Speech in Exile
Pesach as Antidote to Diminished Language
How will I offer thanks? Should I call the Highest by name?
A god doesn’t like what is inappropriate. Maybe our joy
Isn’t big enough to grasp him. We must often remain silent,
A sacred language is missing — hearts are beating and yet
Speech can’t emerge? (Hölderlin, “Homecoming”)“The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
“And Moses said: ‘Please, my Lord, I am not a man of words... for I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue.’” (Exodus 4:10)
“Due to our many sins, speech itself is in exile.” (Likutei Moharan 94:1)
“The secret of the Egyptian exile was that knowledge itself was in exile.” (Ba'al Shem Tov on Shemot 20:1)
“That you may recount in the ears of your child and your child's child how I made a mockery of Egypt.” (Exodus 10:2)
“And when your children ask you: ‘What is this service to you?’” (Exodus 12:26)
“Lechem Oni: Bread over which we say many things.” (Pesachim 36a)
“Even if we were all wise, all understanding... we are still obligated to tell the story.” (Pesachim 116a)
When we first meet Moses, he protests his role as liberator with a telling complaint: “I am not a man of words... for I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue” (Exodus 4:10). This impediment is more than a physiological impediment; it reflects a deeper spiritual condition; speech is a conduit of thought. Moses cannot speak swiftly, because his thoughts are themselves conflicted. Moses’s constricted speech mirrors both his own ambivalence about redemption and the constricted consciousness of a nation in exile. Moses cannot speak, because, as the Zohar puts it, “speech is in exile.”
This connection between speech and redemption appears earlier in Moses’s story. His first public act—striking the Egyptian—is marked by a telling silence and absence of dialogue partners: “He turned this way and that and saw there was no man” (Exodus 2:12). Unable to address injustice through language, he resorts to violence. The next day, language emerges only as betrayal: “Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14). In Egypt, words themselves are in bondage.
The Ba’al Shem Tov penetrates to the heart of this condition: “The secret of the Egyptian exile was that knowledge itself was in exile” (Shemot 20:1). Egypt—Mitzrayim, the narrow place—is not just a geographical location but a state of consciousness where speech and thought are perfunctory rather than revelatory. This is embodied in Pharaoh, whose relationship to language is instrumental and transactional. When he asks “Who is the LORD that I should heed His voice?” (Exodus 5:2), he reveals a worldview where words exist to command and control, not to question and discover. Under his regime, speech builds pyramids and enforces slavery.
When we are in Exile, the Shechinah (divine presence) goes into exile with us. But the Hasidic masters, drawing on the Zohar, teach us something more radical: speech itself goes into exile. Rebbe Nachman writes, "Due to our many sins, speech itself is in exile" (Likutei Moharan 94:1). Our words become trapped in the mundane, or worse, warped by sycophancy and despair. The divine presence hides in our degraded speech, waiting to be liberated.
This is the deeper meaning of God's command to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh.” Come to the place where language appears trivial, instrumental, clichéd, dead. I am hiding there. Free me. You are tongue-tied? Good. That means you recognize the exile of speech. Slow down until you find the right word. Your stutter is not a defect—it is a sign of your potential to redeem language itself.
The Torah presents the antidote to exiled speech through a series of anticipated conversations: “And when your children ask you: ‘What is this service to you?’” (Exodus 12:26); “And you shall tell your child on that day, saying...” (Exodus 13:8); “And when, in time to come, your child asks you, saying ‘What is this?’” (Exodus 13:14). These are not merely instructions for ritual observance. They are a blueprint for liberated speech—speech that emerges from genuine curiosity, that invites response, that creates dialogue across generations.
This redemptive dialogue finds its ritual expression in the matzah, which our sages interpret as "bread over which we say many things" (Pesachim 36a). The bread of affliction becomes, through our speech, a catalyst for expanded consciousness. Liberated speech is not merely free expression; it is dialogical speech—speech that seeks an other. True conversation opens a transcendent space in which both speaker and listener can grow beyond themselves. This stands in stark contrast to Pharaoh's "Get it done" and his subjects' "Yes, sir"—exchanges that leave both parties unchanged, trapped in their respective roles.
The Talmud illustrates this through the story of Abaye, who, seeing the table being removed before the Seder meal, asks spontaneously why this is happening. His teacher Rabba responds: "You have exempted us from saying 'Why is this night different'" (Pesachim 115b). The formal questions become unnecessary because Abaye has achieved their true purpose: genuine, spontaneous questioning. The point is not to recite "Ma Nishtana" but to achieve the state of mind that generates real questions. The point is not to recite Ma Nishtana, but to achieve a sense of “This night is different.” Why is it different? Because difference—as opposed to the monotony of slavery—means I’m learning, growing, and being fruitfully challenged.
This is why even “Two Torah scholars who know the laws of Pesach must ask each other” (Pesachim 116a). Knowledge does not exempt us from dialogue; it demands even deeper engagement. Every lapse into routine speech risks a return to exile. The struggle to bring speech out of the narrow place never ends.
Wittgenstein’s insight that the limits of our language are the limits of our world takes on new meaning in this light. Our world expands or contracts not just with our vocabulary but with our capacity for genuine dialogue. The quality of our questions, the depth of our listening, the authenticity of our speech, and our identities as conversationalists—these determine the boundaries of our spiritual and intellectual universe.
We must ask ourselves, “How can I become the person in a conversation that can free the divine presence from Exile?” In great conversation, we don’t just commemorate redemption—we enact it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins