Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

Welcome back, everybody. It is way number 20. Way number 20 is B'myuth Tzikha, limited schmoozing, communication. So this is the communication principle. We have to understand what it means to have a good conversation. See, every person has wisdom. Every person has life experience that is unique to them. And if you start liking people, you'll start liking to talk to them. So have a good conversation. I actually, when I saw this commentary on this way,
I was like, nah, that can't be what it means. Because until now we were talking about limited, meaning balance, not too much. And when it came to B'myuth Tzikha, it was limited communication, but not limited, meaning have a good schmooze, have a good talk, have a meaningful talk. What does that mean? Another part of what that means is if you're already talking to someone, make it count. Make it be a conversation of something of substance. There are people who could talk about the weather
for hours and hours, just talk about the weather. You know, I'm from Chicago and you're from Florida and you talk about the weather and weather. What good comes out of that? Nothing. You ever wonder? It's like people kvetch about certain things that you can't ever change. When my wife and I, when we moved to Houston, we said one thing we're not going to complain about is the humidity. And there's nothing that you can do about it,
so we're going to talk and kvetch about it every day. Oh, it's so humid, it's so hot. Who cares? Let's move on with life. And you know what? An amazing thing happened. It stopped bothering us. The minute it wasn't a conversation, all we had to do was decide in our mind that we weren't going to kvetch about it, we weren't going to complain about it, and suddenly it stopped bothering us. So learn to hear different opinions than yours
and come to enjoy it. For example, before we began this lecture, the wonderful audience here had a very robust political conversation about current events in the United States. And it's a beautiful thing that we have very different perspectives, very different opinions, and that's fine. That's a beautiful thing that we can have different opinions, that we can have different opinions, and we can have different ideas and discuss them openly and hear other perspectives. Negative speech will turn you into a negative person.
If you talk negatively about other people, you will be negative. It's so important to make sure, like we mentioned this previously, ishq fi mahalalo, the things you talk about are the defining characteristics of who you are. You talk about good things, you are good things. You talk about bad things, you are bad things. So we need to make sure that we use speech very wisely. Speech, by the way, is a fascinating thing. If you ever think about it,
the words that we use are words that are socially constructed to give us an understanding of what is red, the color red. How do we know what the color red is? If you never saw a color before and suddenly you see color, I say point out red. They won't know what red is. Maybe it's purple, maybe it's green. But we know from when we're children, we match the name, the word that we created with the color. The only single language that doesn't have that is Hebrew.
Hebrew is not a societal construction of language. It's a godly construction language, constructed language, which is every word is a construct of certain letters that define its essence. We can get into this a different time, but each letter of the alphabet has certain characteristics and meaning and powers that when you put the combination of letters, it is what the item is. So a dog is not just a dog because they gave it the name, Kelev. It's the name is its definition.
Kelev is kol, lev, all heart. Each animal, each creation, each word in the Hebrew language has its definition in its name, which is the, that's the only language. That's why it's called Lashon Hakodesh, the holy language, which is the only language that preceded this world. The Torah is written in Lashon Hakodesh, in the Hebrew, in the holy tongue. So it's an amazing thing that when I say the word fantastic, everybody knows what I'm referring to,
even though it's a social construct of what fantastic means. It really is, it's something to think about, but we need to use speech wisely because it's the greatest tool we have. We can communicate our feelings through these words. We can communicate our joy through words. So we have four categories of creation. We have domem. Domem is an inanimate object, a stone. It's inanimate. We have a tzomach, which is something which is a growing object, like a flower.
We have a chai, which is a living creature, like any animal. And then we have a medaber, which is someone who can speak using words. You know, animals communicate, but they communicate through certain language of their own. But it's not words like we can creatively create new words. Do you know that 10 years ago, the word selfie was not a word? It didn't exist. Today, it's part of the dictionary. You buy a dictionary 2022,
and the word, I think it was the word of the year that they added to the dictionary in 2014. A group of people who decide that it's going to go into their publication, Mr. Webster and family. But our sages tell us, just as a side point, is that there's another level of creation, which is called the Yehudi, a Jew, beyond a medaber, beyond someone who is just a person who can speak. We have someone who's called the Yehudi, and that's someone who's held
to a higher level of accountability. We can say, I'm just like anyone else. No, you're not. You have bigger responsibilities. You have bigger shoes to fill because you're a link in a chain that leads us all the way back to Abraham, and Sarah, and Isaac, and Rebecca, and Jacob, all the way to Moses, all the way leading down to us 130 generations later. So find the good in people and say it to them. When you see something good, even something simple,
like you're wearing a nice shirt today, I like your glasses, that's a nice cap, nice car, whatever it is, or you have beautiful eyes, say something nice to people. Not creepy, obviously. Talk, have a dialogue. Don't argue with people. Arguments are usually on really small things. People argue about, and plus, at the end of the day, sometimes you're like, what is the point of this argument? What is the point? Generally speaking, arguments don't have benefits. Conversation is a tool of creation.
It removes us from isolation and builds relationships and expands your world. Using words, you can build worlds, you can build relationships, you can build so much love through the words that we use. Also, tremendous amount of creativity through words. The ability to maximize ourselves is dependent on our ability to express ourselves to others. A person who can't talk is lacking the ability to be understood by others. When someone is able to articulate things, when someone is able to talk,
it's such joy because of that ability to be understood by others. A person should limit the amount of futile talk. Futile talk, like we talked earlier about weather. Unless you're a meteorologist, there's really no reason for a person to be busy spending time about weather. You think about it. People spend so much time talking about nothing. If you listen to a baseball game, we talked about this last week, right? My pet peeve. Baseball games is a lot of waste of time.
Or watch the review for three minutes and you got the whole game. All right, you see all the, but they have to fill three or four hours of airtime on the radio or on television talking about statistics and talking about, it's like, come on, really? In general, when we talk about the power of speech, talk is cheap. Promise and deliver. I realized this myself when I was doing this class many years ago that many times, I would have conversations with someone
and I would tell them, oh yeah, they asked me for a certain file. I said, sure, I'll send it to you. And I would forget about it because I'm busy two minutes later with the whole different world and a whole different, what I try to learn to do is tell people, email me, please. So when I see the email, I'll reply to that email with that file. But if everything has to be remembered by me, I realized that's one of my shortcomings.
I tell people, you know what? I'll send it to you. Please email me. Now, nine out of 10 times, they don't email me because they also forget about it. So it's an important thing to follow through. All my days I've been among the wise. This is a Mishnah in Ethics of Our Fathers, chapter one, Mishnah 17. All my days I've been among the wise and I've never found good for the person like silence. Silence is so amazing. Siag lachach mashtika.
You want to know the sign of someone who's wise? Someone who's silent. They hear all the opinions. They hear everyone keep their mouth quiet. They're the wisest usually. We say also, emor me'at va sehar be. Say a little, but do a lot. Be like Abraham. Abraham said a little bit. He said, oh, I'll give you some water and some bread. What did he do? He slaughtered an entire animal for these guests. All he said was he committed to a little.
Bread and water, I'll give you some bread and water. Slaughtered a whole animal. You know, the laws of Lashon Hara, power of speech. You can destroy someone's life. You can destroy someone's marriage. You can destroy someone's relationships, someone's job, someone's livelihood by saying things that are, even if they're true, they're true, it's Lashon Hara. If it's not true, it's Motsi Shemra. It's slander. It's terrible. It's really, it's damaging. We spoke previously when we're talking about talking,
we have to remember what we mentioned previously about seeing other perspectives. But also, Abraham, when God was talking to Abraham, he says about Sarah, tishma b'kola, listen to her voice. Listen to her voice. Why doesn't it say listen to her words? Understand, understand from the cadence of the voice what she really means. There's a difference between someone saying help and someone saying help. It's the same help. It's the same word, different cadence. You can hear panic. You can hear sadness.
You can hear desperation. You can hear joy. All the same word can be said so differently. How was your day today? Good. How's your day today? Good, right? There are many ways the same word can mean different. Listen to the tone, to the cadence, because you can hear a lot if you just listen. Children speak what they hear at home. The Talmud says, children speak what they hear at home. If they hear good things about other people,
they say other things about other people. If they hear negative, they'll say negative. And you know what? If they hear foul language, they will say foul language. I had a young man, young couple, sent me a video of their child using foul language, like really, really intense foul language. And they said, rabbi, can you help us, guide us? How does our child speak like this? I said, well, do you say that? They're like, yeah, we do. Well, that's why your child does.
If you, what you try, your children, they say children are like cement, wet cement. Whatever impression you make on that cement will last forever. It's very powerful. Our children absorb it. My child one time came home from school. We were playing basketball and he shot and he missed it. He missed the shot of the basketball shot. And he said a word. I was like, my wife was there, I was like, what, what did he just say?
I said, so I didn't, I did what my father did. I said, where'd you learn that from? He said, oh, my friend was saying that today when he missed the shot, also in school. So I said, oh, I just want you to know that there's better ways to express yourself. And I haven't heard it since, but it's like, where does that kid hear it from? Where does that child in his class hear such words from? He hears it from his parents.
And we are absorbing the, it specifically talks about a young woman who speaks in a profane way. In the marketplace, you know she heard it from her parents. Now, we also have to remember when we talk about speech is that men and women communicate very differently. Anyone who's been married for more than 10 seconds knows that. And the longer you're married, the more you realize the difference of communication. So it's an important thing for a person to realize
that I remember when I got married, my rabbi told me that it's a special segula, a special omen to have the book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus in your house at all times. It's an omen, a special symbolic blessing for your home to have that book in your house. So I remember one time we were married probably six months at the time. And I remember my wife was upset about something and I couldn't figure out like what in the world
happened here, like everything was going fine and then suddenly, so I opened up that book. Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus from John Gray. I opened it up to a random page and I started reading. I'm like, oh, I got it. I said this, but she heard that. And I needed to learn to get a filter to the words that I used to say them in a way that she understands it properly, the what I mean. And when a woman says things,
sometimes it's misunderstood by us men because we don't understand how to translate them and we have to know the right translation. This book is a great tool to assisting every man and woman who are in a dedicated, committed relationship to understand each other, to speak hopefully the same language, the language hopefully one of love and not one of combative communication. So communication is what distinguishes man from the animal kingdom. We should use this unique ability to our best advantage.
Human beings have a great power of communication. Let's use it in the most advantageous way. So that concludes way number 20. Go out, have great conversation. Talk to people, communicate with people, but make sure you do it in a constructive and effective way. Thank you so much for listening.