June 21, 2024
D’var by member Andrew Segall
Good evening! My name is Andrew Segall and it is a delight to be outside with you on a gorgeous evening at the lakefront. We have been treated to amazing weather and the comforting and familiar sounds of Cantor Howard. There is not much more one could ask for on a night like this, so it seems like a perfect time to talk to you about this week’s Torah Portion, called Beha’alotecha, Numbers chapter 8, verses 1-16, which features a lot of complaining. The Israelites complain to Moses. Moses’s siblings complain to Moses. Moses complains to the almighty. Thinking about this portion has led me to the question, what causes us to complain?
In the different hats I wear, as a husband, a parent, and a teacher, I have heard my fair share of complaints. I imagine you have, too. Complaining is a millennia-old tradition. This week’s Torah portion even makes up a word for this level of complaining and refers to the complainers as hasafsoof. It’s the only time in the Torah where we find this word, which means riffraff.
The sentiment, “Stop complaining, I don’t want to hear it anymore,” is one that I have thought of, if not uttered countless times. There is a famous story in my family about how I tried to end my son’s complaints by telling him he was about to lose everything, which prompted him to question, “Even air?” And some complaints do not deserve to be heard or entertained, like when Aaron and Miriam complain about Moses’ interracial marriage.
The issue with complaints is that it’s an inherently flawed delivery system. No one wants to listen and it provokes extreme behavior in the opposite direction. In this passage, the Israelites complained about only eating Manna in the wilderness, so the almighty provides them with so much quail that they get violently ill. Miriam complains about Moses’s marriage and access to the all-powerful, so the almighty afflicts her with leprosy. (Why Aaron does not receive the same treatment is a complaint for another lakeside service.)
If these stories came from an eternal being, this presence likely knew about the phrase “emotional intelligence” long before it became part of our lexicon. It’s possible then, that some of these stories exist so we might question how the almighty responded to complaints. We can reconstruct this parsha in a different way so we react to, what a former JRC president called the “underlying concerns in each complaint [and] figure out how the kernel of that [complaint] becomes a constructive suggestion or insight.” Or, as Walt Witman said long before Ted Lasso, “Be curious, Not Judgemental.”
Why were the Israelites complaining about delicious food? Could they have been uneasy believing the almighty would bring food tomorrow when it disappeared today? While it has taken me many mistakes to get to this point in my teaching career, I do remember to listen to the kernel behind any complaints I hear from my students, so that I can see if I need to revise something I’m doing if I can’t justify to myself. We do see a glimpse of this in the parsha when Moses complains to the almighty about the demands of being in charge – and the almighty listens to that kernel and creates a much larger leadership council to share the burden of leadership.
Perhaps a big takeaway from this portion is to accept that complaining is part of the social fabric that binds us all together and will continue to be a part of our lives. Our challenge is to look for the moments when we, as the respondent, have the patience to listen for the Kernel to identify the need cloaked in a complaint. I hope that you have the good fortune to complain to someone who can pinpoint your kernel before you pop their patience.