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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"Please don't let me be misunderstood"

“Oh, I'm just a soul whose intentions are good.
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood”.

Readers of this post with an interest in music may recognise these words as the chorus of a much-recorded 1964 song, ‘Please don’t let me be misunderstood’. As humans who communicate with one another through actions and words, there are two prime means of failing to understand others. One is through our actions; the other is by our speech.

Avot encourages us to judge others favourably (Avot 1:6), but this is not a foolproof way of avoiding misunderstanding. In effect, it demands of us that we impose a favourable construction on what we see or hear—but it only comes into play once we regard what we see or hear as wrongful, unethical or illegal conduct. It is also hard to do in many situations, for example where a physician prescribes the wrong dosage of a medication on the basis of an inadequate understanding of the condition he is treating.

The ideal resolution of misunderstandings is for everyone to speak and write with perfect clarity and to act in a manner that is entirely unambiguous. This isn’t going to happen, particularly at a time when time is precious, soundbites are king and patience is short. We also live in an era in which we are apt to neglect the art of attentive listening and accurate reading.

Be that as it may, we can all do better if we try.  And try we should, because the stake are high and the cost of failure in the joined-up age of the social media can be devastating. This is the point made by Rabbi Elchanan Poupko in a recent Times of Israel blogpost (“Pirkei Avot: Words Tested by Time”, here) There he quotes the warning given by Avtalyon that opens Avot 1:11: “Sages, be careful with your words”. Avtalyon continues by dramatically depicting a scenario in which words erroneously spoken by a person with influence are picked up by followers who take them to heart, with potentially fatal consequences.

R; Poupko develops this theme and takes it further:

“… Even when saying the right thing, someone in a position of authority must be extra careful about what will be done with those words. True, you can always clarify and answer questions about what it is that you meant when you are at the place where you are making your statements, but you may not always be there. You will not always be able to clarify your words. If this was something we needed to elaborate on decades and centuries ago, the advances of the internet and social media make it clearer than ever. Statements that are made as part of a conversation and developing a thought can be screenshotted and immortalized into iron-clad statements.

What is said to one group with a certain sensitivity and understanding can then be lifted and posted to another group that will not share the same understanding. What is said privately to one person who needs to hear one thing can be easily made public to others, and the most intimate of exchanges are just a screenshot away from potentially being presented to billions of people who will use it against a person who innocently wrote it for an audience of one. This is why sages, rabbis, and people in public positions must be extra careful about what they say. Even if something is right, true, and appropriate for one audience, the speaker must consider the possibility that they will one day not be there to explain the words that were spoken and now might be misunderstood and misused”.  

It’s hard even for the most literate among us to escape having our words misconstrued, since their comprehension depends on how others read or hear them. But we can still make the effort. Avtalyon’s advice is none the less correct on account of the challenge we face in following it

Many of us will have little difficulty in recalling politicians, teachers, entertainers, sports personalities and family members whose words have been either inaccurately quoted or accurately quoted out of context, to devastating effect. Each time this happens, there is a personal misfortune or even tragedy at the end of it. Before we too play our part in this cycle of misunderstanding we should ask ourselves: is this what God wants of us? And are we being the sort of person we really want to be?

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