It's in the Silence...

By Rabbi Schneider | Parshah Yom Kippur: Leviticus 16:1-34

Every year, during the Yizkor service on Yom Kippur, I think of my mother. I miss her deeply. I miss going shopping with her. I miss hearing about how things are going for her at her job. I miss renting the classics from the 1950s and 1960s, climbing into bed with popcorn and watching the movie with her while she would recall the day she saw the movie in high school and who she was dating. I miss staying up late at night after I spent a day learning in rabbinical school because she wanted me to recite all my notes from my classes over the phone because her love for Jewish learning was so passionate it only rivaled mine. I do miss my mother deeply. And when I lost my mother to a heroic battle with leukemia in 2005, the absence and the silence that she left in my life has been deafening.

Most of the time I’m just like you. I create my own noise, with the TV on, the AirPods stuck in my ear, music playing in the car, in the office and at home. As that famous author, Anonymous said, “… today’s world … loves noise.” Why? Because it doesn’t want to stop and think. It doesn’t want to stop and meditate. It doesn’t want to stop and pray. It doesn’t want to stop and listen. What would it be like if some kind of solar ray suddenly caused all radios, DVRs, iPhones, and televisions to stop working? Trembling hands would immediately begin to push buttons, adjust knobs and flip switches. Eyes would begin to dilate with fear of silence. Terrorized people would be running in the streets or fleeing in their cars. “Karl Marx was wrong,” someone has said, “religion is not the opiate of modern man, incessant sound is. People will listen to anything to avoid silence.”

But Judaism, like most other religions, values silence. Traditionally, the most important petitionary prayer of the service, so important that it is known simply as “The Prayer,” is said silently. An invitation to pray silently at any point in the service is an indication that this is a moment of great solemnity and importance. And of course, when we remember our loved ones who have died, we do so in silence.

In the silence we can finally admit what we need to get from, and give to, the people we love. For example, in Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “The Capitol of the World,” a father comes to Madrid to find his son. His son, Paco, had left the farm after a misunderstanding. If you have ever been to Spain, you would know Paco is a very popular name there. The father, to meet his son, put an ad in the newspaper which read, “Paco meet me at noon, Tuesday, at the newspaper office. All is forgiven. Signed your Father.” In the story, there were 500 young men named Paco who came the next day and stood silently in line, waiting to see if it was their father who had granted them forgiveness.

In the silence we can still be inspired by those who live on only through us. For example, a bus was bumping along a back road. In one seat, an old man sat holding a bunch of fresh flowers. Across the aisle was a young girl whose eyes came back again and again to the man’s flowers. The time came for the old man to get off the bus. Impulsively, he thrust the flowers into the girl’s lap. “I can see you love the flowers,” he explained, “And I think my wife would like for you to have them. I’ll tell her I gave them to you.” The girl accepted the flowers, then watched the old man get off the bus and walk through the gate of a small cemetery.

In silence we give, or get, forgiveness, approval, thankfulness and love, from those who are no longer physically present but who will always be alive in our memories. It is in the silence that we approach them so that these crucial, life-enhancing encounters can take place. It is in the silence that we finish those unfinished conversations we began so long ago. It is in the silence that we still receive the wisdom our loved ones gave so freely while they were yet alive. It is in the silence that we hold on to what we’ve had. It is in the silence that we let go, so that we can move on.

We are so accustomed to action, to responding immediately. We struggle with inaction. When we receive news of a medical diagnosis, within minutes we’re online, searching for every possible opinion — whether it’s from the leading experts or from charlatans offering false remedies. We don’t even allow ourselves the space to fully feel the deep grief that comes with losing a loved one, a grief essential for healing. Instead, we often feel the need to stand up, to say something, to do something about death — yet death is the one thing over which we have no control.