Beha’alotcha 5785 - Kvetching

It can always be better. But we should never let that get in the way of our appreciation of how good it is.

This attitude is central and pivotal to the Jewish story of exile and redemption and is on vivid display in our Parsha. It is here that we see the tide turning on our people, when our triumphant and miraculous journey from Egypt to Eretz Yisrael began to stumble and eventually stop. That negative trend began with the following (Bamidbar 11:1): “The people became k’mit’on’nim, as complainers, bad to Hashem’s ears. Hashem heard and was incensed such that a fire of Hashem broke out against them, ravaging the outskirts of the camp.”

While the verse appears vague, providing little detail about what we did wrong, Ramban argues that it is perfectly clear:

“The word k’mit’on’nim indicates pain and feeling sorry for oneself… Thus when the Torah states that they felt anxious and upset, it has already mentioned and described their sin … meaning that they spoke in the bitterness of their soul as do people who suffer pain, and this was evil in the view of Hashem as they should have followed Him joyfully and with gladness of heart due to the abundance of good things which He gave them. They behaved instead like people acting under duress and compulsion, murmuring and complaining about their condition. It is for this reason that it states regarding the second sin, “and the children of Israel also wept again,” meaning that their first sin consisted of complaining about their lack of comforts in the wilderness and now they again did a similar thing and had not received correction from the fire of God which had devoured them.”

Simply put: Our kvetching transformed the heavenly desert into an earthly prison. This pattern continues into next week’s parsha with the sin of the spies, in which our fate of exile from Eretz Yisrael is sealed by our bechiya shel chinam, our crying over nothing, where we even managed to be dissatisfied with the beautiful land flowing with milk and honey to which God was bringing us. Arguably, this pattern originated in the Garden of Eden from where we were exiled when we chose to ignore the splendor of paradise and focus instead on the little bit of forbidden fruit.

This concept should be top of mind every time we perform the Mitzvah of Birkat Hamazon, during which we twice quote the verse in the book of Devarim (8:10), “You will eat and be satisfied, and you shall bless Hashem your God for the good land that He has given you.” Once we show the capacity to shift from kvetching to expressing appreciation for our blessings and thanking and blessing Hashem for the satisfaction of a simple meal, we can proceed to refocus on the goodness of the eretz chemda tova urechava, the desirable, good, and spacious land that we once cried over.

Some may see the acceptance of the imperfect as a manifestation of a complacent mentality. It may however be our corrective mission within our current state to learn to shift from mit’on’nim to mevarchim, from complainers and kvetchers to those who see the good and readily express gratitude.

Are things perfect? Far from it, that’s why we await the geulah sheleima, the complete redemption. Things can and will be better, but we should never let that get in the way of appreciating how good it is.