There is a teaching in the Talmud that says, “A word is worth one coin, silence is worth two.” The Quakers have something called waiting worship where congregants assemble and sit in silence so they are open and available to divine insight. But even Quakers can be uncomfortable with silence. A member of a Quaker congregation in Richmond, Indiana, told me that there’s no problem finding a seat on the one Sunday a month devoted to waiting worship because “a lot of people don’t go because they find the quiet too challenging.”
