Shabbat Shalom 6/12/09

Parshat Beh'aloscha: How deep is the culture of complaining?
By Lee Weissman
Teacher of Jewish Studies at TVT

Welcome to my classroom. It is the end of the semester. It is complaining season. A student sits across from me complaining about his final examination. The complaint has just enough of a whine in it to annoy me. I give him a bit of the ol' teacher stink-eye. He looks at me with a sweet grin and says, "But Mr. Weissman, we are Jews, that's what we do, we complain!" I grin back in agreement with that simple truth. He has hit on something which is absolutely central to Jewish self-perception. Many of us do believe that "kvetching" is the unwritten 614th commandment. But is it really? Are we really a bunch of complainers? More importantly, are we meant to be a bunch of complainers?

In this week's parsha, Beha'aloscha, we read.
Vayahi ha'am k'mitanenim. (Bamidbar 11:1)
The people were as complainers (literally "grumblers"). It was evil in the ears of Hashem.

The Jewish people were complaining about the hardships of travelling through the desert. (Airport security had not yet been invented; I suppose snakes and scorpions sufficed.) The Renaissance commentator, Sforno, makes an interesting observation here. Note the language of the verse. They were "as" grumblers. They weren't really complainers. It is not that they were complaining in their hearts but they had been whipped up by a few dedicated complainers whose goal was to "test G-d." The complaints did not reflect so much an inner attitude of ingratitude but a habit that was somehow external to their nature.

Sforno could have pointed out that the very term Yehudi "Jew" derives from the concept of "hoda" meaning acknowledgement or thankfulness. In our essence, we are thankful. In expression, not so much. Our insides and our outsides are at war. On the inside we want to express gratitude, on the outside we stand in the parking lot (TVT's desert minus the tents. As a parent, I confess to having sojourned there more than once.) and complain. We are at war with ourselves, at war with our Yehudi essence.

Rabban Gamliel once opened a yeshiva in which the requirement for admission was that the students' "insides must be as their outsides." It was a very, very small yeshiva. To act on the best that is inside of us is rarely easy. Nevertheless, we can make a start. The masters of Mussar (moral development) teach us that the very practice of gratitude is the supreme antidote to the plague of kvetching. If we train ourselves and our children in the habit of gratitude, we can effectively combat the culture of complaining.

The methods are easy and well-known. On the ritual side, Jewish tradition teaches us to make brachot, blessings, to pause whenever we experience something good (or not so good), pleasant and nourishing and thank G-d. Making a practice of saying brachot accustoms us and our children not only to having that inner attitude of gratitude, but to the habit of actually opening our mouth to express it.

We are also taught to express hakarat ha tov, acknowledgment to anyone and everyone who deserves it. Do our children see us complaining or do they see us thanking? Do we encourage them to write notes thanking their teachers? Do we teach them how to be grateful, not merely to say "thank you" but in saying thank you to acknowledge in detail the good that others have done for us? As a school, do we properly thank students and parents who work so hard for the school? It is all very simple, if we only do it.

So to my complaining student who inspired me to meditate on the culture of complaint, thank you for the wake up call! To all my students this year, thank you for being my best and wisest teachers. To the parents of my students, thank you for treating me like a human being and not a grade-delivery system. To my faculty colleagues, many of whom are also my daughter's teachers, thank you for inspiring me this year with your outrageous intelligence and kindness to our children. To my many bosses, thank you for your patience and for guiding me with respect. To the staff of TVT, thank you for making my work possible by creating the time and place for it to happen.

To my Creator, thank You for the endless gifts You give me at every moment, especially the gift of life and the ability to repair whatever I may have broken.

May Hashem give all of us a refreshing, renewing and thankful summer.