|
“In the pictures of the old masters,” Max Picard wrote in “The World of Silence,” “People seem as though they had just come out of an opening in a wall; as if they had wriggled their way out with difficulty. They seem unsafe and hesitant because they have come out too far and still belong more to silence than themselves.” The Talmud is clear that it was more difficult for Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son, Rabbi Elazar, to reenter society than it was to live in a cave for twelve years. They were sent back to the cave for twelve months to learn how to live with other people who had not had the advantage of so many years in seclusion to achieve such lofty spiritual heights. I suspect that the most challenging part of their saga was not living in the cave for so long or even reentering “normal” society; it was learning how to take the first step out of their world of silent safety and protected spiritual environment. How do you leave? Having been in bed for years at a time, leaving only to go to the hospital or doctor, barely interacting with anyone other than immediate family, studying Torah whenever awake or conscious, I am familiar with the challenge of leaving the cave. As desperate as I was to get out into the world and live a normal life, it was a disconcerting change. I wondered whether I would be able to retain the same focus on learning and prayer as when I was secluded. I have not succeeded. I, “belonged more to the silence than to myself.” Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Elazar belonged to themselves even as they stepped back into the world. They may have lived in a cave, but they never separated themselves from the outside world. They retained who they were outside of the cave during all the years they were hiding in its darkness. They never withdrew into their silent environment; they lived and studied as if they were outside. They never stopped belonging to themselves. They were not swallowed by the cave and its silence. They lived as themselves for a total of thirteen years of seclusion. Perhaps this is why they were able to attain such great levels of spiritual growth. It was not based on an external, on the cave with its miracles. It was based on maintaining their sense of selves despite their environment. They studied each idea as it applied to the world outside the cave. It was not silent. They continued to hear the voices of those they left behind, the noises of the marketplace, and the sounds of life. Everything they studied in the cave applied to everything they left behind. Their Torah was not because of the silence in the cave; but because of all the noises they brought into the cave with them. People speak with envy of Rabbi Shimon’s years of seclusion, just as they speak longingly of the intimacy of their private time with God while praying. Even our silent prayer is not silent; we must hear ourselves. We aren’t looking for silence, but for how our learning and prayers apply to the noises all around us. I stopped resenting the coughs and sighs that used to distract my prayers. I am no longer distracted by the noise of people conversing while I am still praying; I simply remember to ask myself how my prayers apply to the noises. The prayers have begun speaking to me with more clarity that pierces all the noise, and connects me to myself
Related Articles -
Jewish Spirituality, Online Jewish Hebrew Bible,
| 
