Honoring the Time to Be Silent

by Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook

            The structures of a person’s spirit suffer great destruction when the inner light of “a time to be silent” (Ecclesiastes 3:7) appears, when holy, supernal muteness in all of the splendor of its glory and the gravity of its burden fills his entire soul, yet he rebels against it and breaches it.
            That rebellion against the sovereignty of silence destroys all of its structures, all of the treasury of simplicity and uprightness, of profundity and supernal connection. All of that is shattered.
            If this person wishes to build its ruins, he must afterwards reestablish everything anew. At that time, the wise person will be silent.
 
            However, if a person gives silence its due when it first appears, it will perform its duty, establish its muteness, penetrate in its profundity and reach the perplexities of its depths, from which it will bring forth mighty foliage and branches with the power of great and fresh blossoming. The leaves will be filled with power and the expression of his lips will emerge.
 
            Then the “time to speak” (ibid.) will begin in its glorious majesty. A spirit of silence is the angel that acts upon the outpouring of speech, which will flow like streams, with great abundance and all beauty.
            “‘[I] create the speech of the lips. Peace, peace, to the distant and to the near,’ says Hashem, ‘and I will heal him’” (Isaiah 57:19).
            “Its fruit will be for food and its leaf for healing” (Ezekiel 47:12), “freeing the mouth of the mute” (j. Shekalim 6:1).
            Orot Hakodesh, Volume 3, p. 275
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