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.
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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