(Note: At a recent service honoring our dear friend Toby Gillman’s special birthday, I thought it would be appropriate to explain a phrase that is meaningful in our lives)

Have you ever heard this expression, “He’s the spittin’ image of his dad”? What in the world could this mean? That he spits at the image of his father? Most of us have great and loyal kids who would never hurt or insult their parents.

So what does it mean? “Spittin image” is a blurring together of a much better phrase, “Spirit and image”.. Many of us have looked in the mirror and seen the image of one of our parents and we hope we carry on their spirits. This makes much more sense. Language can work this way.

So I’d like to give you another example, and you are very lucky, because no one in history has ever heard what I’m going to explain to you.

I know you’ve heard of the Gillmans. Toby has been our shul’s best fundraiser all these years, so you’ve heard the name. But do you know what gills are? They are not fins or tails. A gill is a respiratory organ that many aquatic organisms use to extract dissolved oxygen from water and to excrete carbon dioxide. Gills are branching organs located on the side of fish heads that have many, many small blood vessels called capillaries. As the fish opens its mouth, water runs over the gills, and blood in the capillaries picks up oxygen that’s dissolved in the water.

In other words, gills are filters. So a long time ago, someone explained that Gills are the filters of the fish, and then it became “gills filter fish”, and finally we have a phrase you’ve heard a million times: ge-filte fish. I know what you’re thinking: “I never understood that phrase.” You didn’t know? Now you know.

We use the word ‘filters’ all the time. We say, “She has no filter. He says anything that comes into her head.”

Do you know that story about the rabbi who was giving a sermon at a shul to audition to become their rabbi? He gives a sermon, and afterward, a woman named Mrs. Rubinstein comes up to him and tells him that “that was the worst sermon ever given, that it had no point, that it was rambling, that he should be embarrassed that he gave that sermon.” The rabbi was shaken, and went over to the Shul President, and told him about what the woman said. The Shul President said, “Mrs. Rubinstein. That lady has no filter. She only repeats what everybody else says.”

If we don’t have filters, if we say everything that comes to our minds, we are going to cause a lot of hurt.

But let’s talk about filters going in the other direction; not what goes out, but what comes in.

We have a problem today. It’s called the media, including social media.

If your filter is a biased source, let’s say, against Israel, then you can hear a lot of lies, over and over again, and that’s what’s coming in; you are taking in poison, not oxygen. If your filter is a biased source, let’s say, about a political issue, and you hear a falsehood over and over, then that’s what you’re breathing, and it’s poison, not oxygen. You have made your gills, your filter, something that is doing damage to your mind and your spirit and your emotions.

So we have to develop the right kind of gills.

But this takes effort. It means that you have to assume that a lot of what is coming in. And then you have to do some work, even research, and real reading from reliable sources, and then, maybe, you can figure out what’s really going on or what really happened.

In this country and this world, most people don’t have their own gills, their own filters. They listen and they believe.

There was an old TV show called The X-Files; the slogan was: “The truth is out there.” That’s true, but you have to find it.

The truth is out there, but it’s also in here.

When someone says, “Don’t believe what you see, believe what I tell you,” I respond, “Believe what you see.”

Here’s a gill that we should grow: Patience.

Here’s another one: If it sounds like a lie, it probably is.

I listen to so many politicians and they just lie through their teeth.

We have Supreme Court Justices who lied about what they would do to get on the court, who lie about their finances, who lie about what they really want to do.

There’s such a thing as a mistake. There’s such a thing as being negative for political benefit.

But then there is covering up crimes.

When you hear something that doesn’t seem right, at least wait until you learn more before you even think that it’s true, or repeat it to someone else.

Several times a week, people will ask me about something in the news that I’m not sure about yet. Rather than give an answer, I say, “I don’t know yet.” Ask me again in a few days. Let me check it out.”

And here’s another gill: We have to be honest with ourselves. If we’ve hit a certain point in our lives, and we need to make changes, we have to make the changes. It’s not easy to admit that you can’t do what you used to do. It’s really hard. And it’s sad. But what would be worse is if you put yourself in danger, or put others in danger, because you didn’t admit what you knew, deep down, was true.

For all of the Tik-toks and the chatbots and the incessant social media, the medium that you have to count on is your own sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, what seems reasonable and what seems crazy.

Even fish in a jar know how to Gills-fillter. We should, too.