Although the
Gesher HaChaim enumerates no less than thirteen specific attributes that distinguish
human beings from animals, the miracle of speech is the gold standard of that
distinction, and through it man connects to Hashem by way of Limud Torah and
tefillah.
Rabbi Zev Leff
informs us that this use of our faculty of speech for the purposes of learning
Torah and dialoging with Hashem is not incidental. At its core, speech is the outward
representation of the Neshama and the means by which one manifests his inner
kedusha.
It’s all about bringing
out the spiritual potential from our Neshamos through speech by way of Torah and
tefillah. In this way we build the world
and infuse it with the energy it needs to exist.
When you crystallize
what’s in your mind it coalesces into a thought that subsequently morphs into
speech which is invariably a catalyst for action.
Simply put, speech
is why we’re here.
Therefore, it
follows that a person who takes speech, whose purpose is to give life, and uses
it instead to tear down people and the world, is abusing the essence of life and turning
it into an agent of death. Loshon Hora vaporizes a person’s claim to
be a human being by destroying that aspect of creation that distinguishes us
from the animals.
Is it any wonder
then that Rav Leff tells us that Loshon Hora is an act of destruction that
he compares to total death?
And do we not
also see this in what happened to Miriam when she spoke Loshon Hora
against her brother Moshe, and as a consequence thereof all of her skin turned
white from tzoras?
Why tzoras?
Whereas Loshon
Hora negates a person’s spiritual life and transforms him into a virtual dead
person soul wise, a metzorah, whose flesh is covered from head to toe with
tzoras, represents the physical mirror image of that rotting soul.
Like we said
above, speech is why we’re here.
And when man puts
that faculty of speech into play to create, by uniting man in the service of
Hashem, he hits the high note of his purpose in this world.
