Same Words; Opposite Results

Chazal enjoin us in many places to carefully consider the impact of our words. Yet in many instances it is impossible to know in advance what that impact will be or to anticipate the ways in which the same words will have a radically different effect on two people. That is perhaps why Chazal also commended silence so highly — an option not available to columnists.

Last June I had an opportunity to interview my friend Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz on the early teshuvah revolution in South Africa. The discussion turned to his first book Anatomy of a Search which describes his own path toward religious observance and that of a number of other baalei teshuvah. Written with the fervor of a still relatively recent baal teshuvah the book contained one sentence laden with adjectives decrying the emptiness of secular society. When he subsequently showed the book to Rabbi Aharon Feldman rosh yeshivas Ner Israel Rabbi Feldman told him that he thought the book was very good but he would have left out that particular sentence as it would only alienate those he wished to reach by making them feel under attack. And indeed that was indeed the reaction of at least one set of Rabbi Tatz’s relatives who told him that they felt personally offended by the sentence in question and had promptly put the book down.

But here’s where it gets a bit complicated. Some years later Rabbi Tatz met another South African approximately his age. He described how as a young attorney he and his wife had left South Africa as a personal protest against apartheid. They then spent a number of years in India as part of an idealistic search for meaning. Eventually they ended up on a beach in Israel where it seemed to them that their search had reached a dead end with no further avenues to pursue. At that point the husband came across Anatomy of a Search and was struck by the sentence in question which seemed to encapsulate all the feelings about the secular world that had launched him and his wife on their journey in the first place.

All this took place many years ago. The former lawyer went on to learn for many years in yeshivah and is today a rosh yeshivah.