173 he Performative Speech Act in Jewish Law: Interpersonal vs. Human-Divine Speech Amir Mashiach Orot Israel College; Ariel University of Samaria his article investigates the binding power of the spoken word in in- terpersonal relationships and compares it to that in the human-divine relationship, according to Jewish law. I focus in particular on the area of proprietary rights. Does the spoken word have any binding authority in halakhah? Can it create an actual contract between persons or between a person and God? Using the linguistic philosophy of John Austin, I will show that, while in contemporary Israeli law the spoken word indeed creates a new legal status, it has no such binding authority in traditional Jewish law in the area of interpersonal relationships. One must perform a physical deed such as moving or liting the object in order to create a commitment. But in the area of the human-divine relationship, the spoken word has tre- mendous signiicance, to the extent that we may deine it, with Austin, as a performative speech-act. By way of example I shall examine the concept of hekdesh, dedication of an object to the Sanctuary. In order to explain the diference between the two categories, I appeal to the idealistic philosophy of Fichte, who posited two concepts of the “Self”: the realistic Self and the idealistic one. I maintain that the dichot- omy of the performative speech-act in Jewish law can be understood to follow this distinction. he spoken word has been treated with gravitas in every culture. he power of speech is so great that it has been claimed that “both death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov 18:21). In Jewish tradition, language was also the primary mode of encounter between God and the world, when, on the irst day of creation, the world was created through divine speech as God said, “Let there be light.” Spoken language, then, in its world-creating capacity, is much more than a means of communication.1 his holds true with respect to both the physical world and the private, personal, or interpersonal worlds. he present article sets out to explore the power of spoken language in inter- 1 On language in Jewish thought from the biblical to the modern period, see Benyamin Gross, ěđĥĘĐ ĦĕĤč [he covenant of language] (Jerusalem: Reuven Mass Publishers, 2005).