On a flight from Boston to NY I saw a book that had a fascinating quotation on the back cover: “Words that come from the heart, enter the heart.” As a professor, I wrote down these words and noticed that the quote was attributed to “The Sages.” I’ve asked a few friends where the exact source is, but no one could tell me. Can you? Thank you.
“Words which emanate from the heart, enter the heart” is sometimes quoted in the name of “the Sages,” meaning that it is from the Mishnah, Talmud or Midrash. But the truth is that the source for this phrase is a bit of a mystery! Although it has indeed become an accepted Jewish teaching, it does not seem to appear in any of the above mentioned sources!
However, I would like to propose that the phrase is an application of the principle taught by King Solomon in Proverbs: “As water [reflecting] the face is to the face, so a man’s heart is to [his fellow] man.” Meaning that the human heart intuits the emotions of others, and thus if one speaks with an open heart, the heart of the listener will be open as well.
In the late 1800’s Poland issued a ban against shechita (ritual slaughter of animals). It is told that Rabbi Yisrael Meyer Kagan, the Chafetz Chaim, came before the Polish officials to plead for the rescinding of this decree which would cause tremendous hardship for Poland’s Jews. The Chafetz Chaim pleaded passionately, in Yiddish. When he’d finished and the translator began translating into Polish, the official said, “Stop. You don’t need to translate.” He was so moved by the Chafetz Chaim’s words, even though he hadn’t understood them, that he agreed to do all he could to help rescind the decree.
