What if they have already stopped asking you?

Sometimes silence at home reassures us. There are no complaints, no arguments, nobody asks anymore: when will you come home? Why are you not listening? It seems that everything settled down.

But sometimes silence is not peace. It is resignation.

A child stopped calling his father in the evening not because he no longer needed him, but because he realized that asking when he would come home never made him come home earlier. The silence was the moment the expectation broke.

As long as a person complains, there is something precious inside the complaint: he still believes there is a point in speaking. A more dangerous stage begins when he stops asking.

Before Yom Kippur we often look for the people who are angry with us. Perhaps we should also look for the people who no longer express their anger.

Is there someone whose silence you read as “everything must be fine”? Maybe the right question is: is there something you stopped asking from me because you felt there was no point?

Do not wait for someone to shout before realizing that something hurts.

Is there someone close whose silence you interpreted as peace without checking whether it was actually resignation?

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A father once told me that when his son was little, every time he left for work the child would ask, “Dad, when are you coming home?” In the evening he would call: “Dad, are you on your way already?” And when the father arrived home, the child would run to the door. The years passed, the business grew, and the father began coming home later and later. At first the boy still called. Then he called less. At some point he stopped calling altogether.

The father said that strangely enough, that was when he relaxed. He told himself: thank God, the boy is growing up. He does not need me all the time anymore. He is becoming more independent. Several more years passed until, one day, they had a deep conversation. The father asked his son, “Tell me, when you were little you called me every evening. Why did you stop?” The son answered simply: “Because I understood that even if I asked when you were coming home, you were not going to come home any earlier.”

The father said: at that moment I understood that his silence was not a sign that the problem had been solved.

His silence was a sign that he had stopped expecting.

There are sentences a person wishes he could forget.

There is a situation in which someone close to you is angry with you, and it hurts. He complains, demands, asks: Why did you do that? Why did you not come? Why are you not listening? Why are you speaking to me like that?

But as long as he is complaining, there is something very precious inside the complaint.

There is expectation.

He still believes there is a point in speaking to you.

He still thinks that perhaps you will listen.

He still wants something from the relationship.

There is a far more dangerous situation: he no longer complains.

Not because everything is fine.

Because he has given up.

And this may be one of the most painful questions of Shabbat Shuvah: Who in my life has stopped asking something of me, and am I certain that it is because he no longer needs it?

In the Song of Haazinu, Moses says: “Remember the days of old, understand the years of generation after generation; ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will say to you” (Deuteronomy 32:7). In the plain meaning of the verse, Moses calls on Israel to look at history, remember how God has guided them, and learn from earlier generations. Rashi explains: “Remember the days of old - what He did to the earlier generations who angered Him,” and later: “Ask your father - these are the prophets... your elders - these are the sages” (Deuteronomy 32:7).

But there is one word here that I want to take into the work of repentance: “understand.”

It is not enough to remember what happened.

We must understand what happened.

There is an enormous difference between the facts of a relationship and their meaning.

The fact is that the child stopped calling.

The comfortable interpretation is: he grew up.

But perhaps the real meaning is: he gave up.

The fact is that your wife stopped arguing with you about a certain issue.

The comfortable interpretation is: she finally understood.

But perhaps she simply concluded that there was no point in explaining anymore.

The fact is that a friend who used to call you often stopped calling.

The comfortable interpretation is: everyone is busy.

But perhaps in the last few times he felt he was always the one looking for you.

The fact is that someone who used to ask you for help no longer asks.

Perhaps he managed on his own.

And perhaps he learned that you are not the address.

“Understand the years of generation after generation.” Do not be satisfied with what you can see from the outside. Try to understand what happened inside the years.

This connects directly to Yom Kippur. The Mishnah in tractate Yoma teaches: “Transgressions between a person and God, Yom Kippur atones for; transgressions between one person and another, Yom Kippur does not atone until he appeases his fellow” (Yoma 8:9).

We all know this law. Before Yom Kippur, we ask forgiveness.

But there is a question: from whom?

Usually, we immediately think of the person who is angry with us. There was an argument. There was a hurt. He told us he was wounded. We know there is an open account, so we call and ask forgiveness.

But what about the person who is no longer angry out loud?

What about the one who has stopped demanding?

What about the one who has simply gotten used to it?

Maimonides rules: “Transgressions between a person and his fellow... are never forgiven until he gives his fellow what he owes him and appeases him” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 2:9). The word “appeases him” means it is not enough to check off the sentence, “I asked forgiveness.” There is a person here. There is a heart here. There is a relationship that needs to be soothed and repaired.

And sometimes, to get there, it is not enough to ask: “Do you forgive me?”

We need to ask a much braver question:

“Is there something you stopped telling me because you concluded there was no point?”

That is a frightening question.

Because we may receive an answer we do not want to hear.

A child may say: “Yes. I stopped telling you things because you were always looking at your phone while I was talking.”

A spouse may say: “Yes. I stopped asking you to come with me because I was tired of feeling that I had to force you.”

An elderly father may say: “Yes. I stopped asking you to visit more often because I know you are busy.”

What a terrible sentence that can be: “I know you are busy.”

Sometimes four words conceal years of longing.

And here an important qualification is necessary. Not every silence is a sign of hurt, and not everyone who stopped asking something of us was wounded by us. We must not turn every relationship into an investigation and search for guilt where there is none. But Shabbat Shuvah asks a person to be honest enough to examine whether there is a relationship in his life where he interpreted the silence in the way most convenient for him instead of asking what actually stood behind it.

Because there is a difference between peace and a ceasefire.

And there is a difference between someone who forgave you and someone who simply stopped fighting for the relationship.

Sometimes we proudly say: “In our house we do not argue about that anymore.”

The question is why.

Perhaps we solved the problem.

And perhaps someone simply gave up.

That is the first hard question of this message: Is there someone in your life with whom you think the relationship improved only because he stopped telling you how much he was hurt?

Yom Kippur forces us out of that comfortable place.

We stand before God and confess. Confession means that a person does not wait for someone else to file an indictment against him. He himself says: I sinned.

That is an extraordinary form of greatness.

Perhaps we need to bring some of that spirit into our relationships as well. Not wait for my wife to say it again. Not wait for my child to complain again. Not wait for my brother to pick up the phone. Not say, “If he had something against me, he would tell me.”

Maybe he already did.

Maybe not in words.

Maybe he said it by stopping telling you things.

Maybe by stopping inviting you.

Maybe by stopping arguing.

Maybe by becoming very polite.

Sometimes politeness is exactly what should frighten us in a relationship that was once close.

Once, you talked about everything. Now you say, “Everything is fine.”

Once, you fought and made up. Now you do not even fight, because you no longer enter places deep enough to fight about.

And a person says: wonderful, there is quiet.

But not every quiet is peace.

There is the quiet of closeness, and there is the quiet of distance.

King Solomon says: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, while the kisses of an enemy are abundant” (Proverbs 27:6). Sometimes the one who loves you enough is willing to hurt you with the truth he says. As long as someone close to you comments, asks, and tells you that he was hurt, perhaps he is giving you a gift: he is allowing you to know where the relationship hurts.

And what do we sometimes do?

We teach him not to speak.

The first time he complains, we explain to him why he is wrong.

The second time, we become defensive.

The third time, we get angry that he is bringing up the same subject again.

And the fourth time, he no longer brings it up.

Then we say: finally, the problem has been solved.

No.

Perhaps you simply succeeded in teaching the person that the only way to be near you in peace is not to tell you the truth.

That is the second hard question: Do the people closest to me feel safe telling me that I hurt them?

Not: Am I a good person?

Not: Do I love them?

A person can love very much and still be difficult to talk to.

Can my child say to me, “Dad, that hurt me,” without immediately receiving a lecture about why he misunderstood me?

Can my wife say, “I need more from you,” without my immediately opening the list of everything I already do?

Can a friend correct me without my punishing him with distance?

If the answer is no, I may be living inside a quiet that I myself created.

That is why I would suggest that this year we not be satisfied with the general messages we send before Yom Kippur: “If I hurt anyone, I ask forgiveness.”

It is a beautiful statement, but sometimes it allows us to remain very far from the person we actually hurt.

Choose one person close to you.

Not twenty.

One.

Ask that person a real question: “Is there something I did this year that hurt you and I did not repair? Is there something you no longer tell me because you think there is no point?”

Then do the hardest thing.

Do not explain.

Do not argue.

Do not say, “But you also...”

Do not tell him what your intention was.

Listen.

Because when asking forgiveness, the question is not only what I intended.

The question is also what the person in front of me went through because of me.

It may be that I meant well and he was still hurt. It may be that I did not understand. It may be that he also has a part in the story. All of that can be clarified later. But if the first moment in which a person opens his heart immediately turns into a courtroom, next time he simply will not open it.

And here I return to the child from the beginning.

Once he used to call every evening and ask: “Dad, when are you coming home?”

Then came the day when he stopped.

The father thought the boy had grown up.

In a sense, he was right.

The boy had indeed grown.

But he had grown by learning how to manage without something that had once been very precious to him.

Perhaps one of the most painful things a person can discover is that someone we love learned not to need us because we taught him that it was not worth waiting for us.

Before Yom Kippur, we ask God to hear our voice. We knock on the gate. Again and again we say: Our Father, our King, hear our voice, have compassion and mercy on us.

Maybe before we ask Heaven to hear us, we should check which voice beside us we have not heard for a long time.

Not because it is not speaking.

Maybe because it stopped.

So this year, do not look only for the person who is angry with you.

Look also for the person who is no longer angry out loud.

Do not look only for the one who demands an apology.

Look for the one who has already stopped demanding anything from you.

And do not assume that silence means everything is fine.

Sometimes the deepest thing a person can do before Yom Kippur is sit opposite someone he loves and say:

“I do not want you to have to give up on me in order for there to be peace between us. If there is something you stopped asking from me, I want to hear it now.”

There is forgiveness that comes after shouting.

And there is forgiveness that comes after years of silence.

The second kind demands far more courage from us, because no one is demanding it from us anymore.

Do not wait for someone to shout before understanding that he is hurting. Sometimes the hardest realization is discovering that he has already stopped shouting.