The Power of a Pause

The Power of a Pause
Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal

For the last few months, my children have been obsessed with Hamilton. Yes, they are about 10 years behind the times, but the musical holds up and is just as engaging as when it first gripped our cultural zeitgeist. In one of the songs, Hamilton is teaching the audience the ten commandments of a duel, various rules that you have to uphold before a battle for your honor. Of the ten duel commandments, three are about pausing and trying to negotiate a peace so that the duel doesn’t have to take place and everyone can go home. It is only if those three negotiations fail that you take aim at your opponent. And lest you think Hamilton is taking some creative license, the historical record reflects the fact that multiple opportunities for peace negotiations were an essential part of the duel.

What is the purpose of this pause? The purpose is to allow both parties to imagine another possible outcome, to remind themselves that duel to the death is not the only way. A pause is necessary before possible irreversible destruction.

Our Torah reflects this as well. This week, we read about a house that has become infested with some kind of plague. The priest comes over and tries closing up the house for seven days, to see if it will go away. If that doesn’t work, the priest pulls out the infected bricks, scrapes off the plaster and rebuilds that section of the home. Then again, we wait for seven days. If that still doesn’t work, the house is torn down, and its contaminated pieces are scattered in an area outside the camp.

What is this 14 day pause about? Most straightforwardly, it is preventing people from destroying their houses every time they see something growing on their walls. But there is something deeper happening here. Rashi is disturbed by the idea that we would take down someone’s house just because of some kind of contamination on the walls. He says that the destruction of the house is a blessing in disguise, because those who take down their houses will find gold in the walls, left by the previous owners. The plague on the walls is a sign of a hidden treasure.

I can’t help but think about those who lost their homes in the LA fires earlier this year, or those in Israel who have been evacuated and are worried about losing their homes. I imagine that even if they found treasure in the walls, they might give it up to get their homes back. While I appreciate Rashi trying to find a silver lining, I’m not sure that this is in line with what the Torah is trying to teach.

The Eish Kodesh, the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto, is also confused by Rashi’s statement. He asks, if the destruction of the house is actually a blessing, then why does the Torah ask us to wait 14 days before taking down the house? If the plague was a signal you would find gold, wouldn’t you take it down right away? He comments that, in a moment of uncertainty, you never know if what you are walking into is a blessing in disguise or just as bad as you thought it was going to be. And so, the Torah asks us to pause and sit with the uncertainty and the pain that comes with possible destruction of the house. Whether or not you will end up destroying the house, whether or not you find gold in the walls, there is still loss and we should pause and sit with it.

My dear seniors, I imagine that many of you are sitting in a place of uncertainty right now, mourning the end of your high school careers, feeling excitement and some trepidation about what lies ahead. And I know your parents are feeling all these things too. This kind of change can be scary, even without all the challenges of being a Jew in college right now. Our Torah portion reminds us that it is ok, in fact it is healthy, to sit with that for a while. We cannot jump over it, even if we are certain that we are headed for blessings, as I hope and pray all of you are. So whatever you are feeling tonight, take a pause and hold on to that before you rush ahead, and we will continue to hold onto you for just a few more precious moments.

There is another purpose for the pause, one that I hope will guide our seniors on their journeys and will enlighten all of us as well. We pause so we can learn. Rashi teaches that even if you are an expert in plagues of houses, you need to wait until a priest comes and confirms what is happening. We don’t want you to destroy your house unless absolutely necessary and so you have to wait and learn from an outside expert whether this plague is something for which you need to take down your home. We pause so we can take in new information and possibly chart a different course, one that doesn’t lead to total annihilation.

We live in a world that is terrible at pausing. We post on social media, we text, we respond, often without thinking. We don’t like what you say? You’re cancelled. We hear something that makes us even a little uncomfortable? We’re done with you. And a pause to actually learn something, to hear that we might be wrong, to change our mind or add to our ideas? Unthinkable.

Tonight, I want to urge another path for all of us, but especially for our graduating seniors. Many of you will be going off to college campuses or gap years, or other activities, where you will have a tremendous opportunity to learn and to grow. You will learn from teachers, from your fellow students, from classes, and travel, and community activities. We hope that you will find connections and learning opportunities in the Jewish community and that it will anchor you as you navigate new things. Sometimes you will learn things that will support your sense of self and your understanding of the world. Sometimes you will learn things that will challenge you or make you question what you have learned before. And I encourage you to be open to these new ideas, to give them space to impact you, and occasionally change you.

But sometimes you make space to learn but the space is just a void. Making space doesn’t mean changing who you are, giving up your values, or bending to the will of others. Not every pause is a growth opportunity. The Torah acknowledges that sometimes what you learn in the pause will leave you in the exact same place. The house has a plague and has to be torn down. But our Torah implores us to make that the last resort. Try to wait, and patch the cracks, try to find another way, before you take the whole house down.

More often than not, there is a real benefit in slowing down, in waiting, in pausing. As Rashi reminds us, we wait for the expert because we cannot be sure if what we see is harmless discoloration or a vicious plague. The Torah sees a danger in letting each homeowner decide whether to take down their house, because they are likely to make a rash decision without all the information they need. They might destroy their house unnecessarily or they might leave up their house and inadvertently allow it to decay. Either way, they need more information.

And it is the same with us. We hear something on the news, especially if it fits the narrative we’ve already created, and we don’t wait to consider whether or not it is true before posting it everywhere. We have a misunderstanding with a friend and cut them out of our lives without taking a moment to ask them what’s going on. We are so sure we are right that we don’t pause long enough to consider that we might be able to make a less destructive choice.

But if we can’t find a way to pause and learn, I worry about the destruction that awaits us, as Americans, as Jews, as human beings. The house will crumble because we are too quick to move from seeing a spot on the wall to pieces of the home scattered outside the camp. If we jump straight to destroying the house, we prevent people from ever learning. We have to pause, to learn, to examine the situation and find a way forward that brings people into the community, instead of driving them out.

Our tradition teaches that the Torah is black fire written on white fire. The space between the words, the pauses and openings for conversation, connection and learning, are just as important as the words themselves. So make room for that white space, take a holy pause. You never know what might happen in that opening.