Idea

Words are not just tools of communication; they are instruments of creation.

It Happened Once

On June 10, 1982, Israeli Staff Sergeant Zachary Baumel and his unit were attacked by the Syrian military while on a mission in Lebanon, and a bloody battle ensued, leaving twenty Israeli soldiers dead and more than thirty wounded. Zachary and two of his fellow soldiers were officially declared missing.

Zachary’s remains were missing until 2019, when they were finally recovered by the Russian government and returned to Israel for a proper Jewish burial on Mount Herzl.

As recounted by Zachary’s sister Osna to Chief Rabbi of Tzfat R. Shmuel Eliyahu,9 there was more to this story than meets the eye. At the funeral, Osna went over to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to thank him for retrieving her brother’s remains. She told him that for many years, her family was upset with him for not doing enough to recover Zachary’s body and would voice their grievances regularly. She continued, “One day, we decided as a family to stop speaking negatively about you and instead try to view you more favorably. We realized that there were things we didn’t know; that the situation was complex. And that for a country to request a favor from another country, a lot of political maneuvering is required, and surely there were greater issues on the national agenda than the retrieval of Zachary’s body.”

Netanyahu was visibly shaken. He told her that Israel had been instrumental in helping Russia avoid a terrorist attack. Knowing that the day would come when the Russians would repay the favor, he sat with his cabinet and made a list of fifty possible things that were important to Israel from a strategic point of view. They then condensed the list to three items. Needless to say, Zachary’s remains were not on the list.

When the time came, Netanyahu sat down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. When Netanyahu was asked how Russia could repay Israel, despite having the list of three things in hand, inexplicably, the cause of Zachary Baumel kept coming to mind.

He told Putin about Zachary, and the surprised president asked why something that happened so long ago mattered so much to Israel.

Netanyahu replied, “To the Jewish people, proper burial is of great importance.” Putin replied that if it was that important, he would make sure it was done, and moreover, moved by the depth of care that the Jewish people have for each other, he offered Israel another favor, saying this one was “on him.”

This story highlights the power of speech. Just as lashon hara draws forth the negative traits within others, even if they are not present to hear them spoken, so too (and even more so), when positive words are spoken, the words themselves, even if unheard by the subject, manifest and reveal their inner good qualities.