Some years ago, a British documentarian was exploring world religions. When it came to Judaism, he explored the noisy Beit Midrash, the house of study, and captured all the students debating and yelling at each other. To his eye, this was complete chaos and noise. He asked, Eli Wiesel, who was joining him for this segment, the following question:
“Is there such a thing as a silence in Judaism?”
Wiesel replied: “Judaism is full of silences . . . but we don’t talk about them.”
Different cultures have different ways of valuing silences. Western cultures, mostly deride it. Author Susan Cain argues that the West lives in what she calls the extrovert ideal, where we extol the virtues of a swift and sharp tongue. “Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.” Says Thomas Mann.
Eastern Civilizations on the other hand, particularly Asian cultures, emphasize the quietness and silence. A famous Chinese proverb by Lao Zi exclaims: “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”. Ghandi similarly wrote about the spirituality of silence, saying: “Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.”
So What about Judaism? Back the documentarian’s question, does Judaism have silences, and is Wiesel really correct that we just don’t talk about them?
The two most common words in the Torah are: אמר- to say, and דבר, to speak. At first glance we seem to be more of the Western ideal. Yet when we dig deeper, we might notice something curious about the Midbar, the place where the Israelites spend the majority of time in the Torah. The Midbar literally means the wilderness, but the word itself has the same root as speech- דבר. The Midbar, the place of speaking, is not, however, in the city with its hustle and bustle, it’s raging conversations at every turn, rather it’s the place free of noise. It’s the place where you go to be able to hear and listen to the sounds of silence, or to the soft voice that’s inaudible through the noises of civilization. It’s the place where the prophet Elijah goes when he’s in distress, 40 days into the Midbar. And Elijah doesn’t hear God in the noises of the whirlwind, the fire, and the the earthquake, but in the קל דממה דקה, in the still small silence. The Midbar is the place that is empty of distraction, and full of spiritual and divine sounds that carry a pregnant emptiness.
You may think that Silence is really the absence of sound or speech, but quite often silence is laden with meaning and emotion. If you have ever sat in the room with someone stricken with grief or a tragic loss, you should know that silence is more powerful than words. In silence we hear each other, in silence we see each other, and we connect in the most human way possible. We don’t know the words to say, because there are no words to say. But we communicate in silence.
In Chaim Potok’s book, The Chosen, one of my favorite books, the son of the Hassidic Rebbe, Danny Saunders explains his father’s unusual practice of raising him in silence:
“'My father doesn't write,' Danny said. 'He reads a lot, but he never writes. He says that words distort what a person really feels in his heart. He doesn't like to talk too much, either. Oh, he talks plenty when we're studying Talmud together. But otherwise he doesn't say much. He told me once he wishes everyone could talk in silence.’”
The Rebbe Later explains his logic:
“Once my father took took me to visit a hospital--ah, what an experience that was!--and often he took me to visit the poor, the beggars, to listen to them talk. My father himself never talked to me, except when we studied together. He taught me with silence. He taught me to look into myself, to find my own strength, to walk around inside myself in company with my soul. When his people would ask him why he was so silent with his son, he would say to them that he did not like to talk, words are cruel, words play tricks, they distort what is in the heart, they conceal the heart, the heart speaks through silence.”
Instead of being the thing that wasn’t talked about, silence has become a part of Jewish spiritual practice. Yes, we have our Batei Midrash, our houses of study with rigorous and rowdy debate. Jews have developed meditation practices; we have seen the emergence of the Hassidic art of התבודדות, spiritual solitude. Hassidism also developed the idea of a תענית דיבור, a fasting of words. Silence and introversion have found a comfortable place in Judaism alongside its proclivity to noise and hubbub. Just because we don’t talk about our silences, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t appreciate them more.
Consider spending some time in a midbar, a place free of noise, free of distraction, and filled with a special kind of spiritual speaking. Find your place quiet enough for you to speak to your heart, and where God might speak to you.
