Only when we learn to listen to the sounds of silence, will we be able to enjoin the other in genuine dialogue.

By Paul Mendes-Flohr

The stranger at my fireside cannot see

The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Haunted Houses”

The voices of silence are many, some melodic, others dissonant. During my morning stroll through the streets of my Jerusalem neighborhood I pass dwellings one after the other that were formerly the homes of Muslim and Christian Palestinians. In the wake of the intercommunal conflict that led to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, their former inhabitants fled–most often with the calculated “encouragement” of their Jewish neighbors. Their homes were subsequently pillaged and claimed by the infant State of Israel. The distinctive Middle Eastern architectural contours of these dwellings, now the homes of Jewish Israelis, mark them as haunted by the phantoms of their former forlorn residents. 

The abiding presence of these phantoms have no voice, yet they can be heard–if one chooses to listen. Henry Longfellow’s poem attests to the harrowing presence of the phantoms of the indigenous populations of America that haunted his home. Similarly, one cannot stride through the byways of Berlin, Warsaw, or Odessa without hearing the silent phantoms of their once thriving Jewish populations that still haunt those cities–that are to be heard if one chooses to listen.

But how is one to listen? Longfellow would suggest that one must consciously resist being a stranger to the past: oblivious to those scars and torments of the past inscribed in the silent crevices of the present. We might also learn from Paul Simon’s 1966 hymn of counterculture: “The Sounds of Silence.” In this indictment of the deracinated denizens of the modern social landscape who “talk without speaking and hear with listening,” Simon beseeches us to listen to the words “whispered in the sounds of silence.”

It was a tragic encounter that brought the philosopher Martin Buber to appreciate the significance–indeed the imperative–of listening to what is veiled in silence. He reports that while sitting at his desk one morning, he heard someone pounding on the door of his home in a bucolic village in Western Germany. Rushing to open the door, he was met by a young man in palpable distress. Wishing to honor the young man’s urgent desire to speak to him, Buber beckoned the stranger in for a brief conversation. The early morning guest posed questions, which Buber patiently addressed. The following day, Buber learned that the young man had taken his life. Buber was suddenly gripped by the realization that although he had cordially replied to his guest's spoken questions, he had failed to address the unspoken concerns etched on the guest's forehead, “to listen to the unspoken word.” This graced flash of insight, moment of enlightenment, or satori as it is referred to in Zen Buddhism, sowed the seeds for Buber's philosophy of dialogue.

Dialogue need not be spoken. As Buber explains in an essay entitled “Dialogue,” published in Between Man and Man, “Just as the most eager speaking at one another does not make for a conversation… so for a conversation no sound is necessary, not even a gesture.”  The soundless speech of dialogue is not even the “tender silence” shared between lovers, “resting in one another,” and sharing a gaze, “rich in inward relations.” Dialogical listening, however, is of a radically different order.

Buber differentiates dialogical listening from an empathetic identification with the feelings and experiences of others, which is often based on the assumption that one's own experiences are analogous to those of others. For empathy, by its very nature, entails a projection of meaning that may not be consonant or consistent with that of others–and thus, in effect, denies the existential integrity of the other’s experiences and feelings.

To avoid this interpretative cycle–to circumvent this hermeneutic circle, as it were–Buber spoke of dialogical inclusion: he challenges us to listen to the other's voice, whether it is muffled in silence or not, without imposing our own interpretations. We must simply allow it to resonate alongside our own "story," our own inner voice. To listen to the voice of the other is to be attuned to a shared experience “from the other side. One thus "actively participates" in the other's experience "without sacrificing anything of [one's own] felt reality" and "lives through a common event from the standpoint of the other." Genuine dialogue, he concluded, "arises from an experience of inclusion" when even the “shared silence of two such persons” is in dialogue. Even when they are physically separated, the dialogical life of two people in a dialogue remains as “the continual potential for the presence of one to the other.”

The silent acknowledgement of the existential integrity of the other’s voice induces a humble self-awareness of the singularity of one’s own “story,” and thereby blunts self-centered myopic indifference to the experienced reality of the other. As he describes in I and Thou: “Only silence before the Thou–the Other–silence of all tongues, silence patience in the undivided word–leaves the Thou free.”

Dialogical listening requires that we open ourselves to the voice of the other by surrendering the protective “armor” we as individuals and communities have developed to secure our own story, and to “ward-off signs” addressed to us “without respite.” But because “the soundless thundering seems to threaten us with annihilation,” shedding our armor is a risk we too often regard as “too dangerous.” We prefer instead to “perfect [our] defense mechanism.” However, if the risk is taken and the armor is discarded, one will cease listening only to oneself and begin attending to the voice of the other. Buber articulated this ultimate sine qua non of dialogical listening through a teaching of a Hasidic master. Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezerich, once told his disciples: “I shall teach you the best way to [hear] Torah,” the word of God. “You must cease to be aware of yourselves. You must be nothing but an ear which hears what the universe of the word is constantly saying within you. The moment you start hearing what you yourself are saying, you must stop.” 

Dialogical listening demands an epistemological and existential leap beyond one’s cherished conceptions of truth and self-preoccupations. Thus, Buber implores us in an essay entitled “What is to be Done:” “You, imprisoned in the shells in which society, state, church, school, economy, public opinion, and your own pride have stuck you, […] break through your shells” and reach out to others. For, “each individual you meet needs help, each needs your help” – as ultimately you need theirs. For, “it is the nature of man to leave equally unnoticed [their own] innermost need. […] You shall awaken in the other the need of help, and in yourself the capacity to help. Even when you yourself are in need – and you are – you can help others and, in doing so, help yourself.” Alas, “the voices of the unknown, the familiar [are] silent.” 

What then are we to do? According to Buber: one is to pose the question “What can I do?” The answer is echoed when Saint Paul implores, ‘You shall not withhold yourself’ (1 Corinthians 7:5). Silently the world waits for the spirit, the spirit of attentive listening to the reticent voice of the Other and pari-passu one’s own need to be heard.

So conceived, dialogical listening is all the more urgent when humanity is in the grips of diabolic forces fueled by ruthless Realpolitik and forebodings of catastrophic climate change. In this context, we are beckoned to heed the cry of the German poet Berthold Brecht, who spoke out from Denmark where he had fled from Hitler's henchmen:

To Those Born After

What kind of times are these, when

To talk about trees is almost a crime

Because it implies silence about so many horrors?

When the man over there calmly crossing the street

Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends

Who are in need? […]

The Voices of Silence are many, resonant with wounds–social and existential. They each bear muffled sonic appeals to be heard. Walking the hills not far from my home in Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth implored: “Anyone with ears to hear should listen!” (Matthew 13:9).

Paul Mendes-Flohr

Founder of the Global Lehrhaus and Professor Emeritus at The University of Chicago Divinity School and The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Paul Mendes-Flohr, PhD. currently resides in Jerusalem. In 2019, Mendes-Flohr published Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent. The German translation appeared in 2022 and in Hebrew in 2023. His most recent work, Cultural Disjunctions: Post-Traditional Jewish Identities, was published in 2021.