Words Matter

Protect Yourself and Others From Equivocation

This is a special edition of the Language of Life series, related to the deeply disturbing events in Israel yesterday, but dovetailed into our larger study of the unique features of the Hebrew language.

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“You say tomāto (tuh·may·tow); I say tomäto (tuh·ma·tow).”

“You say terrorist (ter·ror·ist); I say militant (mi·li·tant).”

It’s fairly common for people to casually dismiss arguments by saying, “it’s just semantics.” As if to say: “it doesn’t matter — we’re more or less saying the same thing — just in different ways.”

But it’s simply not true. Language almost always matters (just ask your lawyer).

This is why equivocation, the dark art of blurring concepts, is a dangerous practice.

“…equivocation, the dark art of blurring concepts, is a dangerous practice.”

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If you watched any amount of the Gazan ceremony-celebration that marked the transfer of the alleged remains of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz from Hamas to Israel, you almost certainly felt sick to your stomach, similar to how you did on October 7th.

This feeling was not just because of the horrific events themselves, but also because of the way Hamas and its apologists couched them.

Oded Lifshitz was an 83 year-old activist for Palestinian rights before he was taken captive from his home, and murdered in Gaza, over a year ago. Shiri Bibas, and her two redheaded children, Ariel (4) and Kfir (9 months), became symbols of the 251 hostages dragged into Gaza, and the extent of the brutality of the Jihadists. The iconic footage of her capture will be seared in our minds forever. Her husband Yarden was released two weeks prior only to be told that the whereabouts and conditions of his wife and kids was unknown.

But the evil of Hamas is more insidious than this. It not only seeks the physical death and destruction of Jews and the West. It intentionally twists, distorts and inverts the fundamental moral concepts on which civilization stands.

Hamas locked the coffins and passed the Israeli government the wrong keys. Later in the day, Israel’s forensic team discovered that the remains claimed by Hamas to belong to Shiri Bibas were not hers at all, but rather the remains of an unknown woman.¹ Additionally, the analysis yesterday afternoon revealed that Hamas’s claim that Shiri and her children had died in an Israeli airstrike was unsurprisingly another lie, part of their strategy of psychological warfare. It turns out that the Bibas babies had been killed in cold blood by terrorists last November 2023.

The tragedy and the treachery are unspeakable, and yet, we must speak of them — because if we don’t, we will find that the words that describe the horrific events we are living will be chosen for us by our enemies.

The tragedy and the treachery are unspeakable, and yet, we must speak of them — because if we don’t, we will find that the words that describe the horrific events we are living will be chosen for us by our enemies.

This transfer of bodies transpired on the backdrop of Palestinian wedding music playing, under the banner of “resistance” against the Israeli “occupation.” Thousands of so-called “civilians” in attendance cheered as the bodies of Jewish babies were transferred to the “humanitarian” organization, International Red Cross, which for over 500 days has done virtually nothing to ensure the health and return of hostages.

Particularly nauseating is that the subtext of all of this is the “deal” we agreed to. A “deal” implies an exchange between parties in agreement. Israel was sucked into “agreeing” with murderers to bring back its citizens, and in so doing, was forced to validate a worldview that is the diametric opposite of its own.

This is not a critique of the deal. It is an alarm to guard ourselves against the moral erosion in the war of words.

Mainstream media has been whitewashing Islamic terrorism for decades. Major newspapers like the New York Times refuse to use the word “terrorist” even when used to describe those who slaughtered civilians in their beds and took babies as hostages.

We must continue to fight the physical war against Jihad, and the spiritual war of words with its apologists.

But this should bring us to ask ourselves a question:

Why does it seem that Israel, more than any other nation, is subject to this constant attack on the most basic moral concepts?

Words matter.

The Hebrew word for “speech” is Dibur-דיבור. A spoken word is a Davar-דבר.

Incidentally, a physical thing — a piece of physical matter — is also a Davar-דבר.

Why?

Because words matter. The actual, factual matters of world are ultimately determined by how we speak of them. If the world calls terrorists “militants,” civilian hostages “prisoners of war,” and acts of self-defense “retaliation,” this is how the world will eventually treat them.

What prevents us from sliding into a moral oblivion in which everything we hold to be meaningful is rendered meaningless?

By way of metaphor:

We use measurements like kilometers and kilograms and take for granted that these measurements must be calibrated against normative standards somewhere. It turns out that in the outskirts of Paris, in Saint-Cloud, France, is the Pavillon de Breteuil, which houses the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, which stores the most accurate measurements on earth. National standards of the kilogram, kept in countries around the world, are rendered as copies of International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK) in France.

In a world that seems to be descending more and more into a subjective post-modern swamp of amorphous concepts, we are more and more in need of objective standards of right and wrong.

In a world that seems to be descending more and more into a subjective post-modern swamp of amorphous concepts, we are more and more in need of objective standards of right and wrong.

The moral equivalent of the International Prototype of the Kilogram was the Ten Commandments and the original Torah scroll, which were contained in the Ark of the Covenant (Aron Hakodesh), which was stored in the “Holy of Holies”(the Kodesh Hakodashim) in the Holy Temple (Beit Hamikdash), on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The 10 commandments were engraved “by the finger of God,” so to speak, onto stone tablets.

But it turns out that they contain more than 10 commandments-mitzvot (they contain at least 11, depending on how you count them).

But if they’re not “10 commandments” per se, what are they?

They are the Aseret Hadibrot-עשרת הדברות (from that same word Davar-דבר). They should be more aptly called “the 10 Statements” or the “10 Matters.” They were meant to be the international gold standards of the 10 moral foundations of life.

Remember: the Torah was given in a polytheistic world. There were absolutely no moral absolutes in that world. Children were sacrificed in independent cultures from Mesopotamia to Mexico.

Although we still live in a world with different cultures and social contexts, we’ve come a long way since the ancient world. There is a sense today of objective morality, even if it is buried under post-modern psychobabble.

Jews are at the center of the international “Word War” because we have been charged to preserve the meaning of the world’s core moral principles. It is our job to demonstrate that these 10 Statements — still matter.

As the “Holy Language,” Hebrew is meant to hold onto the intrinsic meaning of the concepts of life. The Torah is that which preserves the correct meaning of Hebrew words. If you ever have a doubt of what a word means, you can look it up to see how its used in context in the Torah. This will be the methodology we will use as we continue Language of Life series.

With every post, I hope to teach you about Hebrew letters, words, and the Torah’s unique layered way of communicating. The beautiful thing about Hebrew is that while you will learn Hebrew vocabulary and mechanics, you will also be learning about some of the deepest concepts of life. This series is called “Language of Life” for a reason.

As we study together, we should clarify and fortify our moral fiber for our own sake, and the sake of our society.

1. As of this writing, there is a report of Shiri Bibas’s body being presently handed over to Israel by the Al Qassam Brigades.