Talmud Class: What is Your Word Cloud? You Become It.

What is your word cloud? What are the leading words that take in how you feel about your life?

Our reading this week reminds us of the very intimate connection between word and world. The words we speak create the world we live in. Our word cloud becomes us, who we are.

The Israelites’ word cloud: “Why did you take us out of Egypt? We used to eat fish for free in Egypt, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. Our gullets are shriveled. Nothing but manna.”

Their negative energy word cloud reinforces and deepens their negative energy world. Our complaints are not costless but spread negative energy to the people in our life. Moses is driven to a meltdown. “I cannot carry all this people by myself, for it is too much for me. If You would deal thus with me, kill me rather, I beg You, and let me see no more of my wretchedness!” There is a straight line from their negative energy this week to their negative energy next week in refusing to enter the promised land. 

But what are we supposed to do with our negative energy if we feel it, especially if we feel it for a good reason, if our negative energy is well earned? What if we are depressed or anxious or worried for good reason? Surely Judaism does not counsel us to repress and suppress hard emotions.

We will look at an old friend, one of the prayers that is most familiar to us, which suffers precisely for its familiarity: Ashrei. The Talmud teaches that if we say Ashrei three times a day, every day, we gain a portion in the world to come. Ashrei is an alphabetical acrostic poem about abundance, blessing, generosity, goodness, radiant positive energy. Say it every day, three times a day, every day, and we begin to feel it.

But is it even possible to offer a positive energy Ashrei word cloud if we feel anxious, depressed, worried?

What is an example of a real person with real worries, eschewing the negative word cloud of the Exodus generation for the positive world view of the psalmist? Can we do that?