On the Feminine Gift of Speech

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It was a favorite tease of my brothers’ when we were kids. Tisha kavin, they would call me; nine parts. It was a reference to the Gemara: Ten measures of conversation descended to the world; women took nine¹. It was a pseudo-scholarly euphemism for blabbermouth, and I hated it. (For a female, I am decidedly not a blabbermouth.)

Well, joke’s on them. The gift of speech is indeed a feminine power, and it is nothing to be mocked about. It is a magnificent and potent power that reflects the creation of the world itself. How can we harness our weapons of words to emulate Hashem in this world?

Divinity of Speech

A power this mighty must find its source terrifically high up. In Hebrew, the word for “word” is the same as the word for “thing”. That is because Hebrew words are not descriptions, but essence. The word for an object is, in terms of creation, the object itself.

Let’s take a look into that process. Beginning dawned, utterly empty, Divine Presence everywhere and nothing else. Then came Hashem’s words: Let there be light – and there was light². Who was He talking to? There was no one to issue a command to; angels were only created later in the week of creation³. Hashem seems to have issued a command, although nobody could receive it, and then, somehow, there the creation was.

Kabbalah offers us an enlightening insight. The words Hashem spoke, those were the instruments of creation. The words crystallized themselves into reality, such that the word and the thing are one and the same. On the plane of physicality, they manifest as objects, but in the upper worlds they exist as utterances. As the Mishna clearly states, “Be’sarah ma’amarot nivrah ha’olam – with ten utterances the world was created.”⁴

Words are the ultimate creative power. They have the power to frame our reality, shape our relationships, upend our lives. The words we use to describe a moment effectively define how the moment is remembered, even how it is experienced. The most important things in life are built or destroyed with the power of ma’amarot, spoken words.

Femininity of Speech

Women are the bearers of that Godly creativity in this world. Bara is the term for spontaneous, something-from-nothing creation. It is used in Bereshit at the very beginning, with the first creation of everything. From there, the process of creation is described as yetzira, a fashioning and molding from existing material. The one time we revert to the use of the term bara is with the creation of man⁵, where something completely original was again produced.

Women embody that unique creative process, in partnership with Hashem himself. We have been uniquely charged with creating and fashioning other lives, and creating the spaces and frameworks for them to thrive. The former is done through our bodies; the latter through our words.

Speech is the most basic mode of connection: between people, between worlds, between opinions and positions and arguments. It holds a thought like a vessel, making it suddenly portable, powerful. It takes the inaccessible, the abstract, and carries it into a finite and physical world. That is always the female energy: The process whereby the hidden becomes revealed, the bridge between what could be and what is.

Chava, the archetypal woman and the collective of all female souls, was a talker. The root word of her name also means “to articulate”, as in the Hebrew word mechaveh. Women are creatures of relationship, and all relationships hinge on dialogue. In fact, interhuman connection of any kind is referred to in Torah wisdom as speech, including physical intimacy.⁶

The chet eitz hada’at came about through the medium of speech, where Chava told the snake that Hashem didn’t allow touching the tree⁷, when in fact He had only forbidden to eat from it. This led to the great breakdown of this world, which we are still rectifying. Naturally, for full closure to occur, the woman who used speech destructively must now use speech constructively. We can bring the world to its final tikkun using our words.

Women and Words

The Gemara famously says that the Jewish people were redeemed from Mitzrayim in the merit of the righteous women. The Baal Shem Tov highlights that exile as the galut of daat⁸. Daat, as the expression of chochmah through the medium of binah, is the source of speech. The exile of speech ended with the word of Serach bat Asher that confirmed the validity of Moshe, and the merit of the righteous women, who encouraged their men during the darkest days. The speakers of better days brought them about.

Consider the case of Delilah, the wife of Shimshon Hagibor⁹. Shimshon was a judge and a Jewish leader. A nazir from birth, his asceticism granted him superhuman strength, which he used to defend his people from the Philistines who were ruling Israel at that time. The Philistines tried tirelessly to discover the source of Shimshon’s unnatural power; for years, their efforts were fruitless. The mighty and dominant Philistines, crafters and bearers of spears and swords¹⁰, could not topple the power of Shimshon.

That is, until they harnessed the power of the woman. The Philistines promised Delilah much wealth in exchange for the secret of her husband’s strength. Her incessant nagging eventually produced the coveted secret, that a razor to his head would reduce him to the strength of standard men. The whispered words of a man to his wife brought his ultimate downfall and the triumph of a colonial power.

It was Korach’s wife, too, who fed him doubt, animosity and vengeance toward Moshe. In the Midrash’s description of the exchange, Korachs wife is simply and innocently asking questions on the halachot Korach repeated to her, as he learned from Moshe¹¹. Her cynicism and disrespect were subtle, and yet they were all he needed to stage his machloket.

A final example is seen in the story of Miriam, a woman of daat if there ever was one. And yet with fine intentions and careful speech, the incident of her lashon hara against Moshe is where we learn about this aveirah¹². For better or worse, it is always women on whose words everything rests.

To Build her Home

Our directive is to use words as tools to build, never to harm. It takes the binah yeteira of a woman to know how to build people, frame ideas, and communicate messages effectively. Intentions make all the difference, as Ramchal notes in Mesilat Yesharim about onaa’t devarim, harmful speech¹³. Only about this type of wrongdoing to one’s fellow does it say “and you shall fear your G-d”¹⁴, because the same words can build or break depending on why one says them, and only the One true judge knows our innermost motives. We can create marvelous edifices and nurture armies of humans with words correctly utilized.

Words are frighteningly easy to use. Sleazily sneaky, infinitely malleable, ultimately creative, they are the building blocks of our existence, objective and subjective both. That we as women were given the lion’s share (lioness’s?) of this most powerful material is a testament that we have what it takes to fashion our words towards the creation of a better world.