Our Gemara on Amud Beis describes how the sages would greet the Shabbos:
Rabbi Yannai would wrap himself in his tallis and stand at the eve of Shabbos at twilight, saying: Come, bride; come, bride.
Ben Yehoyada comments that the Arizal would recite the greeting three times, corresponding to Chokhma, Bina and Daas. He says this corresponds to the three realms of interaction: Thought, Speech and Action. Since thought is hidden, one of the recitations are said quietly. What is the meaning of bringing Shabbos in these three dimensions?
Without getting deeply into the mystical significance of these terms, we can intuitively grasp that each of these dimensions are distinct in operations. For example, Thought connotes intention, which is separate than Action. Action can connote physical deeds with or without intention. However, how does speech occupy a different dimension than thought? Many people consider thought to be merely silent or internal speech. Plato’s Theaetetus considers thought to be an inner dialogue (and therefore can be full of falsehoods, amongst other things, since it is not pure apprehension of the idea, rather a description of it.) If thought is just inner speech, it is hard to see how Thought and Speech are considered a separate dimension.
Lev Vygotsky, the “Russian Freud”, is most famously known for his final work, “Thinking and Speech”, which asserts that thought and speech are a social process. Through his observation and research of young children and how they talk to themselves and others, he concluded that there is a reciprocal relationship between speech and thought. The child learns through social interaction how to identify and construct the experiences recalled and imagined with the words used by caregivers who interact and respond. But then the words are internalized, and the child uses the dialogue he learned externally to organize his own internal norms and ideas.
Significantly, though Lev was by no means observant, he had a solid Jewish education, knew Hebrew and prayers, and was a proud Jew often using Biblical and Jewish concepts. (“A MAN OF HIS COUNTRY AND HIS TIME: Jewish Influences on Lev Semionovich Vygotsky’s World View Bella Kotik-Friedgut Theodore H. Friedgut Achva Academic College, David Yellin Hebrew University of Jerusalem College of Education, Jerusalem.) He grew up in a town that had a strong Chabad presence. Were his ideas about speech and thought influenced by Jewish tradition and mysticism? If so, he would not be the only 20th-century psychologist to have been influenced by Jewish traditions, as so many of psychology's early pioneers and theorists were Jewish. It is hard to imagine modern psychology as ever having come into existence without the influence of Jewish philosophy on human nature and spiritual process. For example, there are Midrashim that describe Human motivation as critically dependent on channeling inner drives such as the Yetzer Hara (see Yoma 69b and Bereishis Rabbah 9:7), which must have had a profound influence on Freud, whom we know studied Talmud as a young cultured German Jew.
Using Vygotsky’s theory of thought and speech, we can define the sphere of Speech as the idea and concept learned initially from the social input, and the sphere of Thought might be the internalization of the idea in personal dialogue and terms. Thus, Shabbos is learned socially by the traditions, which are the outer norms dictated by speech and social communication, and ultimately fulfilled in physical action. But Shabbos also must be internalized and constructed with inner meanings and interior thoughts that make Shabbos personal and private, aside from communal. This may be why Shabbos is greeted via Thought, Speech and Action, and in accordance with mystical rituals, the third “Bo-i Kallah” is uttered silently to represent this final stage.