Do you mumble when you have important requests to
make such as pass the salt or what time is it? Or how about where are my glasses or car keys? Who
would think of not making one’s self clearly heard at such crucial times?
And so it goes for all of our attempted communications, for attempted
is the best we can do because there is no guarantee that those that we are addressing
will hear us or even understand us if they do.
But it’s not for lack of trying, because most of us
are as loud as civilly tolerable even if we don’t always hit the high note of
articulation.
The fact is that mumbling and communication are
antithetical, so aside from two carved in stone exceptions, we make sure to open
our mouths when we have something to say.
The first of these exceptions is when we verbalize (mumble) some
distasteful comments under our breath which are often akin to curses. Not nice perhaps but perfectly logical
nonetheless. After all, aside from
extreme situations, who wants to be heard cursing or running down his neighbor?
The problem is that we give Hashem the same
treatment, because for some strange reason we tend to mumble our brochos even
more quietly than our imprecations.
But truth be told, it’s really ourselves who are on
the dead end of our brochos, for while Hashem, by way of the Halacha, may
require that they should be made at the appropriate times, He doesn’t need to
hear them.
But
we do.
And if we said them loud enough to actually hear
them and ponder their meaning for a nano second or two, we would be living in a
different world. We would be in a
world in which fruit comes from the trees and bread comes from the ground
instead of the super market. And in such
a world, we would understand that tragedies are guided by a Truthful Judge as
opposed to just happening.
But we don’t hear them because we mumble them to such
an extent that they’re barely audible.
And it’s not for nothing that we carry on this way. For those with eyes to see, the Satan’s tracks
are all over the place and with good reason too, because he well understands
that each brocha that is heard and internalized is an affirmation of Emunah.
And that’s the last the thing that the Satan wants
to hear.
So he makes sure that we don’t hear it either by
inducing us to mumble our brochos so that their decibel level will mirror the
silence of the dead.
