The Right Word
Dear friends,
Before I offer some words of Torah as reflections on the last week, I’d like to thank you all for bringing such wonderful energy to the Kumah Festival. It was amazing to see so many of you at the pier last Sunday, and to get your warm responses, your attention and your spirit through the Zoom screens over the last seven weeks. I’m so grateful to all of the many talented participants and curators, to Susan, Maia and Judy who formed this festival with me and gave it life. Of the many incredible moments in the festival, one that stands out is watching people of a huge range of ages attach their prayers of fabric to Suzanne Tick’s vertical loom. Many of you brought family heirlooms cut into strips, cloths that belonged to or were made by grandparents, parents, loved ones. Some brought fabric from happy moments like birthday parties, others wrote onto the fabrics names of people who were killed in the latest round of violence in the holy land, or prayers for the planet and the city. The communal piece of art that Suzanne offered us expresses the heart of what we were getting at in this festival: that our deepest questions, fears and yearnings can be weaved together as a thing of beauty, that we have the capacity to transform our garbage into a worthy offering to God or universe, that art can be the communal action through which we overcome despair. For those of you who couldn’t be with us on Sunday, we are hoping to bring back the loom in the future and offer more opportunities to add prayers of fabric to it.
During these last 11 days of fighting I have found myself turning to the Book of Psalms. I was looking for emotional support, for insight into the nature of humanity, for echoes of the eternal in the current turbulence, for the poetry of justice. The verses that made me stop, reread, wonder, were those dealing with speech and silence, like these from Psalm 38:
וַאֲנִ֣י כְ֭חֵרֵשׁ לֹ֣א אֶשְׁמָ֑ע וּ֝כְאִלֵּ֗ם לֹ֣א יִפְתַּח־פִּֽיו׃
וָאֱהִ֗י כְּ֭אִישׁ אֲשֶׁ֣ר לֹא־שֹׁמֵ֑עַ וְאֵ֥ין בְּ֝פִ֗יו תּוֹכָחֽוֹת׃
I am like the deaf, who cannot hear,
like the mute, who cannot speak;
I have become like one who does not hear,
whose mouth can offer no rebuke.
When David writes these lines he is in a deeply troubled state. All around him he sees wickedness. Emotionally he is broken. Voices are coming at him from all directions to do this and feel that. Instead of standing and acting against the wickedness, of answering the violent challenges, he falls into silence.
כִּֽי־לְךָ֣ יְהוָ֣ה הוֹחָ֑לְתִּי אַתָּ֥ה תַ֝עֲנֶ֗ה אֲדֹנָ֥י אֱלֹהָֽי׃
Adonai, I wait for you; you will answer, Adonai my God.
This is not a typical request from David to God. David relies on God for strength, but he knows he is the actor in the world, not God. But in this case he wants God to speak for him.
How does one speak about the horrors of the world? How does a person choose the right words, the appropriate ideas, the voice that will express the totality of the situation, not just one small piece of it? How can you know the utterances that will be useful toward bringing the terror to an end? ‘It is beyond me, God,’ he says, ‘You do the speaking!’
Despite the pull toward silence I found myself immersed in the desperate noise this week. I spent more time on Facebook than ever before. I posted articles and thoughts, engaged in conversations with people back home and here in the US (including some of you), argued, supported, listened, searched.
Don’t get me wrong, I have had a clear opinion of what this was about the whole time. I expressed some of that to you when this started. And still the strongest pull, the wisest choice usually seemed to be silence. סייג לחכמה שתיקה said our sages, “silence is a fence around wisdom.” But how could we allow ourselves to disengage, to allow wickedness to thrive?
The outside world is a mirror of the internal. War is an expression of our mind. Speaking the right words to others is as hard as speaking the right words to ourselves.
The Sons of Korach, whose poetry also appears in the Psalms had the following to say:
הַרְפּוּ וּדְעוּ כִּי אָנֹכִי אֱלֹהִים
Let go and know that I am God.
The word Harpoo, which I translated as “let go” can be understood in various ways. Many translate it “Be still.” The ceasefire that was thankfully announced yesterday might lead us to translate the word simply as “Stop” or “Cease.” To me there is a letting go that happened yesterday, and a letting go that we’ve been working on all week. A letting go of our certainty, of our narratives, of our frustrations, of our need to win unwinnable arguments or battles through inflicting decisive blows on our adversaries. All week has been a struggle to accept again that our life-long work to improve the world has not changed it in the ways we wanted it to change. Something else, another force, another intelligence is at play, and it goes so far beyond our ability, so far beyond our comprehension, so far beyond our words.
When we let go, in the silence, the no-space of the pause, we can sometimes allow the right word to come to our lips.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha