Why should saying words repair anything?
Tikkun Klali asks a person to say ten chapters of Tehillim. The subject being discussed is pegam habris, harm in the area of personal holiness. How are the words coming from a person’s mouth connected with that harm?
The shiur approaches that question through the relationship between speech, giving and human creativity. A person has the ability to bring something into the world and to affect another person. That ability can be used with care, and it can be used destructively. Repair involves bringing it back to its proper purpose. The rav explicitly says that the creative capacity belongs to every human being. The covenantal avodah discussed here concerns the Jew’s use of that capacity according to Torah.
Likutey Moharan 205 describes reciting Tehillim as releasing a person’s creative power from a kelipah, a spiritual shell that has taken hold of it. This is the teaching’s kabbalistic description of the harm and its repair. A kelipah conceals what lies within it. The work is to bring that power back into a relationship with Hashem.
The teaching connects the name of this opposing force with Tehillim through gematria, the numerical values of Hebrew letters. Its five-letter name totals 480; adding the five letters gives 485, the value of תהלים. The rav avoids pronouncing the names of these forces, and we can follow the calculation without doing so. The teacher explains this numerical relationship as a connection between opposing forces: the words of Tehillim counter the force that has taken hold of the person’s creative power.
Giving also needs a boundary
The shiur reviews the connection with chesed and gevurah. Chesed is the movement of giving and extending outward. Gevurah brings restraint, a boundary and the ability to stop. Human creativity needs both.
The teacher connects this with the teaching about the bris given to Avraham. Alongside the ability to give, there must be a limit. The Divine Name associated with the word dai, enough, enters that discussion. Giving without a proper boundary does not fulfil the same purpose as giving within a relationship.
Likutey Moharan 205 also connects the recitation with the names written here in altered form as Kel and Elokim, associated with chesed and gevurah. It relates their expanded numerical values to Tehillim. Millui, the expansion of a word into the names of its letters, is part of that calculation. This is an introduction to the teaching’s structure; it is not an instruction to invent new Divine-Name spellings or kavanos.
The two covenants
Sefer Yetzirah 1:3 places the covenant of the tongue alongside the covenant of the reproductive organ. Its brief formulation speaks of a single covenant centered between the corresponding sides. The rav develops its two bodily expressions as two connected responsibilities. The teacher develops the connection through hashpa’ah, giving or communicating something to another person.
The rav recalls that Hashem created the world through ten utterances, as Mishnah Avos 5:1 states. Human speech too can bring something into another person’s life, within the very different limits of a human being.
A person can give through speech. He can also give through the intimate relationship of husband and wife. Both involve the responsibility to use a power in a way that reaches a recipient. The terms mashpia and mekabel describe those two sides: the one giving and the one receiving.
The way a person speaks therefore belongs to the work of personal holiness. Speech can build another person. It can also damage him. A good word can give someone strength to continue; degrading speech can leave a person broken. The teacher uses those everyday examples to make the connection tangible.
The relationship goes in both directions. Care in speech is part of repairing the way a person gives of himself, and care in personal holiness gives integrity to his speech. This is the spiritual relationship being taught; its meaning should be developed without collapsing every use of the word bris into one narrow physical act.
Words that another person can receive
Likutey Moharan 29 begins with a demanding idea about speech: words that are heard and received have the quality of meaningful communication. The teacher brings the familiar question about a tree falling where no one hears it as an illustration. A person can make a great deal of sound while failing to communicate with anyone.
What makes speech receivable? The teaching points to the good within it. A person who speaks to help someone, to build him or to give something worthwhile is bringing good into his words. A person who speaks only to display himself, put someone down or satisfy his own ego can leave the listener with little to receive.
The teacher contrasts the self-important speaker on a soapbox with someone who genuinely wants to build other people. An audience can surround a speaker while the words fail to enter anyone’s heart. The question is what the speaker is trying to give.
Likutey Moharan 29 reads the verse:
אֵֽין־אֹמֶר וְאֵין דְּבָרִים בְּלִי נִשְׁמָע קוֹלָֽם׃
There is no speech and there are no words; their voice is not heard. — Psalms 19:4
In the Psalm’s account of the heavens’ praise, the line has more than one reading. The teaching hears it as speech whose voice must be heard. It uses that derash to describe giving without a receiver. The rav then carries the same image back to the other covenant: the person must be conscious of whom his giving is for. This is a spiritual account of responsible communication, rather than a test by which an unheard speaker can be judged impure.
He also recalls Chazal’s teaching that the words of someone with yiras Shamayim are heard. Berachos 6b 34 gives that formulation. Eloquence alone does not exhaust the quality he wants a speaker to develop.
The source then connects the good in speech with da’as, awareness and understanding. Words need to come from a person who is conscious of their purpose and of the person receiving them. The shiur links this back to the other covenant: giving has a proper destination and a real relationship.