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Judaism

Gratitude is next to Godliness

Why saying thank you is the theme of Seed’s Clean Speech campaign next month

January 13, 2025 15:56
A J Jacobs _linkedin
Taking no one for granted: A J Jacobs (left), author of Thanks A Thousand - A Gratitude Journey
4 min read

Five years ago a group of Jewish educators in Colorado launched an initiative called Clean Speech. In a world where social media was increasingly becoming a source of hateful and divisive language, they wanted to encourage people to take greater care over how they spoke to each other.

Thousands of people signed up to a 30-day journey to better their speech through daily videos and education.

Sensitivity of speech is something whose importance we recognise but spend far too little time focusing on and trying to improve, when there is so much Jewish wisdom available in this area. At the end of every Amidah, we ask God to “guard my tongue”.

Since then, the idea caught on elsewhere: New York, Cincinnati, Toronto. We at Seed also liked it so much that three years ago we launched a campaign here, partnered by Gift. We added parent-child learning across dozens of schools, community magazines and partnered with shuls; thousands got involved learning about the power of positive speech and avoiding negative speech.