Parshat Metzora: The Power of Words - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

[Music] my son made up a joke which had me in stitches I was on the floor I'm not so sure I'll be able to do it justice he's pretty good at jokes but let's have a go imagine you're in a darkened room full of mice a cellar it's locked you can't get out of there and all you have is a cigarette box an empty cigarette box and a match now how do you get the mice out of there had a good thing well what you do is this and take the matchbox and you place the match into the side of the matchbox like this okay and then you go like this bottom lot said collage bottom lot said I probably haven't succeeded in splitting your sides but I was so beside myself with laughter that I came close to transgressing the prohibition not to fill our mouths with laughter until the coming of the Messiah the Messiah it got me thinking how powerful words are the right words in the right order the right time can bring you to heaving with uncontrollable laughter and the wrong words can permanently scar a life in this week's Torah portion we learned of the purification process for the matsuura the word Mitsuru is usually translated as leprosy rabbi Shimon Rafal Hirsch gives many reasons why Matt Serra cannot possibly mean the disease that we call leprosy rather mataró is a malady of the soul which manifested itself as lesions on the skin now Matt's aura can also be understood as an acronym for mode C shame ROM its aura literally bringing out a bad name Matt's aura afflicted someone who spread damaging gossip the power of words can be physical anyone who's cracked up at a joke knows that and even though our bodies still reacts to our physical our mental and our emotional states were no longer sensitive to our spiritual states we've lost the thermometer of the soul which was the Matsuura but our words and our speech are still powerful our father Yitzhak Aveeno said the voice is the voice of Yaakov of Jacob Jacob Yaakov still has the power of the voice the power to pray the power to bless to learn Hashem holy Torah and the power to comfort the power to encourage the power to ennoble and that's no joke [Music] [Applause]