At the start of Matot- Masai, this week’s Torah portion, we learn how Moshe conveys the laws governing the annulment of vows and oaths to the heads of the tribes of Israel. Having learned the mishnah of Nedarim recently it is clear that the Torah and then the Rabbis gave a great credence to the power of words to impact reality. The significance of these oaths and vows speaks to the integrity in language in the human condition. Why do words matter so much?

Thinking about this question reminded me of Project Hail Mary which I watched recently with my wife. In short it is a story follows American science teacher Ryland Grace played by Ryan Gosling who wakes up alone on the interstellar spacecraft Hail Mary with amnesia. Flashbacks reveal a microscopic organism called “astrophage” is dimming our Sun and breeding on Venus, dooming Earth to a catastrophic ice age. Recruited by global task force leader Eva Stratt, Grace was sent on a one-way, multi-year suicide mission to the Tau Ceti system—the only nearby star immune to astrophage—to find a cure. Discovering that his ship’s astrophage fuel can double as a biological energy source, he travels to the system and encounters “Blip A,” a spacecraft piloted by Rocky, an alien from the planet Erid. Realizing both of their suns are dying, Grace and Rocky form a brilliant cross-barrier alliance. They discover taumoeba, a microscopic predator that consumes astrophage, and genetically engineer a strain capable of surviving the environments around their target worlds. After splitting the sample, Grace changes his return course to save Rocky from a fatal fuel leak, initially stranding himself on the alien’s home world. The cure ultimately reaches Earth via Beetle probes, saving humanity while Grace spends the rest of his life happily teaching science to the children of Erid.

Inspired by their mutual need to solve this existential issue for their two peoples, Grace and Rocky build a relationship between . This only works when they create a common language and trust between them. To me this was the most endearing part of the movie. It is on the bases of this shared language that they create a deep bond that is what actually saves these two worlds.

It might seem strange that the Torah gives so much power to words, but from the start the Torah sees that the world itself was created with language. There we read:

God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. ( Genesis 1:3)

Words makes worlds. God creates with language. Similarly human beings were created in God’s image. We can create or destroy with language. This is the power of speech. It is totally in our control and often out of reach.