When two quarrel, he who keeps silence first is more praiseworthy. Remember the old saying, silence is golden. The person who gives vent to his wrath destroys his household. These are words we all could benefit from in this day and age. There’s so much strife in so many households. Strife is like the plank of a bridge, the longer it exists the firmer it becomes. According to the Talmud, there are four kinds of tempers: he whom it is easy to provoke and easy to pacify, his loss disappears in his gain; he whom it is hard to provoke and hard to pacify, his gain disappears in his loss; he whom it is hard to provoke and easy to pacify is a saint; he whom it is easy to provoke and hard to pacify is a wicked man. Take a look and see which category you fit in. It may be one you might want to work on.

The Mishna also says, happy is he who hears an insult and ignores it, a hundred evils pass him by. We can all have peace in a very “unpeaceful” world. Great praise is to be bestowed upon the peacemaker. One of the virtues of which man eats the fruit in this world and the capital remains for the World to Come, is establishing peace between a man and his fellow (Pesh.1 1). Let’s take a look at how far one person went to strive for peace. R. Meir used to lecture in the synagogue every Sabbath eve and a certain woman always came to listen to him. On one night he prolonged his lecture to last much longer than usual. When arriving home, the woman found the lamp already extinguished.

Her husband demanded to know where she had been, she told him she had been listening to the lecturer. He took an oath that he would not let her in the house until she spat in the Rabbi’s face. By means of the Holy Spirit, Rabbi Meir knew what had happened to her. He at once pretended to have sore eyes and announced, “let any woman who is able to cure my eyes with a charm, come and do so.” The woman’s friend whom she was staying with said, “now is the time to get back into your house. pretend that you can cure him by spitting in his eyes.” She went to see him and he ask of her, “are you able to use a charm for the eyes?” Out of respect for him she replied that indeed she could not. He told her to spit in his eyes seven times never the less and he would be better.

When she had done so, he said to her, “go tell your husband he wanted you to spit only once, but you have spit seven times.” His disciples were outraged! If she had only informed “us” of what had happened we would have chastised him with straps until he had done what was right with his wife. The wise Rabbi replied to them, “should not the honor of Meir be like the honor of his Maker?” To put it another way, if YHVH did what he did for mankind, what is some spit in your face? Will spit take away your life? Will it hang you on a tree beaten and bloody? We as humans are so overly concerned about “our egos” and the possibility of “eating a bit of crow” that’s its pathetic. The Talmud states by three things the world is preserved: by truth, by judgement, and by peace.

In the absence of peace there can be neither prosperity nor well being. It is said of Aaron when he met two men who were at enmity with one another, he would do the following. He would sit with the one man and say, look how your friend is behaving; he beats his breast, tears his garment, and cries, woe is me, how can I look upon his face after I acted so shabbily to my friend! Aaron would sit with him until he had banished all ill feelings. Then he would go and do the exact same thing with the other man. The result was that when the two men met they embraced each other and all was forgotten. Such is the way we all should pursue peace. We all know that Yeshua is the Prince of peace. If we concentrate on becoming like him, peace will flow from us like a river. It’s only when the flesh gets in the picture that peace flees. So we can all see two things in life are golden, peace and silence. Sometimes if we would exercise more silence, more peace would come into our lives automatically. Until next week, peace be unto you all.