Rabbi
Joshua ben Levi used to listen, every Friday, to his grandson reciting the
weekly parasha. One week he forgot this, and entered the bathhouse. After he
had begun bathing, he remembered that he had not yet heard the weekly parasha
from his grandson, and he left the bathhouse. They asked him why he was leaving
in the middle of his bathing, since the Mishnah teaches that once you have
begun bathing on a Friday afternoon you do not have to interrupt. He replied,
“Is this such a small thing in your eyes? For whoever hears the parasha from
his grandchild is as if he heard it directly from Mount Sinai . . .” -Yerushalmi, Shabbat 1:2
“To say the right thing at the right time, keep still most of the time.” John W. Roper Those who get in trouble most often are those cannot seem to keep still, remain silent. Life teaches many lessons. Among the best lessons of life is one my father taught me at an early age was, “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing.” The contributions we make to life via our mouth are many and varied. Most of the time, I reckon, they are not contributions at all, but things that diminish the richness of life.
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