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Why Teaneck Voices’ Silence?
Teaneck Voices is known to be outspoken on almost every issue affecting Teaneck residents. We have tried to present the cold, hard facts and the reality about what is happening in our government, our schools and our streets.
We support transparency, equitable treatment of all individuals in Teaneck and of all racial, religious, and ethnic communities in town. We support inclusivity. We support RESPECT for our town, its institutions and each other.
We have tried very hard not to side with one group against another unless undisputed facts evidence the reason for that support.
Yet on the issues relating to the war in the Middle East which are tearing Teaneck residents apart, Teaneck Voices has been uncharacteristically silent. Many great moral thinkers have expressed the thought that silence in the face of injustice supports the “powerful.” That to be moral means speaking out and taking sides.
But here in Teaneck – not Israel, not Gaza, not Egypt, not Saudi Arabia – but Teaneck, who are the powerful and who are the weak? What are the undisputable facts that all agree upon here in Teaneck?
It appears to Teaneck Voices that differing emotional and “moral” certainties are leading to individuals speaking their immutable truth. But the” immutable truth” of some is inflammatory to others.
When calls for unity by some are seen as denial of horror by others, there is nothing to say that will not enrage some of our sisters and brothers here in Teaneck. So Teaneck Voices, for the present, has chosen silence.
Read the words of Elie Wiesel:
“I knew that I must bear witness. I also knew that, while I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle.
I would pause at every sentence and start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other images, other silent cries. It still was not right. But what exactly was “it”? “It” was something elusive, darkly shrouded for fear of being usurped, profaned.”
Wiesel understood silence as its own form of action. As he painted it for the American Academy of Achievement:
“You can be a silent witness, which means silence itself can become a way of communication. There is so much in silence. There is an archeology of silence. There is a geography of silence. There is a theology of silence. There is a history of silence. Silence is universal and you can work within it, within its own parameters and its own context, and make that silence into a testimony; that silence will be a powerful silence, a brilliant silence.”
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