by Rabbi Healy Slakman
As we approach the holiday when we gather around the table and tell the story of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, aloud and again in every generation, I’ve been thinking about the power of words. About how speech shapes reality in both our private and public lives. Words can heal or harm, open possibilities or close them, build trust or fracture it. A single phrase from a leader can ignite fear and deepen division, hardening communities against one another and giving permission for cruelty. And yet words can also widen possibilities, call people back to their best selves, and clarify truth.
Recently a very wise bar mitzvah student asked me the question: “If Moses had shattered the tablets a second time, what do you imagine the third set might have looked like compared to the first two?”
While the question itself is nuanced and complicated, with several possibilities for what we might mean by “two different versions” of the tablets, we focused on the differences between the Ten Commandments in Exodus and the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy.
The most noticeable shift appears in the Shabbat commandment: zachor in Exodus becomes shamor in Deuteronomy—from “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” to “Guard the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the Eternal your God commanded you.”
Scholars, rabbis, and commentators have long been fascinated by this discrepancy. Every Friday Jews around the world welcome Shabbat with the opening line of Lechah Dodi: shamor v’zachor b’dibbur echad. Like so much of our liturgy, this line has a source behind it. It comes from the Mekhilta, an early rabbinic commentary on Exodus, where the rabbis grapple with the difference between the versions in Exodus and Deuteronomy by imagining that shamor and zachor were spoken at once—b’dibbur echad, in a single divine utterance.
But because of my student’s question, I suddenly heard the phrase in a new way. What caught my attention was the third word: dibbur—utterance, speech—as its own idea. And it occurred to me that the midrash might be pointing to something more than two verbs spoken simultaneously.
Instead of hearing only shamor and zachor held in a single utterance, I began to hear three words: shamor, zachor, and dibbur—guarding Shabbat, remembering Shabbat, and speaking about Shabbat. Three different ways of relating to the day, all held within that single echad: not competing or ranked, but equally part of what it means to engage with Shabbat. Remember Shabbat, observe Shabbat, and speak about Shabbat.
Because words and speech are central to our tradition. So central that what we call “the Ten Commandments” in English are, in Hebrew, Aseret HaDibrot—the Ten Utterances, the Ten Words. It’s a reminder that dibbur—speaking, naming, voicing—is at the heart of how we transmit holiness from one generation to the next.
And that emphasis on speech reaches all the way back to the opening lines of the Torah, where the world itself comes into being not through force or tools, but through words. “Let there be light.” “Let the waters gather,” God says. Creation unfolds through speech.
Our tradition asks why God creates the world through so many utterances when God could have simply said, “Let there be a world.” Moreover, why did God need to speak at all? Could God have created the world with a thought? The Mishnah’s answer to this question is clear and profound: God chose to create with speech in order to teach us the power of speech. Words can create worlds, and words can destroy worlds.
This power of speech has shaped not only how we imagine creation, but how Judaism has survived moments of rupture. Unlike the tablets, which Moses breaks only once, there are central structures of our tradition that were destroyed multiple times, like the Temple: first Solomon’s Temple, and then, centuries later, the Second Temple. And after that second destruction, something extraordinary happened.
The Jewish people suddenly found themselves in exile not only from a place, but from what they had understood to be the only way Judaism could be practiced. The entire system of the priestly rites, the sacrificial offerings, the rhythm of pilgrimage festivals —it all came to an end. And without a Temple, without a clear blueprint, without a single ritual center, our ancestors had to figure out what came next.
And how did they do that? They talked! They questioned, argued, imagined, wrestled, interpreted, and reinterpreted together. The Judaism that emerged after the second destruction—what we now call rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism we practice, centered around prayer, communal life, and learning— was born from these conversations. The Mishnah, the Talmud, the vast world of midrash: they are all records of people speaking to one another across generations, trying to rebuild a way of life from the ruins of what once felt irreplaceable. And Jewish tradition—even the most strict observances of Jewish law—did not appear in a single moment or descend fully formed from Sinai. It unfolded slowly over time, shaped by centuries of Jews trying to make sense of their world and talking to one another about it. Across late antiquity, through the era of the Mishnah and Talmud, into the medieval generations and onward, communities sent questions across deserts and seas: How do you keep Shabbat in your town? How do you pray? What do you do when the ideal doesn’t match real life?
Our tradition is not the voice of one moment but the voice of countless communities across time. It is the record of how Jews learn from one another, change, grow, and build a shared moral and spiritual life— not by erasing differences, but by carrying them forward in conversation. And it is on us to continue this legacy.
Words are power. Words are freedom. And the Judaism that we practice today has been preserved and carried forward through words, shared stories, and conversations.
As we enter this Passover season, let’s ask: How might telling the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt inspire us, enliven us, and challenge us this year as well? What does it mean to speak this story aloud today? What truths need naming? What freedoms are we still struggling toward? And what worlds might our words help bring into being?
This article was originally featured in the Mar/Apr/May 2026 issue of the Vine.