Being Right or Being Close

As King Solomon wrote: “Starting a fight is like letting water out through a crack in a dam. So walk away before the quarrel breaks open.” Opening “Starting a fight is like letting water out through a crack in a dam. So walk away before the quarrel breaks open.” King Solomon was the wisest of all people, and he compares a fight to water bursting out of a dam. Once that first crack opens, no one is in control anymore. The water keeps flowing. Every “right answer” you add does not close the dam. It breaks it open a little more. But a hard question remains. Should we really ask a person to stay quiet when he is right? Isn’t truth worth something? The Bible says: “Buy truth, and do not sell it!” Think of the learned man at home, used to building sharp arguments and winning them. He knows he has an answer. It is precise and sharp, and it is completely true. Why should he stay silent? The First Movement: Two Choices Pay attention to this moment. She said something sharp. An answer rises up inside you. It is exact, logical, a “win.” Now you are standing before a choice. The choice is not between truth and a lie. The choice is between two kinds of truth. The first is your private truth: your claim, your point, your “I’m right.” This truth comes from the mind. It is the truth of one person alone, and its whole aim is to prove that you stand higher. The second is the truth of the bond between you: the truth that the two of you belong to each other. The Torah says: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cling to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” One. Not two people, where one has beaten the other. When you choose the winning answer, you prove that you are right. And at that very same moment, you create a split between you. The teachers of Jewish mysticism put it this way: “Strict judgment divides.” Judgment, even fair judgment, by its nature pulls people apart. Kindness brings them together. Judgment divides. The Second Movement: The Real Price of Winning You have given your perfect answer. What happens next? She goes quiet. Silence. You feel as if you won. But listen closely. This is not the silence of peace. It is the silence of distance. That kind of “quiet” is harder than any noise, because it is made of the broken pieces of a closeness that has cracked. A young married man, or a working man, who is used to sharp thinking and clever argument knows how to win. That is his tool. In the study hall, in his study session, working through a hard passage of the Talmud, it is a real strength. At home? The same tool becomes a weapon. And a weapon also wounds the one who holds it. Maimonides, the great master of clear reason, does not have to be the model for how we talk at home. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, preferred the warmth of the heart over the coldness of dry reasoning. He taught a different way. True greatness is not in winning. It is in making room for the other person. And where the temptation to win grows strongest, there the privilege of giving way is greater still. The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, teaches us to love Hashem, and to “love your fellow as yourself.” And no “fellow” is closer to you than the one you live with under one roof. Giving way is not weakness. Giving way means setting yourself aside for the sake of something greater than you: for the sake of oneness, for the sake of Hashem’s presence that rests between a husband and wife. Closing: True Strength Abraham our father was greater than Lot in every way. Yet he said to his nephew: “Please, let there be no quarrel between me and you.” He gave way. He gave way even on the Land of Israel itself. He did not do this because he thought Lot was right. He did it because he understood that closeness is worth more than any piece of land. This is true strength: not saying the sharp answer. It means closing your mouth the moment the water starts to move. “Starting a fight is like letting water out through a crack in a dam.” You have to stop at the very beginning, while the dam is still whole. Once it has burst, it is very hard to gather the water back. Our Sages teach: “Torah scholars increase peace in the world.” What makes a Torah scholar truly special is not the sharp argument that wins the debate. It is turning his sharp mind into a tool for making room and making peace. That way the home becomes “a vessel that holds blessing,” and not an arena where arguments are won and lost.