When Small Talk Becomes Big Talk

July 31, 2026/17 Av 5786/Shabbat Eikev

Hevre/Friends,

Here we are in Deuteronomy with Moses giving his book-length retirement speech on the eastern bank of the Jordan River. How many words do you think his speech took to last an entire biblical book? It spans some 13,000 Hebrew words; about 24,000 in English. So much for Moses describing himself in Exodus as "a man of few words"? FYI, while everyone likes to make fun of rabbis for speaking too long, my messages each week run an average of 729 words.

I get it. He had a lot to say to the people before he died. He was worried about us. How we'd behave in the land. How we'd stay loyal to the Torah he led us to Sinai to receive. We didn't have the most stellar track record.

But do we really measure the impact of a speech by its length? Do the number of words reflect the quality of the interaction? Of course not, we instinctively say! Less is more! So much can be said in just a few sentences, whether by a public speaker or between friends or lovers. But the truth is, less isn't always more.

An article published in The Atlantic this week noted that in 2005, people spoke an average of 16,632 words per day. In 2019, only 11,900. Over the course of 14 years, we spoke about 338 fewer words each day than the year before — until more than 25% of our daily verbal output disappeared. And it's not because we became more efficient with our vocabulary or more articulate. It's because we're becoming more isolated from one another. We spend less time together, and we communicate more and more through screens rather than face to face.

And we’re not just having fewer deep, meaningful conversations; it's the daily, often lighthearted, ones which create connection and community that we’re losing. Why call a restaurant to reserve a table when you can just do it faster online? Why spend your cab ride chatting with your driver when you can keep getting work done on your phone, or do today’s Wordle. Soon more of us will soon be able to hail a driverless taxi like a Waymo and avoid the awkward silence altogether. Did you know that it even costs more money to book a flight with a live airline representative than through the website? But booking online costs us something else, too. A piece of our humanity, and the chance to share it with each other.

This week I had to call United to adjust my reservation for my upcoming trip to New York and London. Because it was a bit more involved, I decided to call customer service rather than use the app. When the representative introduced himself as Alon, I could tell he was Israeli and it changed the quality of our interaction. How nice was it to deal with my reservation in Hebrew and bond with the agent?! In reality, it shouldn't have taken the fact the he was Israeli for me to make the effort to have a friendlier interaction. 

A few centuries ago, coffee houses were gathering places for boisterous conversation and debate. Today, we walk into Starbucks, take out our AirPods or pause our phone call, order our brew, maybe we exchange a "Thank you" or "Have a nice day", and then we resume our private activity while waiting for it with a cluster of other customers, all of us ignoring each other. And in this time of raging antisemitism, when we learned a few days ago that 2025 was the deadliest year ever for hate crimes against the Jewish community outside of Israel, many of us with obvious Jewish names give a different one to the barista. We don't even show up as our true selves, never mind introduce ourselves to someone!

The less we actually talk to other people, the more anxious we become about doing so, the more we avoid those opportunities. Think of the last time you rode the subway or metro. Who's striking up a conversation with their seatmate? No one. What if I say the wrong thing? What if they say the wrong thing? What if I come off as weird or stalkish?  Young adults and teens suffer exponentially from this isolation and from their lives lived through screens. So many suffer from social anxieties directly linked to a lack of unmediated interactions.

As a result of talking less, we’re actually endangering ourselves more. Fewer face to face conversations has reduced our capacity for empathy, has increased rates of depression, and has even affected cognitive health because it simply takes more brain power to engage in direct conversation than to type “Thanks”, “LOL”, or a smiley face. And texting Happy Birthday does not accomplish what picking up the phone does. Not having the occasion to interact with a sales clerk because we shop online, or to attend a live lecture because we can watch it on YouTube, has diminished our sense of wellbeing, of being part of something larger than ourselves, and our connectedness to the world around us. And sadly, we know only too well how dangerous a mentally unstable recluse can become. Stopping to talk to another dog owner while walking ours in the park can actually now bring major societal repair.

In a 2005 interview, the darkly humorous author Kurt Vonnegut, told how one day he needed an envelope, and his wife suggested he order a box online to keep a supply in the house. "So I pretend not to hear her," Vonnegut said. "And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know."

That's precisely the kind of openness to unplanned interactions with people of all kinds that a new book called A Little More Social by Nicholas Epley summons us to have. They don't have to be deep or dramatic. Instead of saying "Thank you" to the supermarket cashier, try saying "Are you having a nice summer?" Or, say to the crossing guard you see every day, "What did you do this weekend?" 

Will this solve the war in the Middle East? No. Will this redeem corrupt political leaders? No. Will this extinguish the fires raging here and in Europe? No. Will this enlighten antisemites? Maybe. Will this small but potentially powerful gesture help reweave the frayed fabric of our society? Definitely.

You don’t have to give a 24000-word speech. Just add a few more words to your daily output, and direct them to someone you normally wouldn't speak to. But heed the warning attributed to the Baal Shem Tov: every person is allotted only a certain number of words to say during their lifetime. And when they use them up, their life is over.

Choose your words wisely. And share them lovingly.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dini

Photo by Ronen Avisror