Jim McGinn always wanted a power saw. The day he got his first pay check, he spent it on one—a big, powerful power saw. It gave him a manly, burly, beer-on-your-chest sense of, well, power.

His power saw was built of shiny, hard and heavy metal. It pumped a dynamo of mechanical energy into his hands, so that he had to grip real tight. With it he made stuff, fixed stuff and broke stuff. He almost got hurt bad. And it made a big noise, too.

Words, on the other hand, are wimpy. No substance other than a puff of air. Can't cut through a thing. Can be spoken by a small child or a frail old lady, the softer the better.

Yet the world is not built of power saws. Or of power drills, hammers, bulldozers, computers or even rocket ships. It's made of words. Without words, all that stuff is just a pile of tin.

Like the rest of us who see the world from the inside-out, Jim McGinn's perception of the world is upside-down. The world we see is built of hard matter at the core with words and ideas gently sprinkled on the surface. Sticks, stones and power saws are real stuff, words are just a harmless way of talking about them.

Along comes Kabbalah, seeing things from their origin and beyond, and tells us that no, words are the core reality. Things exist only because there are words for them. Words are the ultimate power.

G‑d said, "Be light!" and it was light. "Be a sky!" and there was a sky. "We will make man!" and there was a man. And then He blew into the nostrils of this man the breath of life, as Onkelos translates: A speaking soul. A soul composed of speech, of words. "And whatever Adam called each creature, that was its name."

Ever since, Adam has gone around making more and more names for G‑d's things, composing stories out of His music and dramas with His creations. He created a world out of words, and we bring it into focus, direct it, manipulate and mold it with our words. Our words make His words real.

Speak good things. Make a beautiful resolution out of this world.