Ki Tavo is full of dire prophecies. If we don’t fulfill the covenant, G-d promises, we will be beset by horrors — political obliteration, enslavement, famine-induced cannibalism. Things will get so bad that וְהָיִ֖יתָ מְשֻׁגָּ֑ע מִמַּרְאֵ֥ה עֵינֶ֖יךָ אֲשֶׁ֥ר תִּרְאֶֽה׃ | vəhayíta məshuga mimar’eih einékha asher tir’eh. | “you will go mad from your eyes’ seeings that you see” (Dəvarim 28:34).

The word for going mad here, məshuga, has cognates in related languages that refer to the cawing of birds and the whinnying of camels. A cognate in Assyrian means simply “to howl”. In an etymological sense, then, the threat is of a devastation so great the human mind cannot hold it without breaking. Language is insufficient to express it; all that will suffice is an animalian onslaught of asemantic noise.

Who among us cannot relate? There are horrors more than enough to go around — in this country, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in place after place around the globe. Who has the words to capture them all? Who has the mind to witness this planet of grief and render it comprehensible in thought? What reaction is there to screech like owls, bellow like kine, jibber like our primate cousins? And, in truth, we are not short of words. We are not lacking in forceful condemnations of war. We have no shortage of arguments against police brutality. The greatest obstacle to stopping genocide is not a dearth of strongly worded letters to the editor. Who reads them? Who heeds them? To the villains advancing these evils, the most elegant arguments are the irksome chittering of insects, the loftiest rhetoric the vapid clicking of a wayward gecko, the most devastating poetry the hapless gasping of a hooked fish flopping towards death on a pier. It is less a matter of words than a matter of organization, power, political will.

The Hebrew letters of məshuga sum to 373, which reduces to 13, which reduces to 4. There are four letters, of course, in the most holy name of G-d. G-d is with us, then, in this wordless insanity. We do not have to find the right words, then, to give voice to the sacred. It is enough to open our eyes to the world and scream.

[This has been an installment of one-word Torah. You can read the full series here.]