The night there was no news! Sunday 18th April 1930 the ten o’clock news on BBC Radio did something unprecedented. Big Ben chimed. “Good evening it’s ten o’clock” started the news presenter, “This is BBC news. Tonight we have no news to report”. Promptly they broadcast a piece of piano music, then the wireless fell completely silent. No news is good news!
The Vilna Gaon [1720-1797] famously said that for every moment a person ‘muzzles his mouth’ – when he has the urge to blurt something out – he merits reward of the ‘hidden light’ that even the angels have no appreciation of. I’m sure that the Gaon was not referring to the BBC in the 1930’s ‘no-news-night-broadcast’, although in today’s age of constant babble of news it would be deserving of phenomenal reward if the BBC could possibly report no news rather than make news.
Reward for keeping one’s mouth shut is seen in this week’s Parshah. The Medresh relates how Yaakov would send presents to Rochel during the seven years he was working for Lavan in order to marry Rochel. But Lavan intercepted these presents and gave them to Leah. Not only did Rochel remain silent she in fact helped Leah marry her husband Yaakov by passing over the ‘signs’ that she had agreed with Yaakov to avoid Lavan switching Rochel for Leah.
Years later, we find that when Reuvain the son of Leah brings home the duda’im, childless Rochel asks her sister Leah for the duda’im which were reputed to induce fertility – something which Rochel very much needed.
Leah answers her request as follows: “is it not enough that you take my husband (Yaakov lived mainly in the tent of Rochel) that you also want to take the duda’im of my son?”.
Astounding words! She only was married to Yaakov because of her sisters’ selfless act of kindness and yet she has the audacity to talk to Rochel like this? How did Rochel respond? She didn’t! She took a ‘shtum pill’ as we say in our house – she kept ‘shtum’ and kept silent. [And I don’t mean she gave her the ‘silent treatment’]
This character trait of keeping quiet, concludes the Medresh is what caused Rochel to merit to have the extra tribes born to Yosef – Menasheh and Efrayim. Another Medresh says that the silence which she displayed by letting her sister marry Yaakov was the merit that was conjured up in order to finally allow Rochel to bear children after years of being barren.
Many point out that the Torah tells us to throw all ‘treif’ meat to the dogs. This is a reward to the dogs who didn’t bark on the night we left Egypt. However we don’t find that the frogs are rewarded for jumping into the ovens during the plague of frogs?! It must therefore be that it is harder to keep one’s mouth shut then it is to jump into a fire!
There are many idioms in the words of the Rabbi’s which extol the virtue of silence. The Talmud says, “a word is worth a sela coin; silence is worth two”. The Mishnah tells us that “a fence for wisdom is silence” on which one commentator comments “Intelligent people know what they speak, fools speak what they know”.
Someone who is capable of being silent and in control of what he says is then able – when he does speak up – to be heard as the sensible voice that matters. Indeed the Medresh relates that it is our Matriarch Rochel – the one who held back her voice for many years in deference to her sister’s honour – that Hashem must tell to stop crying for our bitter exile to end. Rochel through her silence gains the power to have words that have the power to bring about major results – the end of the exile, may it come about speedily in our days.
Let’s finish with the profound words of Irving Bunim on the importance of silence, “In the distracting din of ceaseless chatter, the “thin silent voice” of Divinity is often drowned out. Unlike other organs of the body, the tongue needs little exercise!”
Good Shabbos, Yaakov