Rabbi Johnny Solomon - Finding God in the Quiet

as follows. The stem syllable of the name indicates silence and quiet. This is a characteristic of the month of which follows directly the festive celebrations of the month of Tish. Having celebrated the preceding month of Dra in emotional intellectual concentration, in contrast gives an impression of stillness, an entrance into a quiet private life. Wow, isn't that curious? He's trying to explain to us what is the nature of. He says is noisy, right? Lots of events, lots of festivals, lots of people. The word is right as we see in source 2 the time to be quiet and a time to speak. So that word that verbash is connected to the nameshvan is a quiet month. Quiet in as much as we don't have but according to rah it's not just there's an absence thereby it's quiet. In fact, that's our duty to lean into the quiet, to lean into the stillness, to lean into that privacy of in contrast to the public nature of tish. Tish I see my neighbors the whole time, every few days as avan, you're back to your home. those who be Oreel went back home and then they're back in their private space not so much involved with the community in their daytoday life and sobban is about that private quiet stillness and that is our now Raersh doesn't just say this in his collected writings if you look in his commentary to the Torah and to tim he often gives further insight about the meanings of different words. And here in where the word is used, he makes sense of this. He gives us further insight about what it means to lean into stillness, to quiet, to private. Means not to give expression, meaning to restrain oneself almost in terms of the expression one gives to ideas, to a thought or to an emotion. as in to stop emotion as in not to pay heed to an observation as inashim and elsewhere. He gives all sorts of different biblical references which support his conjecture that the isn't just to be quiet. It is to almost be restrained and yet find wisdom in that restraint in that private in that oneness with self in that stillness. He then adds because Rahers believes that words that sound the same are connected. It is related to kaz to look in so far as it denotes looking at a situation objectively without however giving it more profound study. Now this insight perhaps confuses us more than his first one. And yet when taken together I think Raersh is teaching us some something very very deep both about the verbashot and about the month of it is that we're supposed to try and hear the inner voice of self rather than get distracted by the voices of others. We're supposed to be with ourselves, our private self, rather than necessarily be distracted what other people are doing. It's about finding wisdom in the stillness of our life. I find that to be very very profound. That means there's an avod to do this. It's not just absent of festivals. It's it's time to focus on on the idea of the stillness of the quiet of the private. So in we celebrate with others inv. If you see source 4 theba says something very similar. He references because this is when he was writing Shabbat was also as it generally is. And then he continues as follows. In the month of I'm reading from source for which is filled with all these different festivals. A Jew finds themselves very invested in the world of sanctity, holiness, and godliness. We don't have a chance to deal with the mundane because we're so busy with the festive things. All those mundane things we want to do, we do it, right? Because the doesn't afford us to deal with the mundane stuff because we are dealing with and then has no connection with matters which are undesired. Is things you don't want. meaning you're so busy with the things that you're supposed to be doing, you don't have a chance to get distracted by the other stuff. It exists, but you're busy. We don't say throughout the month of this is a prayer about God hearing our cries, God feeding our pain. It's not because of simply the nature of those festive days. The whole month is all about focusing our attention to the things we want rather than focusing our attention to the other things which perhaps we'd rather not want. The month of it's not just it doesn't have festivals. It's not just defined by an absence of holidays. Has noban is about the mundane. It's precisely about dealing with the things which you said we deal with. You know that broken pipe, right? dealing with those things with your accountant, all those things you didn't have time for in well, it's you're dealing with the does not mean unimportant. It means they're not obviously holy. And he says, and based on what I've explained, this is at the end of a I'm going to skip a line. We are right up there. We are feeling that we are up with the angels. We say out loud because we feel we are comparable to angels. Not sobb. We descend not as a punishment but as a grounding. We become much more grounded. That's the point of the month. to the world is a mystical term describing the world of separation principally the world which is yet to feel that palpable sense of holiness but yet at the same time there's holy all over but within the mundane our task in is to ourselves to unify ourselves with God through the holy holy days through the holy festivals. Our task inhan is to unify ourselves with God through the mundane through through the not obviously holy through the through the fixing the pipe or talking to the accountant all those other things we said we're going to do. We don't necessarily do that in a community, you know, singing or singing. We do it often on our own. And that's what our task is on to figure out how to serve God as individuals. We've learned how to serve God as a collective, as a community, right? We now need to say, okay, how do I bring it down to earth on my day-to-day life when it comes to drain? How do I feel connected to God on the quiet moments when there's nothing much happening in the calendar, right? There's no festival coming up when I don't need to make something because there's nothing that needs to be made. How do I find God in those moments? How do I find God in those moments of the quiet moments, the still moments, the private moments? That's what the month is beckoning us to do. We've t as they say in Hebrew. You know like a tick. We can say I've got a tick to learn how to serve God in shore with people with festivals with holy days with busy mitzvah. Good. You know how to do that. Do you know how to serve God on a rainy Tuesday afternoon when nobody's around when you got a list of boring tasks to do? Do you know how to do that? Do you have to make that holy? because that's what your task is inv there's no big events. How do you connect to God then? So the title of this sh ishan finding God in the quiet and hopefully already by now the title makes sense. How do we find God in the quiet? And yet by using that term I meant to allude to a book that I read I read straight after it came out. You may have read it too by Susan Kaine called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Don't know if you've read it. It was a bestseller. There are people who are extroverts. There are people who are introverts. Susan Kaine is an expert about introverts and she wrote a brilliant book all about the power of being an introvert because it seems to be hard to have power as an introvert because you're not the person who's able to kind of like leverage the room. You're the quiet one on the side. And she gives some insights. We're going to read one in a moment. And I thought, you know, I think Tish is an extroverted month and is an introverted month. It's a quiet month, right? It's a month that most of us don't pay much attention to. We even call it we think it's just a month you have to get through until you get to Kaneka, right? It's just like one of those roads which has no particular purpose other than you have to pass it. But has so much more to it than that. It has its own duties, its own calling, its own identity, its own mission. That mission of finding God in the private, in the quiet, in the stillness when nobody's around, it is a month which is quiet. It is almost an introverted month. And yet, as Susan Kaine says, there's power in the introvert. And I want to quote from her book. This is just one quote from many that I felt brought. From 1956 to 1962, an era best remembered for its ethos of stultifying conformity. The Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University of California, Barkley, conducted a series of studies on the nature of creativity. She's talking about creativity. The researchers sought to identify the most spectacularly creative people and think then figure out what made them different from everybody else. They assembled a list of architects, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and writers who had made major contributions to their fields and invite them to Berkeley for a weekend of personality test, problem solving experiments and probing questions. Turn. Then researchers did something similar with members of the same professions whose contributions were decidedly less groundbreaking. One of the most interesting findings echoed by later studies wasn't just one finding was [clears throat] that the more creative people tended to be socially poised introverts. They were interpersonally skilled but not of an especially sociable or participative temperament. They described themselves as independent and individualistic. As teens, many have been shy and solitary. These findings don't mean, and she's very clear about this, that introverts are always more creative than extroverts. They do suggest that in a group of people who have been extremely creative throughout their lifetimes, you'll likely find a lot of introverts. Why should this be true? Introverts prefer to work independently in solitude can be a catalyst to innovation. In other words, if you're looking if you're in the backyard sitting under a tree while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, you're more likely to have an apple fall on your head. And then she says in brackets, Newton was one of the world's great introverts. William Werdsworth described him as a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought alone. I share these words of Susan Kaine because if you seem to agree with me and you don't have to the is a bit more of an introverted month I think the month calls on us to be creative in I don't need to be creative got enough things to do on my plate right I've got to go for shul I've got to listen to I've got to build the suka I mean the most creative thing is which area of the sukat I use which type of on what kind of decorations we do and what kind of menu we make. Okay, inashan we're tasked to be creative. How you going to be an everm in a creative way when nobody else is telling you what to do when you haven't got this obvious kind of framework of what you need to be doing that calls on you to be creative? How do I serve God on a rainy day when I'm on my own? How do I serve God when I'm when I'm tending the plants in the kitchen? When I'm doing my grocery shopping, when I'm talking to a friend, when I'm at work? How do I do that? It forces us to be more creative in our abodashem precisely because there's no obvious plan about what we should be doing. It's up to us about how we create that connection. And so I think Susan Kane's remarks have much to teach us. But I want to give you uh an example, tell you a story about what it means to connect to God through the quiet because that may well seem to be a bit of a paradox. I mean, Judaism is a very talkative religion. Truth is it's a bit of extroverted religion as well, right? We talk about barra bringing people together. We like doing things together. How do we serve God in the stillness, in the quiet, and in the private? Well, each of us may well have our own ideas. I'll show you a story which really moved me. There's a beautiful book which is a biography of Ruff Cook called An Angel. Now, that book, by the way, tells stories about R Cook, but also those around Ruff Cook. Those were his family of Suoda and his disciples of Arya Lavine and of David Cohen. The Nazir of David Cohen. Well, listen to this story. It's a great story. Once from Arya Lavine was confronted with a very serious and urgent matter. He was unsure what to do. I went to consult with our master of he went to talk to Afk. Help me with this complicated question. But by chance he was not at home at the time. I went to the bet midrash and found it practically empty around the corner. You know the house of cook. Only the nazer of David Cohen was there sitting in a corner immersed in his studies. I went up to him and greeted him. He reciprocated with a cheerful grin and motion to me that I should sit down. I sat down next to him and neither of us uttered a word for close to half an hour. Just imagine that. of David Cohen and Nazi this great saint tremendous Kam learning kind of in a certain meditative str trance of Ariel Levine this great pious person Jerusalem we've got things to do though he needs to address some question he's waiting for David to kind of turn his head and he's sitting there and there is just silence that's a problem when we talk about silence we often say the words just as if silence is an absence science itself is a gift. It often offers the opportunity for us to process, to reflect, to work things out. We just sat there silently. Afterwards, I stood up, took my leave, and returned home. When I arrived, I felt as if all my questions and doubts were solved. Everything that I once asked seemed so simple now, so clear. It was amazing. How many words had he shed of Docoin? None. He'd [snorts] sat in silence next to his dear friend, this righteous sage. And yet it was in the silence where he was able to come up with the right solution. It was in that moment of stillness was he able to be creative about figuring out the solution to whatever he was dealing with. Remember Levasan told this story to Ra Cook. The Rav responded, "Why was your father so amazed? Does he think that our Ravit is a silent type? Not so. Ravit talks a lot. He doesn't stop talking. It's just he speaks in his own unique language. The language of silence which is a language of wisdom. He then goes on to quote the Maral. The language of wisdom is actually the language not of silence of not speaking but too often we speak and that gets in the way of wisdom. We think speaking is a way to find wisdom. Sometimes not speaking is the best way to be wise. Just yesterday I was at a sudach uh it was a lastot of a couple who uh live in our community or the parents live in our community and the katan got up and he was about to try and thank everybody in the community for helping and I knew he'd get some people wrong or he'd forget something. I was like Becca don't say anything. Best to say just thank you to everybody like in this moment like the best thing is say thank you to everybody move away the moment you start listing people somebody else is going to get offended and you forgot to mention auntie reini and oy blessing stay quiet sometimes the best wisdom is found in silence and this story of aar lavine sitting next to of David Cohen and finding the answer in the silence is again to A very very beautiful story because I think that's our mission inh we had the noise the noise not just of the sha of the people right noise of the busyiness noise of the guests the noise of all the good things but also all the busy things that is that month in kashban we're supposed to lean into the stones the silence the quiet and be creative in those moments moment. Listen to God whispering to us to the listen to God telling us how to lean into him through those moments of quiet. And if we do that, we not just learn how to serve God with a cloud. We learn how to serve God as a pr as an individual as a yah because we are both members of a collective and each one of us individually and too often we don't work hard enough on that private aspect of our life. We just think that if I go to shul if I do other things then I'll know how to live as a Jew on my when I'm on my own. And the answer is no. You'll know how to learn as a Jew with others. It's an alltogether different discipline, right? when you are living as yourself without necessarily being propped up by all those other things. You know, I mentioned Susan Kane before and um the second book that she wrote after quiet is called Bittersweet. I don't know if you've read it too. I mention it because we often think of asan the bitter month of and in that book she too talks about the relationship between creativity and quiet but also bitterness. There is a connection between tough times or bitter times or or complicated times and and finding answers being creative making stuff. And I want to quote to you just a couple of lines from it's page 61 for those who have the book. She says, "It may be useful to view creativity through the lens of bitter sweetness, of grappling simultaneously with darkness and light. Creativity has a power to look pain in the eye and to decide to turn it into something better. We think of ma as being a bitter month. But the ma in kashban actually often is a prompt for us to think of ways to be a source of goodness to be able to make a difference to bring more joy to the lives of others in those moments of stillness and quiet and our private space where there is a sense of oh it's a shame all of those festivals are over that forces us to be more creative. The mara isn't an impediment to creativity. It is a factor. It is a motivating factor for us to be creative and how we make a difference to the world and how we make a difference in our life. So once we bring these ideas together is not a month of absence. It's a month which calls on us to make a difference to pay attention to all those quiet moments and not to run away from them. I remember uh for about eight years I taught in a seminary called Munay. Anybody know it? It's a great s. It's based now in give up Washington. What's great about Give Up Washington is the seminary is based in one of the buildings there and there's this like nice path all around the building. So, you can go for a walk with a student in a public place and just talk through some things. Anyway, one time a student asked me a question just about her life decisions and I said, "You know, I think I don't think you need me to help you work this one out. I think you should work this one out for yourself. you know, uh, put down your phone, go for a walk, and just kind of like think about, uh, this issue, and in the quiet you'll find your answers. And she said, "Are you insane?" I [laughter] said, "Sorry, did I say something crazy?" I said, "Just go for a walk. Like, go for a walk around. Just think through whatever." I can't remember the specifics that she was dealing with. I am quite confident that you'll be able to resolve this, and I really think it'll be a good thing for you to do. Just kind of work through this on your own. She said, "Are you crazy?" like without music. I said, "Yeah, without music, without fun, just just you and your thoughts." So, I've never done that. Now, we're laughing and and and my reaction was both laughter and sadness because we wish to be distracted by the noise so often that sometimes we're afraid of the quiet. You know, sometimes we do that that we don't want to be alone at home, so we put on music, put on the television, right? We want to be distracted by noise and that's fine. But sometimes we need to lean into the stillness, to the quiet, to find our own voice. Otherwise, all we're doing is hearing the voice of other people. We're having the distraction of other people. And by the way, sometimes a student shouldn't be told by a teacher what to do. Sometimes a student should figure it out for themselves. My Rob was quite clear. There are times I went to him for answers. There are times I better work it out myself because that's the nature of adult things. And a young woman aged about 19 about particularly in a not tremendously dramatic but meaningful decision in her life is one I really felt that she had to work through herself but it was that she hadn't done that before. It's not part of the culture to lean into the quiet. We're afraid sometimes of what we'll hear when we do. I think that's what Kashban is about. one month a year when we're told to pay attention of that of that silence. We're told that it's okay to be on your own briefly. It's okay to be still with yourself. Quiet is good. Actually, quiet often leads to creativity. And if there is a moment of bitter sweetness, because often there is in those moments a moment of melancholy, then don't be afraid too because that too can foster creativity. That can be the trigger for so many good things. Rather than running away from stillness and quiet and private, maybe we should lean in. And I think that's what our task is inhan. And this then brings us to our last source. Rabbi Saxs in a beautiful essay on parame talking about stillness. He was talking about why the Torah is given in the desert in the still quiet desert. I love the desert. It's why I think we really do connect to God because I think the noise of other things can be such a distraction. need to lean into being not just physically in the desert but arguably is a form of desert in time where we can have our own micro revelations. So he says as follows a silent that counts in Judaism is a listening silence and listening is a supreme religious art. You know is a supreme Jewish prayer. We're taught to listen. Listening means making space for others to speak and to be heard. Arguably listening means making space for us to hear ourselves. This was one of the key elements in the Sinai covenant when the Israelites having already said twice all that God says we will do. Right? They then say all that God says we will do and we will hear. It is an ishma the listening hearing heeding responding that is a key religious act. It's not just doing is about listening not just to the but listening to our soul to ourself to our needs. You know Raf Solvik says that prayer is all about need awareness. If you don't know your needs you can't really pray and to hear your needs you have to listen to you. Thus, Judaism is not only a religion of doing and speaking. It is also a religion of listening. Faith is the ability to hear the music beneath the noise. There is so much music in this world and there's so much noise in this world. And too often the noise beats the music. We struggle. We really we we know God is somewhere. We know the music is present at some point in our life or under some layer of the noise. We just can't seem to get to it. Maybe we just need to turn down the volume of all that noise. Be a little bit more attentive. Intentional. From time to time we need to step back from the noise and hab of the social world and create in our hearts the stillness of the desert where within the silence we can hear the corda the still small voice of God telling us we are loved we are heard we embraced by God's everlasting arms we are not alone now Rabbi Saxs doesn't say that that is a task of and taking his words and claiming that that is our mission I think that's what we're supposed to be doing this month. We've only just begun. It is to use his words once again to step back. We've left. We're on our way home by the sense of say all the people who are in your are back home. The hab of the social world. It's great to be sociable, but it's also important to make space for us listening to ourself and our soul. The stillness of the desert is a form of as I say desert in time and in that silence to hear the call to hear God whispering to us the God the whispering of God saying this is your mission. This is your mission not just in the holiness of praying and doing mikvot but in the mundane because yes our hashem isn't just limited to the synagogue and on the festive days. Ourat is meant to be there in all that we do. God is with us in the mall, in the supermarket. God is with us when we're cleaning the floor. God is with us when we're getting up early and going to work, when we're going for a jog. God is with us in the annoying moments, paying the electric bill or whatever it is. That is paying attention to God being by our side as we wrestle with the hol the grounded reality which is ultimately the majority of our life is to be reassured that God is with us here too. And that requires attentiveness, requires us to be a little bit more focused on the music than the noise. God is telling us always, but no less this month in Maheshwan that we are loved, we are heard, we embraced by God's everlasting arms and that we are not alone. So we should be reassured. If people talk about as bitter, no, it's bittersweet and in bittersweet there is creativity. People talk about it being a quiet month. No, that to be quiet isn't isn't some kind of curse. It's actually a blessing. It offers opportunity for doing more and being more. The many of the most creative people are introverts as is in a certain way. We should have a successful month, a creative month, a meaningful month and a month where we both stay connected to our community but also create connection with ourself. So,