Bring Them Home
This article is like none I’ve ever written: its title already said it all.
Both the average reader and the sagacious scholar already easily grasp the concern and arguments behind it.
Indeed, one can skip to the next article. My point has been made.
However, if you decide to stay, and once I have your attention, let us delve deeper.
You see, language is a lie.
To collect, organize and then articulate our convoluted thoughts seems improbable enough of a challenge. To succeed in that endeavor and then also be able to package it neatly for the masses is but a fool’s errand.
Who would earnestly claim to possess such a seamless vehicle for expressing the profundity and perspicacity of thought? Who would assert the faculty to codify the mystifying splendor of emotions?
This impossibility applies even within ourselves. Indeed, there is even a special word should one succeed in encapsulating in words his truest motive/emotion behind a particular event/action: a breakthrough.
There is but one exception to the above: divrei Elokim Chaim (the words of our enduring G-d, i.e. the Torah). As this is the only communiqué from G-d given panim el panim (lit. face-to-face; Kabbalisticly called “aspakliria d’mi’era,” roughly translated as “through the looking glass”), and unique to Moshe. Whereas other prophets had to interpret the Divine, and then put it into language, the Pentateuch was the exception.
In the Torah, and only the Torah, do we have the essence of thought; the perfect fusion of articulation.
More, its clothed in lashon hakodesh, the Holy Tongue, a language in which the word for an animal, person, or thing is not some arbitrarily decided upon group of contestants, but rather one that describes that matter’s quintessence.
Beneath that surface lies a deeper level: the shape of this language’s letters, its numerology, its roots and apparent synonyms.
All this leads to a fractal-within-a-fractal of information contained in its perfect communications, in every word and letter.
Beyond its Divinity, the Torah represents the only example of what we can never attain: perfect transmission of information.
It is for this reason that its words – and its Talmudic transmission – are debated in the halls of yeshivos and it is why its study is endless.
As for us humans, forfeiting perfection, we have instead developed a series of noises made with our mouths, tongues, throats, etc., that we fancifully title labials, alveolars, labiodental, etc.
It works as a cheap AliExpress processor of thought.
The idea of language can work so long as we never forget that it is flawed and that trying to perfectly express the essence of a thought or feeling through language is akin to shopping online with a Commodore 16 (remember those?!): Not. So. Simple.
We must remain humble in the knowledge that only G-d can accomplish such a task.
Several months ago, a member of my shul, Ira Kreisler, approached me after the derasha.
“Rabbi, you mentioned again that phrase: ‘Bring Them Home.’ Please reconsider. I do not think we are giving over the right message to some guy in Oklahoma not following these events closely.”
Like ‘Never Again,’ ‘Bring Them Home’ has been our chosen battle cry for 18 months. It has become shorthand; it is how we have chosen to articulate our anger and frustration to the world.
My point is not to question the phrase – which is now steeped in kedusha and hot tears – but to suggest we take a step back and consider we may not have gotten it right on the first try.
No one tells a thief, “Bring my iPhone home!” We would say, “Give it back!”
Moreover, “bring” may be seen as a command to one’s army and government. Subtly, to the uninformed, this may sound like the battle cry of an electorate and not that of a people.
The world’s focus should not be confused as to who the onus is on.
I started with the imperfection of language not only so as not to offend those who invented this phrase, chant it, and disagree with considering a change, but to share the following from the perfect Torah:
In the Ten Commandments “Lo signov” (Do not steal), actually refers not to money or land but to people: do not steal people, i.e. kidnap.
But stealing from whom? A single adult, living in his own house, who is taken, is stolen from…?
Rav Schwab asks this and suggest a fundamental lesson G-d is hinting to. It is a lesson so basic, so obvious that it often gets lost: kidnapping, aside from all else, is stealing one’s freedom. He/she is being stolen from him/herself.
A UN so focused on stolen land needs to be reminded of stolen people.
The world’s focus should not be on bringing the hostages home, per se, but rather on their being free, giving them back their freedom. The world must no longer look at these neshamos as just another pawn in a long battle. And we must choose our language carefully.
Three words can make a difference.
Someone took something that is not theirs.
Do not allow the world to delude themselves with distractions: “Give Them Back!”
