Words can be--and should be!--empowering! But what if they are misused, abused, lost to envy, jealousy, and even worse . . . hatred?

I remember reading a few lines about the power of words that really moved me, for I thought, Really, I can use them to move others. Words can be my link to serve people as their conduit to their desires, needs, wants, hopes, or dreams. Here are those few lines. And then, I want to share how a character named Tzachi in a play I wrote ruined forever for me the whole concept of empowerment as the device by which words influenced the world in an affirmative way.

“He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page.” 

― Robert Cormier, I Am the Cheese

When Unlikely Faces Encounter Memory, a one-act play by Yoel Nitzarim

Scene Two

A barren location on the east side of King George V Avenue in the Center of Jerusalem, save for hundreds of books strewn across the length of the other side of the street. On this side of the street one person stands alone. Thunder abounding overhead, he appears impassive as he looks at the books.

Tzachi (Withdrawn as to himself, at a bus stop near a kiosk.) Hundreds and hundreds of books. How can I catch up with them? They cover such a vast expanse of time . . . such a wasteland interminably stretching across human destiny. Human destiny--that's my fate as well. I wonder just how many books it would take just to cover my life. How many books to codify the human experience--billions of lives, hundreds of thousands of years, from East to West, North to South, culture upon culture, civilizations gone, civilizations present, civilizations coming. And my life--a mere sigh in a Pharisaic constellation as yet undiscovered. One word can be used to describe the length of my days: projection.Every time I look down to find my place I take another step creating my experience . . . and later, my history. So looking ahead involves maing decisions about the here and now as it would possibly fulfill my hereafter. I do see the outline of my image. Where should I lead it: to a life with my family, a life created with my imagination, or a life stumbled upon in the midst of my own creation?

Zahava enters the kiosk and joins Tzachi.

Zahava: Tzachi, shalom. What are all these books doing here on this street corner?Who would abandon such a huge amount of "written thinking"? These books remind me that we humans create ideas from the compartments in our minds, and our minds reflect the fragmentary existence which we traverse on this earth. I have often examined my oown life as a sort of scattering of reads--those parts of my person who surface whenever I remember what I have read in words, people's actions, conversations with people, or my own self-talk. In fact, now I know that

Mounds upon mounds of persons--

Some sorted out, others unsorted--

Stretch the personality to an ever-growing

Vitality . . . until one person uncovers

Some undesirable self . . . then, though,

Another person reveals some better

Perceived self to offset that less

Congruous one perhaps momentarily

But what if . . .

Peering out from another dimension

A former version brings recollection

Of searing adventure or trivial circumstance

To the threshold of new experience

Some explanation might be . . .

That this person in offering past connection

Piques interest in bridging temptation

To learn why some previous association

Wrests itself from then to the present . . .

Tzachi: I wonder which person out of all the personalities I have generated I am today. Who am I at present? Anyway, than G-d for waking up today . . . for being able to listen to the birds singing. I am most grateful for being able to think, to remember, to know, to speak, to hear, to smell, to touch . . . . Do books hold the human capacity to remember our thinking? If so, they most probably are "as alive as we are"! A h-u-m-a-n r-e-c-o-r-d . . . Hmm, "written thinking." I'd never thought of books in such a vein. You know, not all books are that scintillating. Most should have never reached the light of day. Actually, I'd refer to the majority as "dubious thinking." Uneventful. Vainglorious. Worthless. Yet seeing that we all all composed of layers upon layers of persons . . . or personalities from the various epochs in our lives . . . .

Zahava: So is there anything worth the effort involved in cudgeling one's brain?

Tzachi: Your life, my life.

Zahava: What for? It's that simple? Just mention someone's life and out comes a book. A book carved out of a living experience. So what? Nothing new. (Yawns.) There has to be something more to it than mere living? Ha! That's too facile. Can't you think of a more inventive explanation? Please, Tzachi, bring some meaning to your ideas. Let the ideas take on the form of someone's memory, hoes, imaginations, actions, deeds, and misdeeds.

Tzachi: All right. Listen to this person's three-dimensional portraiture: Naavah was this beautiful woman with a comely personality in her everyday demeanor.

Zahava: Nu, a good-looking girl with an intact attitude.

Tzachi: Yes, quite so. Anyway, she was the daughter of the unabashed female author Renita Salzberg, whose words brightened the underground Jewish newspapers in Poland in the period between 1937 and 1939. In the beginning, her words leaned on the acerbic side: cautionary tantamount to visionary. As the war heated up, so did Renita's diction to a daunting pitch unparalleled in Jewish intellectual circles.

Zahava: Too much description. Get to the point. Was she effective? Did she make am impact? Most importantly, did people listen to what she had to say?

Tzachi: Yes . . . and no. Some listened--especially the male leaders in various Jewish communities. Others--let it be said that their tolerance for a woman critic was acdepted in a less than tepid fashion.

Zahava: Oh, here comes Panusch on the opposite side of the street. (To Panusch.) Here we are. Come over here. You know Tzachi, the headmaster at the Romema Academy for Anglo-Saxon descendants.

Panusch (As if Zahava did nt meet Panusch and Tzachi every workday in the morning.): Ha! Ha! Sure. Shalom, Tzachi. Tell me, do you remember the character Yevgeniy in your novel The Uncircumcised in Heart? Wasn't he the one who suffered from Meniere's syndrome, and, therefore, wasn't able to hold down his teaching position at the gymnasium in Kirov? Wasn't his teaching license revoked because he couldn't keep up with the number of professional workshops and seminars attendant to his status in the school system?

Tzachi: From where poor Yevgeniy's teaching jurisdiction stemmed, unfortunately, yes. This character gained my sympathy as his personal drama unfolded.

Zahava: What a contrasts to the character type of a Naavah you just described moments ago! At least she could put all of her sentiments on the line: whereas Yevgeniy never had a chance.

Panusch: What do you mean--no chance? he could have transferred to a more sympathetic school system. Maybe even a different school in the same system might have shown more compassion. It could have all depended on the person responsible for such bureaucracy.

Zahav: True. Foff most of us our lot comes down to one or two people in charge.

Tzachi: Nonsense. there are not any bounds to whatever decisions one makes; and few bounds exist constraining the deeds leading from those decisions.

Zahava: Shira should be arriving at any time. I know for sure she'll shed some light on the Yevgeniys and Naavahs in our midst.

Shifra (Having just alighted from a two-decked brand-new Egged bus.): I can't believe what . . .I . . .just . . .I mean, I am at a loss for . . . .

Zahava: Tell me. What happened?

Tzachi: Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Focus.

Panusch: I smell something afoul. Listen.

Zahava: Listen to what? What do you hear?

Panusch: That smell. I r-e-m-e-m-b-e-r it. I . . . .

Tzachi: So do I. But it cannot be possible That was seventy-five years ago.

Panusch: You know, some things repeat themselves. Smells can return to haunt us.

Shifra: Could I have been dreaming what I just witnessed? But this is Jerusalem. I mean this is Israel. Who could think?

Panusch: Let's step back for a moment. Just as Bil'am would not curse the people of Israel at the nehest of Balaq, the King of Moab, someone couldn't have done what we know, that is, we recognize as . . . .