Nothing on My Tongue
Dear friends,
Imagine the world going silent.
Perhaps the last time such a moment took place was 3,334 years ago (according to Rabbinic calculations.) That was when our people stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, as described in this week’s parashah, and expounded upon ever since.
“When the Holy Blessed One gave the Torah no songbird chirped, no winged creature took flight, no cow mood, no angel flew, no seraph said “holy!” The sea did not move, the people did not speak, but the world is quietly keeping silent – and the voice came out: “I am YHVH your God.”
Without keeping silent, we learn, revelation would not have come. Keeping silent is an old virtue that could use some reviving. So much of our anguish and anger these days come from people's inability to measure their words.
“Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel said: All my days I grew up among the sages, and I did not find anything as good for the body as silence: and anyone who speaks too much brings about sin.”
The silence that took over the world before the utterance of the first of the Ten Commandments (or in Hebrew the Ten Dibrot, or spoken pronouncements), allowed for the word of God to be heard in all of its precision and power. It imbued the words that came out with a transcendence of time and space.
The rabbis succumb to their poetic instincts:
“Every single word that came out of the mouth of the Holy Blessed One filled the entire world with the smell of sweet spices.”
“Every single word that came out of the mouth of the Holy Blessed One split into seventy languages.”
“When the Holy Blessed One gave the Torah to Israel His voice went from one end of the world to the other, and the kings of all the nations were taken over by trembling, and they began to sing.”
And yet, precise words that come after true silence can be dangerously strong.
“Every single word that came out of the mouth of the Holy Blessed One made the souls of Israel depart.”
In other words, when the Hebrews heard God’s voice, they all died! Then how did we receive this story, you might ask.
“The word came back in front of the Holy Blessed One and said: Master of the world, you’re alive and your Torah is alive – but you sent me to dead people?! - They’re all dead!
The angels began to hug and kiss them. “Don’t worry, you are children of YHVH!” And the Holy Blessed One sweetened the word in His mouth and said to them: are you not my children? I love you! And continued to touch them until their souls returned.”
That word travelled all the way to the end of the world and right up to its source.
This is the power of a word preceded by silence. Not only can it kill, but it can also give life, as the Book of Proverbs put it:
מוות וחיים ביד הלשון
“Death and life are in the hand of the tongue.”
At our Kabbalat Shabbat next Friday we will be transported by the Qanun of our musical guest, John Murchison to that prayerful realm of “nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah,” as Leonard Cohen described it. Until then, let us all practice staying silent, and maybe allowing the few precise words that follow to emerge.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha