Chazal enjoin us in many places to carefully consider the impact of our words. Yet in many instances it is impossible to know in advance what that impact will be or to anticipate the ways in which the same words will have a radically different effect on two people. That is perhaps why Chazal also commended silence so highly — an option not available to columnists.

Last June I had an opportunity to interview my friend Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz on the early teshuvah revolution in South Africa. The discussion turned to his first book Anatomy of a Search which describes his own path toward religious observance and that of a number of other baalei teshuvah. Written with the fervor of a still relatively recent baal teshuvah the book contained one sentence laden with adjectives decrying the emptiness of secular society. When he subsequently showed the book to Rabbi Aharon Feldman rosh yeshivas Ner Israel Rabbi Feldman told him that he thought the book was very good but he would have left out that particular sentence as it would only alienate those he wished to reach by making them feel under attack. And indeed that was indeed the reaction of at least one set of Rabbi Tatz’s relatives who told him that they felt personally offended by the sentence in question and had promptly put the book down.

But here’s where it gets a bit complicated. Some years later Rabbi Tatz met another South African approximately his age. He described how as a young attorney he and his wife had left South Africa as a personal protest against apartheid. They then spent a number of years in India as part of an idealistic search for meaning. Eventually they ended up on a beach in Israel where it seemed to them that their search had reached a dead end with no further avenues to pursue. At that point the husband came across Anatomy of a Search and was struck by the sentence in question which seemed to encapsulate all the feelings about the secular world that had launched him and his wife on their journey in the first place.

All this took place many years ago. The former lawyer went on to learn for many years in yeshivah and is today a rosh yeshivah.

Unquestionably Rabbi Feldman’s advice was correct: Rarely is there any purpose served by making ones message unpalatable to those whom one is trying to influence. But in this case davka the sharpness of the phraseology was what hit a young couple at a moment of desperation in their lives when they were prepared to make a dramatic change.

Let me add one amusing personal anecdote that also illustrates the unpredictability of the impact of our words albeit without the same happy ending. Last week I wrote a piece in the Jerusalem Post quoting statistics about how college fails to develop the capacity for critical thought. I then argued that Talmud study develops one’s critical faculties better than any other text. Lo and behold three days later I received an e-mail from a mother whose daughter is pursuing “rabbinical” studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative). Previously she had worried about the value of her daughter’s education. But I had put her mind at ease.

Not exactly what I had intended.

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Can’t Buy Me Love

Poor Bibi. People are determined to hate him no matter how hard he tries to please them. The adjective “hard-line” that is inevitably attached to his name as if it were part of his official title has never quite fit. True he has always been able to articulate a hard-line position and explain it better than anyone. But inflexible would hardly be the first term to describe him.

Even during his first term as prime minister he disappointed the right flank of his coalition repeatedly in entering into withdrawal agreements with the Palestinians. And a great deal of credible testimony suggests that he was eager to negotiate a Golan withdrawal with Hafez al-Assad.

Yet that did not keep President Clinton from bad-mouthing him constantly and dispatching his top political advisors to Israel to ensure Ehud Barak’s victory in the 1999 election. On his second go-around as prime minister he has been positively congenial from an American point of view agreeing to an explicit ten-month settlement freeze in Judaea and Samara and an implicit one in post-1967 areas of Jerusalem. And he has repeatedly embraced the two-state solution.

What has he received in return? Tongue-lashings from the secretary of state being left to cool his heels in the servant quarters while the president supped upstairs with his family and the administration’s announcement that the pre-1967 borders must be the starting point for negotiations blindsiding him on the eve of a visit to America. Most recently the whole world has learned that French President Sarkozy considers him a “liar” and that President Obama was eager to see that slur and raise it one. It is apparently the only thing about which Sarkozy and Obama agree.

My guess is that Bibi’s attempts to placate his other great enemy — the Israeli media — will prove no more successful. He has now ordered Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman to withdraw a bill that would have instituted Knesset hearings for prospective Supreme Court justices. He did so with great self-righteousness as well citing his commitment to the “separation of powers” and “the rule of the law.”

The Supreme Court and the media are the Left’s last two bastions of power in Israel — and they work tirelessly to protect one another’s monopoly. Netanyahu’s statements parrot the standard media line: that attempts to change Israel’s method of judicial selection — the only system in the world that allows the sitting Supreme Court justices decisive power over the selection of their colleagues — are an assault on democracy. The three Supreme Court justices on the nine-member committee always vote as a block and effectively wield a veto power over new selections. The system has rightly been described as “a friend brings a friend.” As a consequence the most activist high court in the world is also the most politically unbalanced.

Netanyahu is a great admirer of all things American and he knows that even a Senate vote on candidates for the federal judiciary is a breach of all democratic norms or the death knell of an independent judiciary. His hopes of currying favor with the Israeli media by pretending otherwise are likely to be no more successful than his efforts to placate Obama and Sarkozy.

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Reb Yaakov on Quitting Smoking

A close friend recently shared with me the advice Reb Yaakov gave him for quitting smoking based on Reb Yaakov’s own personal experience. Reb Yaakov told him to stop an hour before Shabbos and not take the last cigarette that every smoker smokes.

The first cigarette after Shabbos is hard for every smoker anyway. So why does one who has gotten through Shabbos without a cigarette start again immediately after Shabbos? Because he’s a smoker and that’s what smokers do. But said Reb Yaakov since you didn’t take that last cigarette before Shabbos you no longer have a “shem [name] smoker ” and thus won’t need to smoke that first cigarette after Shabbos.

Reb Yaakov told my friend that he had given up smoking in this fashion and his advice also worked for my friend.

In Reb Yaakov’s advice lies a major yesod (fundament) of all personal growth: Oftentimes the first step is redefinition of oneself. Until that is done no major change is possible.