Silence Before the Noise©
Shabbat HaGadol 5779/2018
Rabbi David Baum
It's Passover time which means I'm at the kosher grocery stores a lot, or as I call it, my own personal Mitzraim. Waiting in long lines, you cannot help but overhear conversations, mainly because we are such a verbose people, it is crowded and loud, and of course, hearing aids seem to be in short supply. So I think I'm going to start a new Twitter Account – Overheard in Boca. I want to test one out, so here's my first Tweet:
"You should hear what Sarah regularly says about her husband, poor guy. She never has a good word to say about him. I think she must have graduated school with a degree in lashon hara.”
“And do you know what, Estelle? He's really not such a bad man. I mean look at me - my Chaim is a fat, lazy slob and cheap as they come. But have you ever heard me say a bad word about him?"
We come to an interesting time in our calendar – it is Shabbat HaGadol, a Shabbat that was famously, or some congregants might say infamously, known as one of two major sermons that the rabbi of the community gave a year. But there is another custom which happens on this Shabbat – Jews started studying the contents of the Haggadah. The word Haggadah comes from the Hebrew verb, להגיד, which comes from the commandment for Passover – והגדת לבנך – and you shall teach your children. All of this is a prelude to arguably the most verbose night of the year, the Pesach Seder.
But this week's parashah, Metzorah, gives us a little pause – it reminds us of the power of words, and the consequences of too many words. We are introduced to the Metzorah, the person afflicted with a skin affliction. The Torah text is interested in how to treat the afflicted – the ritual on how to cleanse the person with this mysterious skin affliction. The rabbis of the Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 16:1) however, are interested in an unasked question: why did this person become afflicted? They come up with a play on words – Metzorah is Motzi Shem Rah – a person who speaks Lashon Harah (slander/gossip). But the rabbis make another interesting connection that we often times overlook – Lashon Harah, or gossip, is related to another very important Jewish concept – privacy. In the Talmud, violations of privacy are referred to as hezek re’iyah, damage by sight or visibility. In other words, what we show to the world, our public voice, is really the origins of evil speech. The Talmud even tells us not to say positive things about others publicly lest we invite people to speak ill of that person after our compliment.
This got me thinking of the noisy times we live in. Someone pointed out to me that we don't live in noisy times because everyone is always on their phones. The noise though is actually internal, in our heads. We are constantly bombarded with articles, podcasts, music, we rarely, if ever, have time for true silence.
We are a verbose people – we are a people of the book, our Talmud is one really long conversation, debates where everyone's voice is recorded. It is why the following teaching is so interesting and counter-cultural.
Pirkei Avot 1:17 states the following:
שִׁמְעוֹן בְּנוֹ אוֹמֵר, כָּל יָמַי גָּדַלְתִּי בֵין הַחֲכָמִים, וְלֹא מָצָאתִי לַגּוּף טוֹב אֶלָּא שְׁתִיקָה. וְלֹא הַמִּדְרָשׁ הוּא הָעִקָּר, אֶלָּא הַמַּעֲשֶׂה. וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה דְבָרִים, מֵבִיא חֵטְא:
This teaching seems so un-rabbinic. Be silent, whoever speaks more brings sin to the world. How else are rabbis names known by then what they say out loud? One would think, the more that one says, the more they are recognized, and the more followers they will acquire. After all, this is the law of Twitter. The more you Tweet, the more extreme your language, the more followers you receive.
But, as Rabbi Gordon Tucker points out in his commentary (Pirkei Avot Lev Shalem- The Wisdom of our Sages), perhaps Shimon is noticing who he learned most from: "the more thoughtful and less verbose sages were the ones who gathered more students and acquired more authority in the long run."
But does this idea translate to today? The loudest people may have more followers (think about the world of Twitter), but their words might be less and less meaningful and memorable with each successive post.
As Teddy Roosevelt said, “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Speak less, act more. But Shimon would add, because other people are watching and learning from you.
When I think about the noisiness of the world, I often think of our communal conversations, especially political. This week, the Israeli elections were held. If you followed the elections and heard all the lashon harah (slander) being slung back and forth, you cannot doubt that Israel has truly made it as a regular country, at least in regards to politics, no different than other Democracies.
But along with the mudslinging are the candidates and supporters who state with conviction that their belief is the only belief. I wanted to read you something written by one of the leaders of Labor Zionism from then Palestine in 1940, Berl Katznelson:
“When I see someone walking around who appears to have solved all the world's problems and resolved all its discrepancies, or someone who imagines that a new Guide for the Perplexed has been composed for that person’s own personal use (and which such a one has no plan therefore to make public), or when I notice someone who doesn't even need such a personal reference work because that person’s clear mind has never actually been perplexed by anything in the world—I inevitably think that such a person must inhabit a different world from this one, one unrelated to this world of misery of ours with all of its upheavals and suffering and dashed hopes. Or perhaps such people have simply learned to live so tsatisfied by chewing their own cud and thus obviating the need for further ruminative thought. As for me, however, I vastly prefer the confused soul who wanders through life without finding any respite from the world, to the unsullied calm soul at peace with its own truths.”
Rabbi Tamar Elad Applebaum (Lev Shalem Pirkei Avot) comments on this poem connecting it to Shimon's words: "Shimon ben Gamliel now suggests that the authentic Jewish mind should also be flexible enough to embrace many possibilities at the same time. Living in the tumultuous era that saw the destruction of the Second Temple and the end of Jewish independence, he seeks to address the question of how to build a nation that includes those who believe in many different certainties. Nor is this a question for his generation alone; in our own time, we too need to ask that same question about how best to create a unified people out of so many personalities who fervently believe that they alone are in the right... Indeed, in every generation, different voices encounter each other and grapple with the question of how to live together—and in our day that struggle is more pronounced than ever. Shimon ben Gamliel's challenge is not just his own, but one that we must ask ourselves as well. How does an individual who carries many certainties in his or her mind live with oneself? How can these certainties co-exist with each other, and enter into dialogue with each other, without ripping apart the delicate fabric of society? And how can spiritual wholeness emerge from a multiplicity of drives, emotions, words, deeply held outlooks, unshakable attitudes, and deep inner propensities—that together characterize a single, multi-faceted identity?"
Israel gathered as a people to vote and a little less than half of the population isn't happy. As far as Jewish Americans are concerned, even more of us are unhappy which can be shown by statistics. And the seder might be the great metaphor for the day after – even after we fight with our family, we have to sit with them at a holiday table and talk. But maybe, just maybe, we can choose to listen more.
I believe that the answer to many of our problems could be the following: less talking, and more listening; less noise, and more silence. When we do talk, let us speak with some humility, knowing that we do not know it all, and that, yes, we might not be 100% correct.
As we approach this week of studying the Hagaddah, of coming up with interesting questions to ask our children, and stories to tell, let us also keep this week's message in mind, the message of the dangers of speaking too much, or saying the wrong thing, and the gifts of doubt and growth that can come from silence. Ultimately, it might lead us to say things that are actually remembered by our children so they will impact their children.
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