Three Types of Silence

Dear friends,

I love it when I get to stay in New York, for Christmas. Not because of the Chinese food (although if you haven’t been to the Sechuan restaurants in Queens Chinatown you should go), but because of the quiet. You can finally hear the city breathe. So I offer reflections on three types of silence.

The first I’ll call inevitable silence. This is the silence of the dead, at times experienced by human beings, when we cannot speak. This happens to Joseph’s brothers in this weeks parasha, when he reveals himself to them. For a long time they are speechless. They can’t even move. Actually the Hebrew word for silence, Dmamah also implies no movement. Finally they are able to hug him, and after that to speak again.

Aaron the High priest had what might be such a moment when he found out his two sons were killed by God for offering “a strange fire” in the tabernacle. Although in his case one is left wondering whether when the text says “And Aaron was silent,” (again with the same word, which implies stillness), it is the silence in the face of his sons’ death, or in the face of his brother’s strangely philosophical statement that followed the deaths: “This is what the LORD meant when He said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.” Is Aaron stunned into silence, or is he biting his tongue at his brother’s inability to be silent with him?

Which brings us to the second type of silence we can call bad silence. We are human beings and our natural state is to make noise. When we see something we love we make noise. When we see something horrific we are supposed to make noise but sometimes don’t. Rabbi Joachim Prinz, rabbi of Berlin in the 30’s famously said at the March on Washington: "bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.” It is likely that you haven’t heard about the police killing of Andre Hill on Tuesday in Ohio. It’s even less likely that you have been out in the streets making noise about yet another African American shot by a police officer that clearly has been trained to kill.

“Since we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal,” said James Baldwin, “I have been making as much noise as I can, here in Europe, on radio and television—in fact, have just returned from a land, Germany, which was made notorious by a silent majority not so very long ago.”

Our chevrutah on Learning From the Germans by Susan Neiman began this week (join us for the next meeting January 7th), in which we are learning how the Germans transformed themselves from a nation that was shamefully silent, then perhaps inevitably silent, and finally not at all silent about their past.
The third type of silence is a desirable one, a good silence, which I’ll call the silence of God. “What is it that stands higher than words?” asked Saint Francis of Assisi: “Action. What is it that stands higher than action? Silence.”

Often our greatest moments are when we find that silence that is always there at the heart of existence. Like hearing the breath of the city on Christmas. The Book of Kings describes God as silence:

“And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire the sound of perfect silence.”

That’s often the process of how we find that still silence.
Out of that silence something new can emerge:

Find silence in Adonai, be still; and let the dance begin, sang the psalmists so many years ago.

Wishing us all some good, still silence this year. May it lead to new beginnings, and the right kind of noise.

Shabbat shalom, and happy Christmas,
Rabbi Misha