I once asked my friend, “How are you
doing?”
The reply, “No complaints.”
“No complaints?” I echoed
astonished, “Surely you’re not Jewish!”
I love my people and we’ve
accomplished so many great things for humanity, but there is rarely a day that
goes by that God’s chosen people aren’t complaining about one thing or another.
To not complain, frankly just isn’t Jewish. The conventional opening to any
secular tale is once upon a time, but if you’re Jewish, it’s “OY, it’s
hard to be a Jew.”
“Why is life so hard?” “So
many problems.” “Why is all this happening to me?” “What does God want
from me?” Are sentences I hear daily and ask regularly. It’s reminiscent
of a teenager who leaves his room in disarray, blasts music, doesn’t
lift his head from the smartphone and then can’t figure out why his parents are
always screaming at him and constantly punishing him. The parents are on repeat
mode; the kids are on mute mode. And empty answers depend on what’s in mode.
And that’s why I ask, “Are my people
hard of hearing?” The question “Why?” when it comes to life’s factor Xs, is a
philosophical question. God, the King of all philosophy, has provided a
pragmatic answer. The challenge is, do you want to know the answer or do
you find greater comfort in the “poor me” swaddling cloth and greater solace in
nursing the tear-sodden inquiry “Why me?” like an after-meal brandy?
God has told us through the Five Books
over and over again what He expects of us and it is clearly stated in this week’s
Parasha: “See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse. The
blessing, that you will heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I
command you today; and the curse, if you will not heed the commandments of the
Lord your God….”
God has told us what he wants from
us but we refuse to listen either because it’s not convenient, because we know
better or because our nurtured arrogance has filled the void where knowledge
and truth should reside. Poor God, for Him it must be like a perpetual
Groundhog Day in a Verizon commercial: “Can you hear me now?” “Can you hear me
now?” His word keeps echoing unheeded in our environs. Perhaps that’s why
this week’s reading starts with the word “See” and not “hear.”
We’ve already proven we hear only what we want to hear. Will we now only
see what we want to see? Do we leave any sensory aperture hospitable for
God’s footprints to enter?
