Our speech should be regal, dignified, and nice TB Pesakhim 3

The very first Mishnah of our massekhet uses a counter intuitive word. “אוֹר לְאַרְבָּעָה עָשָׂר בּוֹדְקִין אֶת הֶחָמֵץ לְאוֹר הַנֵּר-On the אוֹר [or] of the fourteenth of the month of Nisan, one searches for leavened bread in his home by candlelight.” (Sefaria.org Translation) Although or (אוֹר) is normally translated as light, it means “evening” in the context of this Mishnah. All of yesterday's daf and part of today's daf TB Pesakhim 3 brings examples where or (אוֹר) means evening.

Today's daf asks and then answers the logical question, why didn't the Mishnah use the unambiguous word “night”? “The Gemara asks: And the tanna of our mishna, what is the reason that he didn’t explicitly teach: The night of the fourteenth, as it was taught in the school of Shmuel? The Gemara answers: He employed a euphemism. Since the tanna of our mishna did not want to mention darkness, he preferred the term or to refer to the night of the fourteenth.” (Sefaria.org Translation)

The Torah is known for its brevity. When the Torah deviates from this pattern, it wants to teach us a valuable lesson. Here the Torah wants to teach us to use regal, dignified, and nice language and not profanity. “And this is in accordance with a statement of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. As Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: A person should never express a crude matter, as the formulation of a verse was distorted by the addition of eight letters rather than have it express a crude matter, as it is stated (About Noah and the animals he took on the ark-gg): “From the pure animals and from the animals that are not pure [asher einena tehora]” (Genesis 7:8). To avoid using the Hebrew term for impure [teme’a], which is four letters: Tet, mem, alef, heh, the verse replaced the term with the euphemism meaning “that are not pure,” which is spelled with twelve letters: Alef, shin, reish; alef, yod, nun, nun, heh; tet, heh, reish, heh.” (Sefaria.org Translation)

Words can be weapons. In the wrong hands (or mouths), they can sting, burn, burrow, blind, pierce hearts and corrupt souls. We can learn what not to say from our tradition, but also from politicians and comedians. Too often politicians and comedians provide us with negative examples of what not to do.

Donald Trump has attacked Hispanics as drug dealers, criminals, and rapists who want to enter our country illegally. He has called reporters losers and women who are unattractive in his eyes as dogs. He described the entire city Baltimore as "a disgusting, rat infested mess. When Trump called several poor countries “shit-hole nations,” he was chastising countries made up of people of color. We Jews were not spared either. ““A lot of you are in the real estate business, because I know you very well,” he said. “You’re brutal killers. Not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me, you have no choice.”

Sometimes profanity is appropriate. But way too often comedians can make their points without swearing. All the f-bombs are gratuitous. I believe in these cases profanity distracts from the points they are making.

Because our national discourse has become coarser, I'm not surprised that the ADL has reported a dramatic increase of hate crimes and anti-Semitic instances. Words matter and have consequences. And as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel has said, “Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.”