Moshe Rabbeinu informs us that we are to leave Egypt with great wealth “borrowed” from the Egyptians. The medrash informs us that every Jew left Egypt with 90 lubian donkeys laden with the best of everything that Egypt had to offer. We are further taught by the medrash that for this effort of carrying the heavy loads, the donkeys were rewarded that every firstborn donkey was vested with holiness, and thus needed to be redeemed by a sheep or to have its neck broken. Similarly, we find that by the plague of frogs, those frogs that heroically entered the ignited furnaces were rewarded by not dying from the fierce heat of the ovens.
Yet, a third example of the prowess of animal-kind during the Egyptian era was the fact that the dogs didn’t bark as we left Egypt at midnight. This is, although they had plenty of reasons to be barking, for the Gemara in Masechtas Berachos tells us that midnight is a time when dogs usually bark. Furthermore, when the malach hamaves, the angel of death comes, the Gemara says that dogs yelp. Also, the Gemara tells us that it is the nature of dogs to bark when there are a lot of corpses around, and this was definitely the case on the night of makkos bechoros, the tenth plague of the death of the firstborns. Finally, these were border patrol dogs that were highly trained to bark if anyone crossed the border and now millions of Jews were escaping. Yet, no dogs barked.
For this behavior, the dogs received three rewards. First, they were granted to be given treife meat, as the pasuk tells us about the treife, “Lakelev tashlichin oso – It should be cast to the dogs.” Next, we treat the parchment of the sefer Torah with a byproduct of dogs. Third, the dogs were granted their own song in Perek Shira.
Rav Elyah Lopian, zt”l, zy”a, asks why there is such a discrepancy between the rewards given to the dogs and the rewards for the donkeys and the frogs. For all of their manual labor, the donkeys got their necks broken. And regarding the frogs, they didn’t die, but that was just for that generation alone. However, all of dog-kind was rewarded throughout the millennia with receiving the treifos, getting to be part of the manufacture of the sefer Torah, and singing to Hashem with Shira. Rav Lopian answers with a flourish that we see from this that keeping one’s mouth shut is a greater feat and accomplishment than manual labor or even going into a lit oven.
This fundamental idea of how important is the trait and the power of keeping ones mouth shut is echoed in Pirkei Avos where it teaches us, “Shimon b’no omeir, ‘Kol yomai gadalti bein hachachamim, v’lo matzasi l’guf tov m’shtika – Shimon, his [Rabban Gamli’eil’s] son said, ‘All my life I grew up amongst the sages and I never found anything better for the body than the art of silence.’” The Gemara makes a stunning statement: “Mah umnoso shel adam b’olam hazeh? Ya’aseh atzmo k’ileim – What is a person’s profession in this world? He should make himself like a mute.” The Gemara is educating us that although we each have our own profession, whether accountant, plumber, doctor, lawyer, or bus driver, there is another profession that we all need to master, and that is the talent of knowing how to control ourselves from saying a nasty or satirical rejoinder, mastering not need to have the last word, and learning that keeping quiet will preserve the harmony in the home and save oneself from receiving the cold treatment from their spouse the whole evening or even for the entire weekend.
The pasuk says, “Toleh eretz al blimah.” Literally this means “The world is suspended upon nothingness.” But the Gemara explains it homiletically: “Ein ha’olam miskai’em ela b’mi she’boleim piv b’shas merivah – The world is sustained by those who know how to shut their mouth during a time of quarrel.”
In the merit of knowing when to “zip it,” may we be blessed with long life, good health, harmony, and everything wonderful.
(To be continued)
Transcribed and edited by Shelley Zeitlin.
