The Cost of Silence

Parshat Mattot-Masei 5770

When you become a parent, your cultural context changes.  My favorite poets used to be Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.  Nowadays I read a lot of Shel Silverstein poems.  One of my favorites is called “The Bagpipe Who Didn’t Say No.”  The poem is about a very brief romance between a lonely turtle and a bagpipe.  It begins:

It was nine o'clock at midnight at a quarter after three
When a turtle met a bagpipe on the shoreside by the sea,
And the turtle said, "My dearie,
May I sit with you? I'm weary."
And the bagpipe didn't say no. 

Said the turtle to the bagpipe, "I have walked this lonely shore,
I have talked to waves and pebbles--but I've never loved before.
Will you marry me today, dear?
Is it 'No' you're going to say dear?"
But the bagpipe didn't say no. 

I’ll spare you the rest.  Suffice it to say marriage was short lived.  Now it might seem funny to us that a bride – in this case a bagpipe – can consent to being married without saying a word.  But, as a matter of fact, in traditional Jewish law this is pretty much how a wedding happens.  According to halachah, the groom presents the bride with a ring and makes a legal declaration of his intention to acquire the her as his wife.  The bride need not say anything; rather, her silent acceptance of the ring is enough to signal her consent.  Thankfully we’ve evolved the traditional ceremony a bit, and today most brides also give their groom a ring accompanied by an affirmative statement of intention. 

In this week’s Parsha we also see an instance where silence is considered as assent.  Parshat Mattot starts with a discussion of the vows taken by women.  In Biblical times, if a woman took a vow or an oath, her husband had the legal right to annul it.  As long as he verbalized his objection on the very day that he learned of the oath, he could invalidate it.  We might take this, like the traditional wedding ceremony, to be an artifact of a patriarchal society.  I’m not going to apologize for our Biblical ancestors – that’s the way it was back then. But, you could argue that the rule was progressive in its context because at least it affirmed that women had the power to make binding vows.  Furthermore, you could say that the rules actually curb her husband’s power over her by limiting his opportunity to overrule her. At any rate, if he did not object on the very day he learned about the vow, his silence was taken as approval. 

There are other examples in Jewish law where silence is understood to be a gesture of assent.  Our tradition does not believe that it is possible to just stay quiet (certainly not for Jews!)  Not speaking up is as good as saying yes.  And when we learn of something objectionable and we fail to speak out, it is as though we support it.  As a Jew you don’t have the option to sit on the sidelines.  And, indeed, we Jews have a long history of speaking out against injustices and wrongdoing.    

For the past few months we’ve all been watching a horrifying event unfold.  On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 rig workers and setting off what is now the worst environmental disaster in US History.  Today marks 82 days since the spill started gushing at least a million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico every day- that's roughly one Exxon Valdez every 4-7 days.  Chances are the gusher won’t be plugged until a relief well is completed in August (and there’s a chance that might not work either).  I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.  We’ve all been paying attention to this story unfolding, but as I studied this week’s parsha it occurred to me that I’ve been silent about it from the bima.  The BP spill has been going on for nearly 3 months and I haven’t said anything about it.  And, reading about how silence can be taken as assent, it made me wonder what to make of my own silence.

And, I’m not alone – neither rabbi Dollin nor I have spoken about it.  Please understand, that’s not meant as criticism of Rabbi Dollin or myself.  In fact, I put out an email to my colleagues around the country asking if they have spoken about the spill.  Only three rabbis told me they’ve preached about it from the bima.  I’ve looked on the internet for any statement from a rabbi on the oil spill and have found very few.  Like I said, I’m not pointing this out to be critical.  I think there are good reasons for the silence.  It is hard not to be totally dumbstruck by this tragedy – especially when we’re still in the midst of the crisis.  It will take a long time for us all to make some sense of this terrible catastrophe (hopefully not as long as the cleanup will take).  So I’m not surprised about the silence.  But at the same time, I became a rabbi because I sincerely believe that Torah is a source of wisdom; and that living by its values makes our lives better and makes the world better.  It may be too soon for a totally coherent Jewish response, but I have to believe that our tradition cannot remain silent much longer. 

There are many Jewish sources that can be brought to bear on this situation, but let’s consider an episode in this week’s Parsha.  Shortly after the discussion of women’ vows, the Torah says that the tribes of Reuben and Gad approached Moses with a request.  Reuben and Gad were wealthy tribes who owned a lot of cattle.  So they asked Moses for permission to settle the fertile grazing grounds on the East side of the Jordan River, instead of joining their brethren in the conquest of the Land of Israel.  Moses erupted in uncharacteristic indignation saying: “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here!?”  The leaders of Reuben and Gad – confronted with their selfishness and self-centeredness – instead committed themselves to lead the way in the conquest of the land. “We will not return to our homes,” they respond, “until every one of the Israelites is in possession of his portion.”  In turn, for their loyalty they were granted their request.

One of the values we can derive from this episode is the idea of communal responsibility.  It’s true that Reuben and Gad’s initial impulse was self-interest rather than responsibility to their community.  It’s not surprising and I don’t think it makes them bad people.  We all act that way sometimes when left to our own devices.  I think our tradition recognizes that people act in their self interest unless otherwise called upon to be responsible to others.  We wouldn’t need Torah and laws if people always acted responsibly.  Moses may have shamed them into it, but in the end Reuben and Gad were rewarded for acting responsibly and looking out for their brethren.  One of the many lessons we can take from the Torah is that we can’t always expect people (or corporations) to act responsibly on their own.  BP might have prevented this disaster if they had spent (or been compelled to spend) a little more time and money on sensible safety measures and realistic contingency plans. 

And then there’s a second point I want to make about responsibility.  Beyond the need for oil companies to act more responsibly (or be compelled to act more responsibly), each and every one of us has got to come to terms with our own culpability for this tragedy. 

It is my observation that one of the reasons we’re having such a hard time talking about the spill is that it scares the tar out of us.  And I think it terrifies us into silence because we quietly know that we bear some responsibility too.  This event is a harbinger.  It’s a canary in the coal mine.  It certainly isn’t the first one, but I think it might just be the most tangible.  For decades scientists and activists have been warning about the many different potential negative consequences that lie ahead due to our ever growing consumption of oil – global warming, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and global conflicts.  But, it’s hard to grasp what the big deal is about a few degrees of atmospheric temperature change; and it’s easy to ignore a story about polar bears who can’t find ice or tiny Pacific Islands that are being swallowed up by the rising seas.  This one is different.  It’s in our backyard, it’s devastating an entire region of our country and its economy, it’s smelly and dirty and toxic and it’s sticking to everything it touches.  I think part of the reason we’re scared dumb about the oil spill is that this time we can’t avoid the inconvenient truth – that our use of hydrocarbons will someday have devastating consequences.  Well “someday” was April 20, 2010.  The petroleum party is over.  We can no longer defer the real costs of a petroleum-dependent economy to sometime in the future.  The future is now.  This spill is going to cost us billions, maybe trillions, and far more in ways that you can’t put a price tag on.  Moving forward we have a choice: we can start acting responsibly and pay the real costs of energy up front; or we can pay even higher costs later. 

           

In the next several months, years, and even decades there will be a lot to say about this event.  The BP Oil Disaster, I predict, will be one of those watershed moments.  I hope it will energize a new conversation about our dependence on hydrocarbons, our stewardship of the environment, and the balance of business interests and public interests. 

We can no longer afford to be silent.