PRAISE TO SILENCE

Ah, the beautiful word!
Who does not often wish to live in silence.
It is well said: if the word is silver, silence is golden.
Why is that?
It is necessary to believe that this one has its merits.

Nowadays, there is too much noise around us. And life seems to force us to live in this condition.

In every house, there is at least one television on all day long. This one makes its noise that we don't hear anymore because we are used to it.
It is the same in the car, where many people turn the radio up to the max so that everyone can hear their music.
In the summer, everyone is talking, each one believing he is the only one to speak and give his opinion.
On the highways, if you don't drive fast enough for the driver behind you, he honks at you with an unpleasant noise.

It seems that the only time silence is king is during exams when no one is supposed to talk and concentrate on his paper.
What I found rather curious is that when silence is requested, it is done in a loud voice, breaking it.
How often do we ask our children, always turbulent, to calm down or rather to be quiet, because they break the silence. Leon Tolstoy was right when he said that we teach people how to speak, but their greatest concern would be to know when to keep silent. So was Baruch Spinoza, who told us that the world would be a happier place if people were as capable of keeping silent as they were of speaking.

It must be said that perhaps sometimes silence would be the best advice, but we forget that the Dalai Lama told us that sometimes silence is the best answer.

I will believe that silence is a virtue, and like all virtues, it does not have many followers. What a shame!
I also believe that for successful concentration, silence is necessary. We do not want to be disturbed, annoyed by factors that are not pleasant.
If you ask people why they take a vacation, I am sure that some of them will tell you that they are looking for peace, i.e. silence.

And here is a rather interesting word, found while reading a chapter of the 'Clavicles of Rabbi Solomon' which says that the celestial intelligences make themselves seen and communicated more willingly in the silence and in the tranquility of solitude.

And here is that silence takes on another dimension that we notice in politics for example.
What can we say about the assassinations of Vladimir Putin's opponents and journalists who investigate and denounce the corruption of power seem to leave Western observers unmoved. They remain silent.
On the other hand, at the United Nations, in recent days, another definition of the word silence has been given, namely: abstention. This is what several countries have done, giving their silence by not opposing a vote in favor of President Trump.

A film by Pierre Rehov "The Refugees of Silence" tells the story of the million Jews who were forced to flee the Arab countries where their families had been established for hundreds, even thousands of years. These people had been stripped of all their possessions before their departure. This made them refugees. Although they never asked for this status and never benefited from it. Nor did they receive any compensation.
Who told us about these refugees of silence when we are daily broken by the Palestinian refugees who left, most of them voluntarily?

It is true that the situation of the Palestinians in the so-called
occupied territories, or rather disputed territories, is terrible and
worrying, but it is above all for a majority of Arabs a pretext for
hatred against the Jews. Meanwhile, the Syrian people are being
massacred in the indifference and silence of the other Arab peoples

The attacks committed by a Muslim minority, claiming to be part of the
Islamic State, in the Philippines, a country with a Christian
majority, are not mentioned, while the media openly criticize the
silence of Aung San Sui Kyi, the current head of the Burmese
government, in the case of the Rohyngas

In conclusion I will end with a word from the Treatise of Principles (Pirke Avot) that would apply well to this work:
I grew up among wise men and found that there is nothing better than
SILENCE