TELLING IT STRAIGHT

At Avot 2:5 Hillel teaches a number of principles for guidance in one’s relations with others. Among them is this:

אַל תֹּאמַר דָּבָר שֶׁאִי אֶפְשַׁר לִשְׁמֽוֹעַ שֶׁסּוֹפוֹ לְהִשָּׁמַע

Depending on one’s preference, this can be translated in one of two ways:

Do not say something that is impossible to understand if it is meant to be understood

or

Do not say something where it is impossible that it should be heard, for ultimately it will be heard.

Aside from noting the irony that Hillel’s own words appear to be incapable of bearing a single meaning that can be immediately understood, there is much to be said about the notion of speaking plainly so that one’s words will always be understood.  Much if not most of then tractate of Avot focuses, whether directly or indirectly, on the process of imparting and acquiring understanding of Torah. Given this overarching context, the importance of teaching only that which can be understood is obvious and needs no further elucidation.

Of modern commentators, Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai) is among the most forthright in promoting the notion that plain speech is best. Say what you mean to say and leave no-one in doubt of the meaning of your words. He writes:

“If we have something to say, we should say it outright, clearly and plainly. Others should not have to work hard to plumb the depths of our meaning, because this can lead to grave errors, and even to the point of disaster, God forbid. If the issues are complicated and our words are ambiguous, there is a great risk that people will misunderstand. Especially when dealing with sensitive matters like faith and belief, this is very dangerous. There is no room for uncertainty here, and we should not be the unwitting cause of it, God forbid”.

This must be the ideal position, especially in matters of Torah instruction and matters of Jewish religious practice. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) however explains that it must be qualified in the field of psychotherapy, where a patient is in denial and any attempt to get him to accept the truth of a proposition is bound to fail until the patient becomes capable of accepting it for himself.

There may be further limitations. The Yalkut Gershoni, Knesset Yisrael and Meir Nesiv all apply this teaching to the mitzvah of tochachah, rebuking others, and indeed it seems appropriate to do so—but this works best in the field of practical halachah. If you tell someone, for example, that they are not putting their tefillin on correctly, it is necessary to spell out explicitly both the error and its means of putting it right. However, there are other areas where a more indirect approach may be preferred both by the speaker and his addressee, particularly when others may overhear the conversation. Anyone who has had to let someone know that they smell and that either they or their clothing needs prompt attention, as I once had to do, will know what I mean.  

Sometimes a failure to say directly what one means will produce quite an unsatisfactory result. Let me cite here a relatively trivial incident drawn from my own experience. On one occasion, when visiting an aged relative in a retirement home, one of the other residents called out to me: “You make a better door than a window”. I had no idea what this cryptic comment meant until someone informed me that my addressee was complaining that I was standing between her and her television screen.

I have recently taken to listening to what I say, playing it back, and wondering how clearly, I am expressing myself in terms of Hillel-compliance. This exercise has led me to conclude that the meaning of much if not most of what I say is governed by context, not clarity. For example, I might come back from a fruit-and-vegetable shopping trip and announce, “the grapefruit today were quite reasonable”. To a third party, eavesdropping on my words, this message must have seemed quite baffling.  “Reasonable” is not a word that is usually paired with “grapefruit”—and is there such a thing as an unreasonable grapefruit?  But context is everything. If I have been shopping in a discount store where the goods are of variable quality, “reasonable” will be taken as “of reasonable quality”. However, if I have returned from an expensive upmarket store, “reasonable” will be understood as “reasonably priced”. Is there a point to this exercise? Yes. It shows that the standard of comprehensibility must be subjective, in keeping with the addressee’s knowledge, and not objective.

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