This week’s Torah portion of Shemini contains the gripping and in some ways inexplicable sudden loss of Aaron’s two sons, Nadav and Avihu, "who brought a strange fire that was not commanded of them." Tied to this tragic episode, which some explain as resulting from their hubris and overweening pride, either before God and/or their elders, is Aaron’s unique and perhaps signature response to loss and tragedy. The Torah text notes that Aaron’s response to the sudden death of these two sons was silence: "Vayidom Aharon." In the face of his enormous and on some level inexplicable loss, words were woefully inadequate. Aaron thus displays a mute response to his suffering. From his actions he teaches future generations that in moments of loss and tragedy words may fall short when dealing with emotional pain. Instead, there is a certain eloquence and perhaps even elegance to silence demonstrated and practiced before those who are engulfed by loss. By our presence we say more than by our words. One’s ability to withhold comment and vain explanation but rather listen to and be available for the mourner with unconditional love and affirmation can be far more potent than any exercise of verbiage to explain that which words cannot capture.

Hence the traditional Jewish custom, when making a shiva visit, of not initiating conversation before the mourner; instead, we wait for the mourner to say something and take our cues from those sentiments.

This approach to comforting the bereaved flies in the face of our contemporary American approach, which is to have something to say for all occasions. The result, however, is that talk has become cheap and little thought is often given to comments made in the face of people’s pain and worries. We easily ask people, "How are you?" and barely give much interest to their response. Indeed, ours is a culture of much talk and less action. Our rabbis and teachers intuited this tendency long ago when they instructed us in various places to "say less and do more" — "emor me’at v’aseh harbeh." And there is the comment of Shimon ben Gamliel in Avot, "kol yamai gadalti bein hachachamim v’lo matzati l’guf tov eleh shtikah" — "all my days I have spent growing up among the wise and I have found nothing more helpful to the body than silence."

Silence has its golden moments and salutary effects. It can easily be argued that we can do more by being available to friends and loved ones with our support than with our armchair psychology. We do not always have to, nor can we, possess the answers for some of life’s mysteries. The sign of a wise person is the ability to recognize the imponderables in life and to leave some situations unexplained rather than engage in what can become less than useful philosophizing about the existence and prevalence of evil and suffering as part of our human condition.

I have heard near-heartless attempts by would-be consolers, sad statements that were hardly considered for their meaning and efficacy, proffered before aching mourners, when silence and a warm embrace would have said and accomplished more. It is true that we are uncomfortable in this idle mode and that our culture has made us think that we need to have something to say right away.

And so it is that Aaron teaches us by his own actions at the time of his own mourning to initially hold back and refrain from comment. There are times when words are woefully inadequate, especially when people are suffering from loss. We might better work on our listening skills to more ably hear the nuanced pain and strains of life.

It was Disraeli who was reported to have quipped that the human being was given two ears and one mouth and therefore should use those faculties in proper proportion, two-thirds of the time listening and one-third talking. Expanded to other realms of societal engagement, we are now finding great wisdom and guidance from those leaders who exhibit a more considered form of executive presence and lead more by their attentiveness to details and appreciation for their total environment than by quick comments and off-the-cuff statements.

While we cannot deny our singular skill as humans that resides in our capacity for verbal communication, the koach ha-dibbur, the power of speech, is not an unqualified good and benefit. As we have seen of late from the incendiary and inflammatory comments of certain religious leaders, the words of King Solomon from Proverbs ring loud and clear: "mavet v’chayim b’yad ha-lashon" — "life and death are in the power of the tongue." And it was Aaron who first taught us through his own tragedy when and how to hold our piece, and that, indeed, there is strength and might in silence.