The Right to Remain Silent Rabbi Ariel Rackovsky
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The Right to Remain Silent Rabbi Ariel Rackovsky Shavuos Day I Bnei Brak in the 1940s was quite different than it is today; there were few houses or apartment buildings, not much in the way of public transportation, and they had just installed street lamps to allow the citizens of the growing city to navigate the streets after dark. It was in this Bnei Brak that the Torah giant Rav Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, known as the Chazon Ish, lived, having moved there from Vilna in 1933. Not long after street lamps were installed, someone asked the Chazon Ish what he thought of this new development. The Chazon Ish replied, excitedly, that they were truly amazing. The person asked, “What is so amazing about them?” The Chazon Ish replied that “I noticed that that the closer a person comes to the light, the smaller he appears, because his shadow shrinks. The further a person moves from the light, the bigger he appears, because his shadow becomes bigger as well.” There is a cryptic passage in the Talmud in Chagigah that compares the spiritual levels of two prophets, Yeshayahu and Yechezkel- both of whom were initiated into prophecy through very similar mystical visions of the heavenly court, the latter of which is read . הפטרה today as the תלמוד בבלי מסכת חגיגה ד יג עמוד ב אמר רבא : כל שראה יחזקאל ראה ישעיה . למה יחזקאל דומה לב כפר שראה את המל , ולמה ישעיה דומה לב כר שראה את המל . 1 Everything that Yechezkel saw was seen by Yeshayahu as well. To whom is Yechezkel comparable? To someone from a small village who beheld the king, and to whom is Yeshayahu comparable? To someone from a city who beheld the king. Yeshayahu is viewed as a superior prophet, because he was more comfortable with the experience of prophecy, whereas Yechezkel was a “country boy” who sees the king; he is completely overawed by his prophetic vision. The selection of that mystical initiation of Yechezkel, raises a number of important , מעשה המרכבה known in the literature of Chazal as the questions. • First, if Yechezkel was an inferior prophet, why do we choose to read about his vision on the day we commemorate the seminal event in Jewish history, receiving the Torah? Shouldn’t we read the vision of Yeshayahu? • Furthermore, Chazal expressly forbade expounding upon the meaning of this vision of Yechezkel in public. חחח גיגה פרק ב משנה א אי דורשי בעריות בשלשה , ולא במעשה בראשית בשני , ולא במרכבה ביחיד , אלא א כ היה חכ ומבי מדעתו . So on the day we celebrate receiving and understanding the Torah, why did they choose such a passage consigned to inscrutability? Rav Yigal Ariel is a prominent teacher of Torah in the Israeli Dati Leumi community; he was the Rav of the community of Nov in the Golan for over 40 years, the founder of Midreshet haGolan and now teaches at the Yeshivat Hesder in Yaffo. He is also the לב author of a popular series of books on different books in Tanach, including the work on Yechezkel. Rav Ariel points out that if you read the prophetic events- those of חדש 2 Yechezkel and of Yeshayahu- there is a pattern that emerges which explains the stark contrast between the two. Isaiah VI Then said I: Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. 6 Then flew unto me one of the seraphim, with a glowing stone in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; 7 and he touched my mouth with it, and said: Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin expiated. 8 And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said: 'Here am I; send me.' In his experience of prophecy, was an active participant. He speaks to the Angels, they reply. He is called by God, and he answers the call. In contrast, the entire prophecy of Yechezkel is related from the perspective of a bystander. Whatever the mysterious ואראה celestial beings were that he beheld, he didn’t speak with them. Indeed, the words :are the common ones used to describe his experience, and both are passive ואשמע and Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river Chebar that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spoke 3 Why do we read the esoteric visions of Yechezkel on Shavuos, if they are opaque and inferior? Perhaps the answer is that on Shavuos, the day we accept the Torah, we are challenged to do so following the model of Yechezkel. When he was confronted with this awe-inspiring vision, he certainly may have wanted to react, but instead, he stood silently by, realizing it was time to be humble, and not to speak. On the day we receive the Torah once again, our challenge is also to grow through humility, and to let ourselves be observers in the drama of revelation. In his book “Surprised by Joy,” C.S. Lewis related that as a young man, he was sent a place called Little Bookham to study with a man named William T. Kirkpatrick. Their first conversation was a bit odd to Lewis. He was trying to make small talk, and in an effort to make conversation with his new teacher, he said that the country in Surrey was “wilder” than he had expected. Kirkpatrick interrupted him. “What do you mean by that? What grounds did you have for not expecting ‘wildness’?” At first, Lewis thought Kirkpatrick was also making small talk, but then realized that his teacher was being serious; he really wanted to know. He confessed that he really hadn’t formulated a conception of what “wildness” meant, and had no real reason not to expect it. Kirkpatrick said, “Do you now see, then, that you had no right to have any opinion whatever on the subject?” We’ve all encountered those people who won’t let us make a statement without questioning a word, a nuance or turn of phrase we used, even if we mean them innocuously. Often, those people are children, but there are adults do it too, and Kirkpatrick seems to have combined this deeply annoying trait with superciliousness and a lack of charm in a particularly infuriating way. That said, Kirkpatrick was right; having 4 the right to express an opinion does not mean that our opinion is accurate or well considered. The challenge of humility in the face of revelation is especially acute in a community like our own, whose members are educated and well read in Jewish and secular texts, and are people of accomplishment whose expertise is sought out on various important matters. We also live in a society that prizes freedom of expression, and in which we have a constitutional right to express any opinion we want, no matter how poorly forumlated it may be- but we should not always have to exercise this right. If we are not nuclear physicists, we would be very careful not to weigh in on an issue in which knowledge of nuclear physics is a prerequisite. Those who know nothing about sports will reveal their ignorance if they are drawn into a conversation that is anything other than superficial. This past year, we have been studying Bava Kamma in my Shabbos afternoon Talmud class, where many principles of Jewish tort law either resemble, agree with or directly contradict principles of American law. Very early on, I learned not to use any legal terms unless I was completely confident about their meaning, because in a shul full of lawyers, I have certainly been respectfully corrected when I used the wrong term. Yes, we are reticent to discuss topics we don’t know too much about, but because we are an educated community that engages in text study and enjoys it- and because Torah is the heritage of each and every one of us- it sometimes is difficult to retain the same reticence when we approach the Torah. We want to insert ourselves into the narrative, so sometimes, when analyzing a biblical text together and discussing the actions or motives of a particular personality, we tend to use expressions like, “I think Yaakov was wrong,” or “I think Mordechai made a mistake.” There may be ample support in the text and commentaries for any of these readings, but we are placing ourselves on their level with 5 these kind of statements, or bringing the characters down to ours. Humility in studying the lives of our forefathers and of biblical characters takes nothing away from their humanity, but it does help us maintain a sense of spiritual and intellectual honesty. Sometimes, this less than humble attitude can be found in study of later texts. It is common for us to say things like “I agree with the Rambam” or “Rashi makes no sense.” Again, there may be support for the assertion that the view of the Rambam in a particular matter is correct or that Rashi is difficult to understand, but formulating our sentiments in this way implies that we are on the level of the Rambam to agree or disagree with him, and that we are the final arbiters of whether a Rashi is understandable.