Rhyme and Reason

“Hashem, open my lips and my mouth will declare Your praise.”

London librarian Chris Roberts wrote a humorous book titled The Reason Behind the Rhyme, explaining the meaning behind famous nursery rhymes. For example, “Baa Baa Black Sheep” is a protest against taxation. Who was Humpty Dumpty? Not an egg, but rather a cannon mounted on a wall that blew up during the English civil war. Many of the nursery rhymes have a juicy history that makes for a fun read.

Aside from these nursery rhymes, there is a well-known children’s adage that is both preposterous and false: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” As we all know, our words can cause tremendous anguish to other people. Imagine the child who is told that he is not good enough to join in a game. Or perhaps, there is a young girl who is told that she isn’t pretty enough. Words are so powerful that they can have long-lasting effects and cause long-lasting damage.

Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi) understood how false this phrase is. He said:

“Had I been standing on Har Sinai at the time that the Torah was given to the Jewish people, I would have asked Hashem to create people with two mouths, one to learn Torah and the other to take care of all their other talking needs. Then I retracted and said, “If with one mouth a person cannot control himself from speaking lashon hara, if he had two mouths, it would be far worse.” (33 Talmud Yerushalmi, Berachos 1:2.)

Rashbi understood the power of our tongue and the constant, enormous challenge that we face with our words. When we request assistance to be able to open our mouths and utter Hashem’s praises, we are reminded of the great responsibility of our lips. This opening request should empower us for the rest of the day. We are reminded of the responsibility to use our mouths for proper, kind, purposeful speech. If, regarding prayer, divrei kedushah (holy matters), I recognize that it is Hashem who gives me the ability to speak, even more so throughout my day by the ordinary speech, divrei chol, that I use, must I recognize that it is only by Hashem’s blessing that I am able to speak.

Excerpted with permission from Rabbi Tenenbaum's new book, Three Steps Forward, from Mosaica Press.