by Rabbi Evon Yakar
Learning to Talk
Avraham….Avraham!
It’s curious that in the Torah portion we read this morning, the troubling passage of the Akeidah, the Binding of Isaac, that the angel who calls to Abraham demanding him to not lay a hand upon the boy calls twice. “Then an angel of Adonai called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Hineni, Here I am.” “ (Genesis 22:11).
At the beginning of the episode God calls Abraham one time. The second time the angel calls to him, only once: Avraham!
Did Abraham not hear the first call from the angel? Was the angel like a young child calling to a parent, “Mom…mom… MOM!…. FRANCES!” like I used to do when my mom didn’t respond the first time? Perhaps the angel was angry that Abraham even considered carrying out this act. Or, as we often assume at a cursory reading that the angel was interrupting the scene with profound urgency.
Either way, this moment in the episode is curious to me… It is about language. It is about dialogue. It is about relationship.
Our tradition shares a brilliant tale about the origin of languages, about communication, and it is intricately tied to both what connects and what divides us. Only a few chapters before the Akeidah, we have the story of the Tower of Babel.
After the flood and Noah’s ark, but before the call to Avram and Sarai, Lech Lecha – go forth, humanity is described in Genesis chapter eleven as speaking one language. They contrived a goal, a large building project to erect a tower to the sky, as Torah teaches, “to make a name,” for themselves (Genesis 11:4). God appearing displeased with this self-aggrandizing effort confounded their speech. Through one lens, we see this story as a powerful literary device, a way for our sacred Torah, our story, to help us and our ancestors explain the existence of a multitude of languages. With a shift of perspective, our sages in the Midrash share another understanding, as they illustrate how the builders of that tower built: If a man fell and died they paid no heed to him, but if a brick fell they || sat down and wept, and said: Woe is us! When will another one come in its stead? (Pirke de Rabi Eliezer 24:6). A community of one language, had lost their connection. Rather than a shared vision, with which they began their project, they had begun to value progress, their tower, the bricks required for its success, over their neighbors’ lives.
They used bricks as a building block, to build themselves, their reputation up…reaching towards the heavens. They failed to treasure the building blocks of communication, the tool of language, which allows us to aspire towards the best of ourselves: Social creatures engaging in the experiment of living lives well lived. It is about language…what we say, and even more how we use this tool, the gift of being human.
While our sages call Noah’s generation the one of the flood, the builders of the tower we refer to as Dor Haflaga, the Generation of the Separation. Even more, this word Haflaga, in Rabbinic Hebrew, yet an additional window into the power of language, it is not just separation, but division.
We’ve arrived at a moment of division, of lost language, of misunderstanding over understanding, and perhaps our task is to return to a language, not French or Chinese, or Ugaritic, but a new language that lifts up the commune part of communication.
On this first day of our New Year, we embrace an ancient ritual. We utter time-honored formulations of prayer, of a particular kind of language. Avinu Malkeinu, Our Father Our King, or now often heard, our Parent our Sovereign…. Unetaneh Tokef, Let us proclaim the sacred power of this day, it is awesome and full of dread. K’vakarat ro’eh edro, As the shepherd seeks out his flock, and makes the sheep pass under the staff, so do You muster and number and consider every soul. Sh’ma Koleinu – Hear our Voice, we beseech.
This language of Teshuva, of repentance, is unique to this time of year for us, but who is listening? We need to speak, listen, and respond for communication to, well, help us commune. The response…the dialogue part of communication is necessary too. For our change and transformation to result from the spiritual work of this season, we rely on this language. It is the tool we use at the High Holy Days, these Yamim Noraim – Days of Awe to attempt to imagine…to create for ourselves the “God” we want to be listening…maybe even responding. Transformation comes as a result of crucial dialogue…conversation… both the speaking and the listening.
The sacred tongue of our bible and prophets, our Hebrew language, takes many forms. We engage with these examples through the imagination of our sages, the authors of our prayer. We study Biblical and Rabbinic texts in chevruta, in dialogue…in conversation with others.
What about our daily use of words? What about media and social media? Common discourse? Or the language of politics, of activists and activism? Are we using shared language? Or just words to build up our own views….is it all just babel?
I remember a moment in my youth, at my grandparents home. My grandfather heard my siblings and me from the basement, too loud and rambunctious I’m sure. Mind you, we weren’t young children, we were High School and College students at this point. He called us to the stairs. As the three of us looked to each other with an “on bleep” look on our faces, we came to the stairs. I’m sure the lecture was full of profundity, but what I remember was the close: And no more four letter words!, our grandfather barked sternly as he walked away! We were guilty…and giggled of course.
It feels as though the building blocks for our communities, our societies at this moment has become of mixture of denigration and of vociferous vulgarity, and certainly not the carefully crafted language of our Machzor, the prayerbook in your laps, nor the eloquence of Shakespeare or Webster or Sophocles. As University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson recently wrote in an opinion piece, “Now we live in a cacophony of curses. People curse on the job, no matter how white their collars. Kids now swear as well as the mythical swearing sailors of my youth.” He wrote, and continued, “Have I heard a person of the cloth swear? Who hasn’t?”
Sure, many of you have heard a bad word come off my tongue too….
Yet, what Edmundson goes on to point out is that this leaning into vulgarity, this compulsive vulgarity not only depicts a lack of creativity, it is far worse. It portrays a negatively titled outlook. It leads to reductionist framing of the object, of whatever it is we may be cursing: A bad driver, a politician holding an opposite view, even an enemy…however understood. It diminishes the potential, if not totally voids, and the possibility for crucial and empowering dialogue, conversation. And remember, we’re here today to be in dialogue with the Divine, with our best selves, and especially with each other. That conversation, our communing by communication is a building block of relationships, which in turn are building blocks of community… and dare I say, building blocks of our world too? It is the foundation for living lives well lived. We need new language…it is all about the language.
We know this is missing. Just look at the increasing numbers of folks turning to chatbots for conversation…even for relationship. There’s even an entire AI field substituting for dialogue, communication, and relationships. A sector of this new technological advancement seeks to be a conduit for our religious, spiritual, and faith development. The faith-tech industry is on the rise. Hallow, and others like Biblechat, pray.com, DeepSeek, and A.I.Jesus are rivaling Netflix, Instagram, and TikTok in Apple’s App Store. We are in search of dialogue. But the language of meaning, of connection, of depth has been lost.
We have become addicted to….well being disconnected. We are disconnected to valuing others. We are glued to the media’s portrayal of our reality, however real or unreal it may be. We are increasingly relying on this addiction to putting others down, closing our ears to another point of view, and siloing ourselves into echo chambers where we only share views, values, and language. Johann Hari, a writer and journalist with his own challenged past, presents the view that the opposite of addiction is connection. Perhaps we are addicted to these distractions, these things that divide because we are disconnected… We need to yearn for and re-build a language of connection. This season, these Holy Days can be a starting line. It is a season of change and transformation. Our language of prayer at this moment, unique to this season, are examples, blueprints to build from. We have the ability to change and transform…we are human…Teshuva, reminds us of this.
We are amazing creatures. As scholars claim, for at least 100,000 years, we have been using language to be in relationship, to live out as social creatures. We have an ability to learn. Languages themselves evolve. We, humans, evolve. Our creativity empowers us, even better demands us to rise above our spiral into Edmundson’s cacophony of curses. Our commitment to our neighbors ought to inspire us to rise above valuing bricks over bodies.
While not the solution, a change…a transformation of how we use language, how we commune and communicate with each other is a building block towards more connection…enabling us towards lives well lived.
Mara Siskin, a Speech and Language Pathologist shares: The brain has an incredible capacity to heal and adapt. While the path to relearning how to talk can be challenging, it’s not hopeless. I’ve worked with many individuals, she said, who, with time and therapy, found their voice again—sometimes in new and different ways, but always in a way that allowed them to connect with the world around them.
Our own text, millenia old, clearly identifies the power of speech, of language as we learn from the book of Proverbs: מָ֣וֶת וְ֭חַיִּים בְּיַד־לָשׁ֑וֹן וְ֝אֹהֲבֶ֗יהָ יֹאכַ֥ל פִּרְיָֽהּ׃ – Death and life are in the power of the tongue; Those who love it will eat its fruit. (Proverbs 18:21)
And language, learning again to talk is not only about evolving how we talk, it is also about hearing…. Listening… being not only able, physically, but open-hearted to it. We learn to hear at young ages, and as hearing diminishes for some of us, we know there are resources to help…even to re-learn how to hear…to listen.
““Children are sponges, they’re born to learn, but they can’t learn without interaction and engagement from their surroundings. They listen to their environment and books being read and words spoken to them. They watch facial expressions to learn how to interact and react. It’s a feedback loop; what comes in is what they will mimic and eventually produce with accuracy. It’s incidental learning but it can’t be learned without the intention put forth by those that engage with them.” These are words shared with me by Dr. Jenelle Sandy, our community member, and local audiologist. She continued, “We are humans and as such, we are communicators. It’s what keeps us stimulated and keeps us from isolation or depression. When someone loses hearing over time, they begin to shy away from engagement they once enjoyed. When they regain their hearing through hearing aids or cochlear implants, they have to relearn how to process sounds that their brain knows but hasn’t exercised in a long time. That means engaging again with music, conversation, stories, the news, dinners. It takes effort and daily intentional practice, motivation, to put the work in to regain their quality of life.”
This last part is the message. It takes effort and daily intentional practice, motivation, to put the work in to regain their quality of life. When we are intentional, motivated, and put in the work, we can regain a quality…of living. We are able to learn to talk again…to listen again… if we can do it when medically or physically limited, how much the more so can we do it, and must we do it without those limitations… Let us spend these holy days committing to the change and transformation of our words, our languages…may they be the building blocks of a grand human and Jewish journey, writing our story to be one of a hopeful, healing, and loving community.
The Akeidah is less, for me this year, a story about Abraham’s ultimate faith. It is more a story about evolving from practices, behaviors, and rituals stuck in the past… It is about recognizing the journey forward demands a common commitment, a shared purpose of knowing we are connected to one another…. And the Tower of Babel, well we now know it is our Torah’s story of separation and division…and its words of caution, telling us: Build your connection, not reputation, build relationships toward each other, not towards some holier than thou image of the Divine, or self-aggrandizement.
May we learn again to talk…may our language soften so that we may approach all with curiosity rather than judgment. As our sages taught, ‘The angel of victory and the angel of learning cannot be in the same room at the same time.’ Or, since language develops, a new way to hear this same idea, from the great Ted Lasso, “Be curious, not judgmental.”
May we inscribe ourselves for a year of conversation, elevated language, and learning again to listen and to talk.
Shanah Tovah
Resources for Additional Learning on the topic:
Etgar Keret – in the NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/opinion/israel-war-language-humanity.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Lauren Jackson – in the NY Times
Mark Edmundson – in the NY Times
Culture Study Podcast – How Algorithms are Changing the way we Speak
