Sefer Yetzirah says like this: the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the 22 letters of the alphabet. You know what Avraham calls them? Stones. He calls them 22 stones. Why? Because they are the building blocks of creation. How did God create the world? He didn’t use laboratory chemicals, you know. He said, “Let there be light,” but he said words. And those words are made up of Hebrew letters. And therefore, it’s the Hebrew letters, their energies, that created the world. So he looks at the Hebrew alphabet as stones. It’s constructive. So we call them 22 Avanim (stones).
Incidentally, if you come to shul in the morning, it says those students who are studying Torah are called the children of God. Banayich, the children of God. So then we say, al tikrei banayich. Don’t read that they’re the children of God, those that said they’re builders, builders. If you ask somebody, they’ll ask me, “What do you do?” “I’m in construction, construction.” What exactly do I do? I sit in the kollel (Torah study hall). What kind of construction is that? No, we’re taking the 22 letters, the building blocks, and we’re learning, and we’re creating the world. We’re keeping the world in existence. So therefore, the real builders of the world are those that use the 22 letters.
How do you bring people back to teshuva (repentance) when you see somebody in the before picture? You don't have to preach to him or just expose them to the Torah. Expose them to the 22 letters of the alphabet. Don’t preach. Just bring them to a class. The rabbi will talk whatever he’s going to talk about. And all of a sudden, they’ll go into their soul because their soul is parched. Their soul is thirsty. It’s dehydrated. It’s like pouring cold water on dry earth. And all of a sudden, it’s refreshing.
And therefore, the pasuk (verse) says, you know, when you see this child or this adult who lost his way and is on a bad path, you know what it should be? U'regamuhu ba'avanim. Pelt him with the stones. With the stones, not the rocks. With the stones of the Torah, with the stones of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And guess what? You’ll be able to knock out all the negativity. The Torah is like cleansing. It’s like a certain—where you have these drinks, you clean, you detox. How’s that about a detox? It’s detox; it gets rid of all the bad ideas slowly, not overnight, of course. And then the Torah says not to throw him off a building and stone him to death, but to take the 22 stones of the Torah and get rid of his negativity.