Authors & Artists

by Rabbi Ethan Tucker

Can you ever forget the times when your heart leapt into your throat as you read a riveting book for the first time? When was the last time a book shattered your world, completely altering your perspective? And how many times have you plowed through endless pages of text, only to realize you barely remember any of it? Sometimes books thaw out our insides; sometimes they allow us to hide within our own boredom and alienation.

Franz Kafka was an early-twentieth century, German-language Jewish author. Inside each of us, says Kafka, is a frigid core. We can easily become set in our ways and numb to the outside world. Only an axe can shatter the most hardened surfaces, such as thick ice. When the frozen surface is not simply a sea, but a human soul, we need books to break open our calcified hearts. Only words of critique and rebuke will effectively free the living waters that run beneath.

This image is harsh, even violent. But the notion that words have the power to change the world is an old idea, and a very Jewish one. In Psalm 147:18, the Bible speaks of how divine words melt the snow that blankets the earth. This softer image of melting offers a gentler perspective on the power of words. Words can break us, as in Kafka’s image. But they can also warm us and melt our frozen hearts, releasing energy and potential from within that can, in turn, warm others.

Rabbi Ethan Tucker is Rosh Yeshiva and chair in Jewish law at Mechon Hadar. Rabbi Tucker was ordained by the chief rabbinate of Israel and earned a PhD in Talmud and rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He cofounded Kehilat Hadar and is a winner of the first Grinspoon Foundation Social Entrepreneur Fellowship. Rabbi Tucker was selected three times by Newsweek as one of the 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America.