Kathy Schultz, a professor of education at the University of Colorado (and, by coincidence, my elementary school science teacher), has written extensively about the role of silence in education. Silence among learners, she offers, can reflect any number of things: obedience, defiance, uncertainty, reflection, engagement, indifference, or some combination of these and others. This can be a challenge for educators, who may struggle to correctly interpret what their students are conveying at any given time.
Today’s daf also considers the propriety of silence in various situations. The first example is a narrative that many struggle with: the death of Aaron’s sons. According to Leviticus 10, Aaron’s sons went before the Tabernacle and offered a “strange fire” that hadn’t been requested. A fire then came forth from God and killed them. In response, Moses repeats to Aaron what God had told him previously: “Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.” Aaron’s response is silence.
There are numerous interpretations of this episode, and the Talmud adds to the pile. Citing Exodus 29:43 (“And there I will meet with the children of Israel; and it shall be sanctified by My glory”), the Talmud reads the Hebrew word for “by my Glory” (bikhvodi) as bimekhubadai, “by My honored ones,” with the following implications:
Once the sons of Aaron died, (Moses) said to him: Aaron, my brother, your sons died only to sanctify the name of the Holy One, Blessed be He. When Aaron knew that his sons were beloved by the Omnipresent, he was silent and received a reward, as it is stated: “And Aaron held his peace.”
In what appears to be an attempt to comfort Aaron, Moses calls his sons martyrs and interprets their deaths as a sign of God’s love for them. Whatever one may think of this attempt to console his brother, Aaron’s silence meets with God’s approval, and may have even been rewarded by having God address him directly.
As a second example of silence in the face of loss and adversity, we turn to Psalms 37:7:
And likewise by David it states: “Resign yourself to the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.” Although He strikes down many corpses around you, you be silent.
Psalm 37, among the many psalms attributed to David, centers on faith in God. Once again, the Talmud makes an inference based on wordplay, noting the similarity between the word for “wait patiently” (vehitholel) and halalim, referring to the bodies of fighting companions who fell in battle. As with Aaron, the Talmud reads this verse as equating silence with faith in God, even (or especially) in the face of death.
This is not to say that silence is always appropriate:
And likewise by Solomon it states: “A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” There are times that one is silent and receives reward for the silence, and at times one speaks and receives reward for the speech.
This verse from Ecclesiastes is taken from the very passage that supplies the lyrics for the famous song “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Like Schultz, Solomon’s view is that silence doesn’t have a fixed meaning: sometimes, it’s warranted and welcome, and other times, not so much.
It would be great if the Talmud (or Solomon, in his wisdom) gave us some more specifics of when silence and speech each would be rewarded, but sadly, we’re left without additional guidance to assess how our responses will be received by a divine (or other) audience. Instead, we’re left to guess what our audience is looking forward to and factor that into our decisions and actions.
Read all of Zevachim 115 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on January 7, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
