Kvetching – The Blame Game 2
Jun 10th, 2011 by Rabbi Simcha Weinberg in Portion of the Week, Spiritual Growth
Is This Us?
The $9 billion machine has been riddled with problems. Bad electrical connections caused a quench that damaged 53 of the magnets. One of the physicists working there has been accused of having links to Al Qaeda. People have begun to wonder if all the delays and complications aren’t owing to a more preordained cause. A pair of CERN physicists have somewhat whimsically suggested that the reason for building the collider might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple back through time and stop the collider before it could make a Higgs boson.
Anxious people think strange things. As scientists attempt to discover the nature of physical reality, people who do not understand what they are doing, nor, why, are so lost that they begin to worry about strange and unlikely possibilities. People who do not understand consider the Promethean goal of the collider to be no less ambitious than Victor Frankenstein. We are frightened by what we do not comprehend. We cannot grasp something that seems so beyond our ken.
It must have been challenging to experience the exodus, the Splitting of the Sea, eating Manna, drinking magical water from Miriam’s Well, living inside the protection of the Clouds of Glory. We know how frightened the Children of Israel were at Revelation.
They were safe as long as they lived within a self-contained world. Once they began to move toward crossing over into the Land, with all the trumpets, movement, Clouds, and the Ark, they realized that their self-contained world was on its last legs. They began to focus on the fact that something far beyond their understanding was happening. The movement of the Ark was their Large Hadron Collider. They were confused. They were anxious. They simply wanted to kvetch.
They faced a challenge equal to, if not greater than, Revelation: They would have to use everything they learned and experienced to live a “normal” life. Some rose to the occasion. Many simply went along. A group of opportunists began to kvetch, and watched their misery speed through the camp faster than a particle beam.
If only they had blamed Moses or God for something! As my dear and honored friend Rav Moshe Stepansky points out in his comments to The Blame Game: 1.When one assigns blame (whether fairly or not) one activates the psychological mechanism of closure that allows you to move on with your life.
2.Even while assigning blame to someone else, one is still applying a cognitive process of cause and effect. This cognitive process may open oneself up to reflect inwardly and contemplate whether there is personal culpability -stirrings of T’shuvah.
3.Conversely,if one just hangs out and gripes about the situation without assigning blame, one gets mired in inaction and very well may fall into despair.
4.Inaction and despair team up to create a warped view of reality.
Moses had nurtured these people from their spiritual birth into adults ready to step into a new world, a new life, unimaginable heights. He could deal with blame. He could not deal with kvetching.
God responded with the appointment of the Seventy Elders and the “Slav.” I suspect that the 70 was a clue for some, and the “Slav,” a response to others.
To Be Continued…
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I strongly urge anyone with a few moments to grab a khumash B’Midbar and open to chapter 11 verses 21-24 and read 2 of the most amazing RaSH”I’s verses 22-23.
The scripture describes the interplay between Moshe and G-d “I’ve got 600,000 ravenous men about me and You say You’ll provide meat for them,for 30days!Are there enough animals in supply; would all the fish in the sea suffice?”G-d’s retort”Cannot G-d supply the goods?Now you will see whether what I say happens, if not!”Moshe goes out to speak to the People G-d’s words and gathers 70 men from the elders and places them around the Tent (Ohel Mo’ed)
RaSH”I on verse 22 quotes a discussion between Rabi Akiva and Rabi Shimon whether Moshe’s position was meritorious or not.
I’d like to focus on the quote in RaSH”I on verse 23 in the name of Raban Gamliel son of Rabi Yehudah HaNasi -G-d says to Moshe”Now you will see whether what I say happens, if not!”==> G-d tells Moshe – you’re focusing on the ‘irrelevant’ details-do you think you can placate these intransigent folks by offering them meat or fish?All they want is to pick a fight! If you offer them beef, they’ll say they want veal; if you give them veal, they’ll say they want beef etc.,etc. ad infinitum!They’ll always say that I, G-d, am not supplying the goods!Moshe tells G-d, let me try to make peace with them.G-d’s response”Now you will see whether what I say happens, if not!”
Moshe goes to the People and says”Cannot G-d supply the goods?After all, He brought out water from the rock for you and bourishment from the heavens!!!”The people parried Moshe’s claim- G-d sent you with a tepid excuse;He can’t answer our demands!!”
At that moment, when Moshe saw the people were not listening to him, he gathered the elders around him.
The People were so worked up in their wallowing self-pity, they were unable to listen to the voice of reason.Their world was in freeze-frame mode and NOBODY, not even G-d,was going to alter things.
G-d, in His infinite wisdom,cautioned Moshe there was no reasoning that would move them because they were belligerently irrational and immovable in their intransigence.
Indeed, G-d’s response was the only realistic contra to the People’s out-of-the-box demands.”You cried-It was so good in Egypt!You want meat?!I’ll give you meat! Not one day, not two,not five, nor ten or only twenty but up to a whole month shall you eat meat till it comes out of your noses till you are repulsed by it just as you rejected the G-d in your midst as you were ungrateful when you cried why did You take us out of Egypt”(11;18-20).
However, there was another Divine response on a much subtler level. There was such an accumulation of negativity, G-d had to counter with an influx of positive energy by ennobling the seventy elders with ‘Ruakh HaKodesh’.
The People were so very self-centered-despite G-d’s miraculous intervention on their behalf with the Clouds of Glory, the Mahn and Miriam’s Well, it just wasn’t enough!What has G-d done for me lately!We might as well be back in Mitzrayim!
Moshe Rabbeinu the Humble Man par excellence,whose essence was selflessness, shared his Ruakh HaKodesh, prophetic leadership abilities,with the elders.When Eldad and Meidad prophesied (unlawfully?)and Y’hoshua took issue, Moshe intervened and wished that everybody could attain that level of connection of being Other-centered.
I bless all of us to be Other-centered and through that to come closer to G-d.
Excellent typo!
‘bourishment from the heavens!’-obviously it should be ‘nourishment from the heavens’
This moved me to tears. I was raised Catholic and in the 1950’s, there was little exposure among children like myself to the faith of others. I learned more wisdom for this one article and comment than I did from 18 years of religious instruction and homilies.
I think God lead me to this URL, so I could read this and the mote fall from my eye. I have been doing nothing BUT kvetching….I think now, I can stop.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart,
Madeline McGuckin
P.S. I thought “bournishment” was a real word that only Rabbis knew, LOL.