Passover: Speaking our way out of shame

According to a recent article in the Atlantic, “the secret shame of middle class americans,” many more Americans are cash-stapped than we are accustomed to believe. For example, 47% of Americans can’t round up $400 for an emergency. Most can’t afford the accoutrements of middle class lifestyle: house, cars, health, vacation—which costs an average family $130,000, double the median family income. You’d never think—those who have these things talk about them, we hear about all sorts of family vacations, but those who don’t have don’t talk about it-it’s too shameful.
How many Americans are living in this kind of shame, unable to speak about the pain they experience?
The Haggadah instructs us to start the narrative with shame (gnut), and end with praise (shevah). The Talmud (Pes 116a) reports a debate about what shameful situation is meant. Rav says “shame” refers to idolatry, so he starts the Maggid narrative with terach’s idolatrous family. Shmuel, on the other hand, starts in Egypt with avadim hayyinu, “we were slaves in egypt.” What’s the difference?
Maybe for Rav, shame is when we do something truly bad, so he reaches back to idolatrous days. For Shmuel, on the other hand, shame has nothing to do with whether it is our fault; it is being in an embarrassingly low situation
What’s the shame in that? Why do we feel bad about ourselves when we are down & out? Why do people feel ashamed of not having money, live in silence?
Maybe the shame is really like Rav: fear that others will see it as a moral failure. The OED defines shame as “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.” Jeremy Seabrook, in the Guardian, recently argued that we used to blame poverty on God, but now we blame it on the people.
Or perhaps Shmuel feels that even if it’s not my fault, I still experience it as shameful. I know others will look down on me. Also, I can’t see myself as being needy, weak, etc. None of us wants to see ourselves as poor, vulnerable, down and out. We certainly don’t want others to see us that way. So we suffer in silence.
Just like when we were slaves in egypt, We are shamed into silence. Shame is a contemporary Mitzrayim
What truths do we have that we are not speaking?
What truths are those around us suffering but too ashamed to speak up?

There is a classic midrash on the word “pesah,” that interprets it as peh sah, a mouth telling. On a simple level, the ‘mouth telling’ is reading the Haggadah, telling the story of the Exodus. On a deeper level, however, the mouth is gaining the ability to speak through the process of the exodus. Gaining the ability to speak is itself yetziat mitzrayim, leaving egypt.
Now we get a little technical:
The Zohar distinguishes kol, inner truth that we need to speak, the voice of our heart, from dibbur, the words that actually leave our lips. If the universe is divine speech, self-expression, then kol is the voice of the divine heart, and dibbur is the actual expression of the divine into the physical universe.

Exile is a rupture between kol and dibbur. On an individual level, this means that my inner voice is not articulated into speech. On a divine level, this same rupture happens to God.

The Zohar says that the Jews were constricted like the embryo of a donkey in its mother’s womb. They could not move. Redemption started when they cried out: They cried out, and god heard their cry.

Really embryos do move, so not a great metaphor; maybe donkey embryos move less than human embryos, or maybe the point was that an embryo can’t talk. But the idea was that egypt is a constriction that prevents the dibbur, the articulation of deep truth—they were not not speaking their truth. Only when they cried out, in an unarticulated cry, did the redemption start

The invitation: speak our way out of our personal mitzrayim,
To speak our way out of shame

Jewish Civil Disobedience Part 2: the obligation to speak up

pete seeger was followed by FBI for over 30 yrs, letters opened, blacklisted & called in 1953 before house committee on un-American activities and cited for contempt of congress, didn’t know why
Why?
In July 1942, Seeger, 23, was drafted into the Army. He was training as an aviation mechanic at Keesler Field in Mississippi. in the fall of 1942, Seeger, wrote a letter of protest to the California chapter of the American Legion. It was to the point:
Dear Sirs -
I felt shocked, outraged, and disgusted to read that the California American Legion voted to 1) deport all Japanese after the war, citizen or not, 2) Bar all Japanese descendants from citizenship!!
We, who may have to give our lives in this great struggle—we're fighting precisely to free the world of such Hitlerism, such narrow jingoism.
If you deport Japanese, why not Germans, Italians, Rumanians, Hungarians, and Bulgarians?
If you bar from citizenship descendants of Japanese, why not descendants of English? After all, we once fought with them too.
America is great and strong as she is because we have so far been a haven to all oppressed.
I felt sick at heart to read of this matter.
Yours truly,
Pvt. Peter Seeger
I am writing also to the Los Angeles Times

"How did the American Legion respond? It forwarded Seeger's note to the FBI in San Francisco. And somehow this matter was brought to the attention of the Military Intelligence Service of the War Department. Within weeks, military intelligence was investigating Seeger—and soon updating the FBI on its effort. The official "reason for investigation," as numerous military reports forwarded to the FBI noted, was that "Subject wrote letter protesting and criticizing the California American Legion's resolution advocating deportation of all Japanese, citizens or not, after the war, and barring all Japanese descendants from citizenship.""


Banal, something many of us would have done
Irony: now we all see that the government acted in an un-American way

Perhaps there are times when we must speak up
Whoever can protest to his household [for committing a sin] but does not, is seized for [the sins of] his household. If he could protest to his fellow citizens, he is seized for the sins of his fellow citizens; if the whole world, he is seized for the sins of the whole world. Rab Papa observed, the members of the Resh Galuta's household are seized for the whole world. Even as Rabbi Hanina said, “Why is it written, ‘The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders of his people, and the princes thereof” (Isaiah 52:14) If the princes sinned, how did the elders sin? But say, [He will bring punishment] upon the elders because they did not forbid the princes. - BT Shabbat 54b
Latin saying: Qui tacet consentire videtur “silence is consent”

Another explanation: Yocheved was called Shiphrah because through her the people of Israel increased
(sh’paru) and were fertile. Miriam was called Puah because she lifted (hophiah) up Israel to God. Yocheved
was called Shiphrah because her deeds were beautiful (sh’iphra) before God. Miriam was called Puah because
she defied (hophiah) Pharaoh, all but thumbing her nose at him, saying, “Woe to this man when God comes
to settle with him." Pharaoh, filled with rage, was about to have her put to death. But Yocheved, who was
called Shiphrah because she used to smooth over (meshapperet) her daughter's impudence, conciliated Pharaoh
by saying, "Need you pay attention to her? She is only a child and doesn't know a thing."
- Sh’mot Rabbah 1:13

Miriam and Yocheved were the balance of wisdom and courage, speaking and knowing when to be silent.

Tradition gives a major caveat on obligation to speak up: Only when we actually have power to stop something
But in a democracy, a vocal majority has power to stop anything
Argument that ‘nobody is listening’ swiftly becomes an argument for mass silence

Tyranny thrives on secrecy, and the implicit consent of the masses
Ramban on 1:10-pharoah’s plot to manipulate public so he would not be identified as bad guy
"Let us scheme against them" Pharaoh and his advisers did not decide to smite them with the sword, because that would be a great betrayal, to smite a nation that has come to the land on the command of the first king. Even the common people wouldn't give consent to the king to do such a crime, for he advises with them, and additionally the nation of Israel was numerous and mighty and would fight back in a great war. Rather he advised that they should act cleverly so that Israel should not feel that he is acting out of hate, and therefore he levied a tax on them, for it is common for foreigners to pay a tax to the king, as is seen by Solomon (Kings 1, 9:21)
In other words: found ways to oppress them that wouldn’t raise eyebrows
People would stay silent, allow their conscience to be subtly violated

2003: Iraqi war and duct taping windows
I was going to participate in anti-war rally, before Bush invaded Iraq
Government warned of impending biological attacks, told us to duct tape our windows
I didn’t go to the march—I was scared into silence

Silence is very dangerous because it empowers those who use it to support oppression, tyranny & abuse

Buchenwald-just outside city
Allied forces came in, forced locals to walk through in Sunday garments
And yet, when they talk about Nazis, some foreign element that came, did bad things, and disappeared
People don’t realize how much they themselves are complicit through complacency

I am very disturbed by peoples silence over Radzinger’s involvement in nazi youth
—“I had to do it”—what if nobody had complied?

On a personal level, Sometimes we are silent because we do not find the right words to speak up
Or do not feel anybody is listening
Art: honesty without hurting feelings

My experience recently:
Somebody laughing at me in demeaning way
I was upset, didn’t know how to respond, fell silent,
Finally told them: really hurt me that they were laughing at me
They claimed laughing because it was funny
I stood my ground, told them: still hurt my feelings

We need to find ways to speak up
For ourselves, in hurtful relationships
For what is right, in a world that often seems to be going in the wrong direction

Aaron's silent scream

Aaron’s silence

This week, I think we all were stunned by the disappearance of a Boeing 777 with 269 passengers onboard. After the pilots turned off their location radar, and saying goodnight, the plane flew off in silence through the night. It is an eerie silence, an absent cry, a mystery begging to be solved.

Scene: aaron’s silence
In this week’s Torah portion, Shemini, Aaron’s silence too confounds us. The Tabernacle just inaugurated, divine fire had miraculously issued from inside the Tent of Meeting to consume Aaron's burnt offering on the altar, and then Nadav and Avihu, Aaron's two elder sons, mess up. Maybe they were disrespectful, maybe they were drunk, it is unclear.

This time the fire came from the tent and burned them, turning triumph to tragedy. Moses’ response was sharp, and it’s unclear what he meant: “that’s what God said he’d do”—was he trying to be comforting? Waqs he being an “I told you so?” Aaron's response was silence: "VaYidom Aaharon"—one of the only instances where Torah says someone stayed silent.

Did he stop crying?
Did he stop himself from replying?
What did he want to say?
Why the silence? Why no scream?
Aaron’s response is striking. Personally, I find it troubling: is it really better to be stoic in the face of tragedy, to swallow my sorrow and put on a cheerful face, not to make even a whimper?

When David's vain and rebellious son, Absalom, who rebelled against his own father, was killed in flight, his father fully vented his grief: "My son Absalom! O my son, my son Absalom. If only I had died instead of you!" (2 Samuel 19:1).

We are taught in Leviticus, that we shall not stand by while our neighbor bleeds. While we might be inclined to respond to someone else’s suffering with silence, we are commanded to expose, to speak out and not be indifferent to unjust suffering.

In fact, the Zohar blames Noah for the flood, because when he was told about the divine decree to wipe out everyone else, he didn’t argue with God. As a result, the flood is called mei Noah, the waters of Noah, because when I keep silent, when I do not protest, I am responsible for what happens. I am accountable for keeping silent.

Abraham Joshua Heschel describes the prophet’s job as follows:
The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority, and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words. Had the purpose been to express great ideas, prophecy would have had to be acclaimed as a triumph. Yet the purpose of prophecy was to conquer callousness, to change the inner heart as well as to revolutionize history.

Sometimes our voices must be raised like the prophets’, to speak out against injustice, to take out from anonymity the falsehoods and crimes perpetrated in our society.

And psychologically it is extremely dangerous not to speak out after tragedy, to let grief fester inside of us. When we speak we process feelings, we make extreme intolerable feelings more tolerable, we can integrate our experience and move on. This is I think why we have a tradition of shiva, of a mourner sitting for a week surrounded by friends and family who allow the mourner to speak. It is by talking about our loved ones, processing our loss, that we can move on.

We see this now with many returning veterans, who cannot talk openly about the horrors they have witnessed, and who constantly relive those war experiences in their imagination, in their dreams. And the treatment for them is to make their memories more tolerable to enable them to speak about their experiences without reliving the trauma. In this case, that which is silent must be articulated, or it will destroy us.


Silence as positive
I have talked up to now about the power, the value, of us speaking out, and our need for the world to speak out for God to speak out. But in our parsha, Aaron is silent, which I find very troubling.

The midrash sees Aaron’s silence as a positive thing. God speaks to Aaron after his silence directly, rather than through or with Moses, as a reward for that silence.

3 types of silence
1. There is the silence of the unknown, of the absent voice
This is the silence of the missing flight 370, a boeing 777 with 269 people
Where are they?
How can their families grieve and move on not knowing what’s happened to them?

This kind of silence begs to be articulated, it points to a mystery begging to be solved, of unspoken suffering begging to be recognized

Elie Wiesel, who broke the silence of Holocaust survivors and his own 10-year vow of silence, when he wrote Night, said:
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
The original version of Night was a 900-page memoir entitled Un die welt hot geshvign (And the world kept silent). This is a silence begging to be given voice.

2. Silence of the unspeakable
There are also times when we hold ourselves back because what we say would be hurtful, or because we know we wouldn’t be heard

Shimon & Levi’s massacre in shechem
Jacob confronts them: 'You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.'
But they said (Genesis 34:31), 'Should he treat our sister as a harlot?
Jacob was silent—but not because he agreed with them
On his deathbed, finally speaks up:
Simeon and Levi are brothers;
Instruments of cruelty are in their dwelling place.
Let not my soul enter their council;
Let not my honor be united to their assembly;
For in their anger they slew a man,
And in their self-will they hamstrung an ox.
Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce;
And their wrath, for it is cruel!
I will divide them in Jacob
And scatter them in Israel

When Jacob was silent, it was because he knew they wouldn’t listen. His words would have fallen on deaf ears, so he wisely didn’t bother.

Sometimes: to speak would be hurtful
Maybe aaron wanted to say “you jerk, what an insensitive thing to say”
Moses’ mistake: speaking first, offering explanation
When we visit a mourner, let them do the talking, we do the listening
Never say things like “it’s for the best,” which true or not are insensitive and unhelpful

3. The silent scream
3rd type: Silence of the awesome, of that which is beyond language, which defies language

Ismar Schorsch compared Aaron’s silence to Edvard Munch's painting of 1893, "The Scream.”
“A gaunt figure on a bridge with his face contorted in horror and hands clasped to his ears trembles in the midst of a cosmic scream, suggested by a wavy landscape in deep colors. Munch wrote of the experience that lay behind the art: I walked one evening on a road—on the one side was the town and the fjord below me. I was tired and ill — I stood looking out across the fjord — the sun was setting — the clouds were colored red — like blood — I felt as though a scream went through nature — I thought I heard a scream. I painted this picture — painted the clouds like real blood. The colors were screaming.” (JTS Commentary on Shemini, 5762)

These silences are not really silences at—they just speak a truth too massive, too powerful to be articulated in human language.

White fire
One can think of this kind of audible silence as the mystics did of the white fire with which Torah was written. What we naturally see when we peer inside of a Torah scroll is the black forms of letters that form words, and give the meaning of the Torah in human language.

The midrash says that torah was written with black fire on white fire. Right now when we read torah, we only read from the black. But in the messianic era, the white fire, too, the apparently empty spaces, the silence, will be revealed as Torah. We will encounter the inexpressible, silent torah, embodying a higher level of consciousness, a deeper mode of feeling & experiencing reality. As David Wolpe (In Speech and In Silence) has written, “Even in the silence, there is a message of faith. The paradox is listening for that which cannot be heard.” Psalms says, “to you silence is praise.” There is a type of silence which expresses that which is above expression, that which is awesome—being awe struck, being flooded by the white spaces in reality.

Perhaps Moses tried to relate to Aaron in words, and fell short, because words could not express what he felt. Perhaps Aaron was so overwhelmed by his emotions that only silence could express the depth of his feelings. And perhaps Moses and the community held him lovingly as he went through that experience.