Freedom of Speech

Freedom is a concept and experience that exists on many levels. One that is highlighted by Passover is the freedom of speech METZORA METZORA

The Seder Highlight

Pesach, our sages tell us, is more than just a commemoration of an ancient people’s drive for independence saga. One of the salient themes of the Seder is the need to feel as if we are actually the ones who are going through this liberation process. Quoting the Mishnah, the author of the Haggadah (the text recited at the Seder) states:

“In every generation, every individual is obligated to see himself as if he had left Egypt.”

The manner by which we attempt to experience our own liberation is primarily through the recitation of the Haggadah – by way of telling. Of course, there is a need to eat matzah and Moror (bitter herbs), but the most important feature of the Seder, around METZORA which everything else revolves, is the verbal part: simply telling the story.

Pesach: The Mouth Speaks

According to the Ari, the great Kabbalist of the sixteenth century, the very word Pesach alludes to the significance of speech in relation to the forces of liberation. The word Pesach is a composite of two words: peh (mouth) sach (speaks).

Chassidic thought explains the words of the Ari in the following manner:

Before the Exodus, the Jews were not only in physical bondage, but their power of speech was also impaired. Speech has the capacity to express one’s innermost and most powerful intellectual and emotional abilities. When speech is not free, the entire person is likewise not free.

The Jewish people were so crushed that they could not fully express themselves. All they could do was to cry out to G-d. Their faculty of speech was thus also in exile.

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There are many tragic stories of Holocaust survivors who could not talk about their experiences. It was all bottled up in them and caused their pain to continue. The moment they could open up and express their feelings, the more liberated they were able to feel.

Reflection of G-d’s Speech

The faculty of speech that we possess is a reflection of G-d’s faculty of speech with which He created the Heaven and Earth. When the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, G-d’s “speech,” as it were, was also concealed and in exile. This means that G-d’s creative power, the words through which He creates the world, were hidden.

When one looks around and sees only natural phenomena, failing to see the Divine creative power that is the true animating force of all existence, it could be said that G-d’s faculty off speech is in exile and in need of being liberated.

Pesach, with all of the miracles that clearly demonstrated to the Egyptians and the world, that there is a Creator who is in total control METZORA of the universe, is the holiday of liberation for G-d as well! With Passover, G-d’s speech (read: His creative powers and overt involvement in the world) was beginning to express itself.

Passover is thus when both G-d and the Jewish people experience true freedom of speech; freedom of expression.

Two Forms of Speech

But, there are two forms of speech. The theme of this past week’s Torah portion, Metzora is named after a person whose unbridled negative speech, leads to the development of a skin disorder known as tzara’as (discussed in many of the preceding essays).

The word Metzora, is a composite of two words: Motzi Ra, one who elicits and expresses evil.

Speech – good or bad – has the capacity to express the hidden qualities of either goodness or evil.

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Pharaoh-Peh Ra: The Evil Mouth

When one speaks of another person’s faults, it has the capacity to elicit these faults and make them more pronounced. This too is a liberation process – albeit, a negative on. It liberates the negative energies that may have remained locked up within the individual.

This form of liberation, however, is the very antithesis of Pesach. It is identified with the process of Pharaoh, which Kabbalists say is also a composite of the two Hebrew words: Peh Ra, the mouth of evil, or the force that elicits the hidden evil.

Pe-sach, thus, represents the emergence of the power of positive speech. When we speak of the Exodus, we elicit the forces that bring about the liberation of our own Divine potential and the Divine potential of the entire world.

Next year in Jerusalem!

At the end of the Seder we declare: Next year in Jerusalem! This is more than just a prayerful wish for the end of exile and return METZORA to Jerusalem. The very exercise of telling the story of liberation is what brings about our own individual liberation as well as the liberation of the Jewish people and the entire world from exile.

At that time G-d’s “speech” will resonate clearly throughout the world

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From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Tazria-Metzora by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.