Two of the most resonant words in all of the Torah are recorded after the death of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Evihu. The Torah says, “Vayidom Aharon” — and Aaron was silent.
Many years ago, I wrote a book called In Speech and in Silence: The Jewish Quest for God. Part of the book explored how expressive and important silence could be in the Jewish tradition. It was my mother who taught me this lesson: in her early fifties, she had a stroke that rendered her aphasic, unable to speak. Yet, her silences spoke as eloquently as anyone I have ever known.
What could Aaron have said that would be more eloquent than silence? Each word would have reduced the enormity of his pain. The greatest masters of words are the ones who also recognize their limitations: as Flaubert writes in Madam Bovary of the uses of language: “We hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.” There are thoughts too deep to emerge in words and like Aaron, at times, we understand that the task of one’s life is to learn to be silent (Chullin 89a).
Even when confronted by hateful words, there are moments — surely not always, but sometimes — when any reply is less effective than a scornful silence. At times, to answer is to demean oneself, and to be silent is to allow the bigotry to be laid bare for what it truly is.
The Rabbis tell us that when God gave the Torah at Sinai, the entire world was silent. We have silences in our prayer, in part to make space for depths to emerge. We lose so much in a world always surrounded by noise in every establishment we visit and even plugged into our ears when we walk along. GB Shaw, dining in a fancy restaurant, was asked what he wished for the orchestra to play. He answered, “dominoes.”
There are silences of loss, of connection, of prayer, of pain, and of love. Rebbe Nahman speaks of the silent scream that we can offer up to God. For years, I watched my mother offer that silent scream. I often felt that in those silences, like Aaron’s, were all the words ever spoken.
