Are Words Things?

       Rabbi Lawrence Kushner reminded me in his book God was in this Place and I, i did not know that the Hebrew word dvar means not only "word" but, surprisingly, "thing."

       Words and things seem  opposite, or at least very different.  Things are of the "real" world, and words are "about" the real world amongst other realms.  Kushner notes that for the ancient rabbis, "Primary reality is linguistic."  The word is the thing.

        Jews do, maybe especially but not uniquely, like to interpret words, play with words, study words, find whole worlds in words.

       Words are for investigation, celebration, creating fireworks, and are eternally chameleon-like, comedian-like--"belly button"--, they do hand-stands and ham-stands, and stand-ups.

       And they are "things" whole blogs can be written, spoken, sung, and visualized about!