If you’ve ever read or watched videos about lashon hara (destructive, defamatory speech), you’ve probably heard of the Chofetz Chaim, a 19th-century rabbi whose life’s work focused on teaching about lashon hara. His real name was Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, and in 1873 he published the first systematic text on the laws of lashon hara and gossip. The title of the book was Sefer Chofetz Chaim, from which Rabbi Kagan’s moniker was derived.
What is revealed in The True Power of Speech’s author’s biography is that Rabbi Mendel Kessin’s “lecture on lashon hara inspired the founding of the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation” in 1989. The foundation today reports that it reaches over 100,000 people each year with the teachings of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan on the importance of guarding one’s tongue, avoiding lashon hara, and fostering positive speech.
What, then, does Rabbi Kessin’s new book add to the conversation?
The True Power of Speech: The Key to Both Worlds is not a book about the laws of guarding your tongue and how to avoid harmful or slanderous speech. Rather, it is a book about what happens in the spiritual world when we cross the boundaries of proper speech into the realm of lashon hara. The book’s 24 chapters are based on a series of lectures on the cosmic consequences of improper speech.
Kessin explains that when we speak lashon hara, we empower the prosecutorial spiritual force (commonly known as the Satan) in the heavenly court. We open ourselves up to judgment and prosecution by the Satan, who becomes empowered to reveal and prosecute our hidden sins.
Kessin writes, “This is middah k’neged middah [literally ‘measure for measure,’ meaning that the consequences of one’s actions are exactly proportional to the actions themselves]. If you refrain from speaking lashon hara, the Satan cannot speak lashon hara against you in court. On the other hand, if you speak lashon hara, it gives the Satan access to your entire portfolio of sins.”
By contrast, according to Kessin, a person who refrains from lashon hara is judged directly by God and is assured a more merciful judgment.
Being prosecuted by the Satan instead of by God directly is one of the spiritual consequences of lashon hara on the personal level. In The True Power of Speech, Kessin also explores how negative speech can damage relationships and communities.
Arguably, his most potent teachings pertain to the national realm and how the misuse of the power of speech affects the Jewish people as a whole in our journey from exile to redemption.
The True Power of Speech is not a book for the casual reader. Because essin elaborates on some of the spiritual mechanics of the world, the chapters can become abstract. Readers unfamiliar with Kabbalistic or metaphysical discourse may find some chapters challenging or difficult to comprehend fully.
Rather than relying on a glossary, Hebrew concepts are often translated parenthetically, directly within the text. This is such a helpful feature; it’s a shame it isn’t consistently applied throughout the book.
Kessin has been a Torah teacher for more than six decades. Having been a student of his for over 20 years, I can attest from personal experience that he is particularly gifted at breaking down complex Torah ideas in an accessible manner. This ability is repeatedly displayed on the pages of this book. Nevertheless, his material is dense.
The True Power of Speech asks the reader to view speech as having spiritual power, leading to tangible effects. For a reader who wants to explore the issue of guarding one’s tongue beyond what is permissible to say under what circumstances, this book provides that.
This is not a book to read casually. It needs to be read, even reread, slowly and with care. It’s a book that a reader, who is also a serious student, might consider taking notes on or, at the very least, reading with a highlighter in hand to fully appreciate its value.
The writer is a freelance journalist and editor of Ten From The Nations: Torah Awakening Among Non-Jews; Lighting Up The Nations; and Adrift Among the Nations, all available on Amazon.
- The True Power of Speech: The Key to Both Worlds
- by Rabbi Mendel Kessin
- Feldheim
- 224 pages; $20