Rabbi Blau's Insights on Avot Rabbi Yitzchak Blau If you have comments or questions please feel free to e-mail Rabbi Blau at: nyz@netvision.net.il

Silence and Speech

Shimon his son (of Rabban Gamliel) said: "All my days, I lived among the sages and ("ve-lo mazati la-guf tov ela shtikah") and I did not find anything better for the person than silence." (Avot 1:17)

This mishnah champions silence but it is unclear if the mishnah is concerned about a particular situation of problematic speech or valuing silence as a broad overarching value. Some of the commentators relate this mishnah to specific situations. R. 
Ovadia Bartenura writes of having the restraint to not respond when insulted. Rashi writes of not talking when one truly does not have something of wisdom to say.

Other commentators make the broader point. Rabbenu Yonah mentions the empty nature of much of our conversation. Rambam outlines the various categories of human speech and evaluates them accordingly. According to Rambam, the mishnah 
is clearly not about productive speech because we are in favor of such discourse. It is also not about prohibited or problematic speech because we do not need this mishnah to tell us to desist from negative conversations. Rather the mishnah is about voluntary, religiously neutral speech. Here, R. Shimon informs us that minimizing such speech would promote a better religious life.

While we can well appreciate the problem of excessive verbiage, we might wonder about pushing the point too far. After all, some sources indicate that the essence of humanity is its power of speech. Do we want to promote a message in which this 
precious tool is to be minimized? To be fair, Rambam does not want to limit the beneficial speech that promotes wisdom and the formation of fine character traits. Yet, the essential message of the mishnah for Rambam focuses on the great worth 
of silence. 

In this context, it is interesting to note the reading of R. Yisrael Lipshutz in his Tifferet Yisrael. He has a different version of the mishnah that reads "ve-lo mazati la-guf tov me-shtikah." I did not find anything good that comes out of silence. R Lipshutz says that the mishnah refers to a student learning from his or her teacher. Education suffers when that student merely listens quietly during the learning process. First of all, the student will be perceived either as boorish or as too arrogant to address the 
teacher’s ideas. More importantly, the give and take of discussion is crucial for real education. Additionally, students will remember and internalize active learning far more than passive learning. Thefore, educational contexts suffer from student silence.

Perhaps these various commentaries enable us to strike the appropriate balance. There are many areas of life where we could all speak a good deal less. However, there are also many contexts in which the proper use of speech is essential. May we 
strive for more judicious use of a most precious human ability. 

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