by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

Recently, I came to the door of a friend and overheard the following parental moment: “Don’t whine at me! I said ‘No’ and that’s it!” The little girl had been tearfully pulling at her mother’s skirt for more chocolate.

Now, that’s real parenting. As I once heard, every time a parent says “No” to something the child demands but shouldn’t have, it’s like giving another vitamin, and one should feel no guilt about it. A large part of the parent’s job is to teach that the world is a place where the answer to our desires is, and often should be: “No.” A person who grows up on a steady diet of such “No”s will be spared the pain of unrealistic expectations that plague so many adults throughout their lives. To be sure, there should be plenty of hugs and kisses between the “No’s,” but the “No’s” are also an expression of love.

Whining, complaining, grumbling, belly-aching, all come naturally to us, but we have to grow out of it. As a teacher of mine once said to me, when I complained about a certain assignment, “It’s ossur (forbidden) to complain.”

Indeed, Judaism takes a dim view of it. The generation of the Flood was destroyed, among other things, because of robbery. The Torah says that the world was “full of robbery.” The implication is that everyone was engaged in it. But how could that be? Surely there were at least as many, probably far more, victims as perpetrators, and what did the victims do wrong? The Midrash explains that the world at that time was destroyed by two types of people: those who robbed—and those who complained about it.

Of course, they had every right to try to get their money back. But their complaining went far beyond filling out a form at the local police station. They called the police incessantly demanding that they catch the culprits, they wrote letters to the editor, yapped about it on the morning call-in show, whined to their friends, moaned in the streets and fretted in the hallways. They never let up. The robbers took people’s money; the victims robbed everyone around them of peace and quiet.

People have a low threshold of tolerance for others’ complaints. I overheard a friend of mine advising someone not to talk too much about their illness. “You can confide in your immediate family, maybe one or two close friends. But beyond that, don’t talk about it. People do not want to hear your problems.” It may sound harsh, unfeeling; but it’s wise counsel. The sick person cannot afford to alienate her friends by dwelling on her problems. On the contrary, limiting discussion of it forces her to get her mind off her own problems at least some of the time, which can only be a healthy thing.

The Jewish viewpoint actually goes much further. “Why should a living man complain?” says the verse in Iyov (Job). The Talmud interprets it to mean that if a man is alive, he has no reason to complain. Life itself is so great a gift that no matter what suffering it may entail, the very fact of being alive should overshadow that suffering and banish all complaints.

When people hear this for the first time, they usually cringe and make a face. For someone facing real suffering, it seems like an impossible demand. But Iyov is expressing the ideal. From God’s perspective, from the point of view of absolute truth, unclouded by emotion, there is never any justification for complaining.

But mustn’t kid ourselves. For us it is appropriate to echo Jeremiah’s words, lo eleichem (let it not happen to you, or you shouldn’t know from it) when something painful has befallen us. And in the Shmoneh Esrei (daily prayers) we ask God to return to Jerusalem with mercy. We would prefer not to contemplate any other mode of return.

For us, it’s already a form of stoicism not to complain or go lie down at the first sign of a headache. I remember once reading a parody of a candidate for President who promised to “to fight fearlessly and tirelessly, to work day and night for the betterment of all the people…except when I have a headache.”

The Talmud says that the best thing for a headache is to study Torah. Maybe that’s because a headache is a symptom of some disharmony between body and soul. Torah renews our connection with God and has the power to correct that disharmony.

In my experience, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean the Talmud was wrong. They didn’t promise a foolproof cure; they just recommended that if you have a headache you should go and study Torah. And if the headache doesn’t go away, you gained all that Torah which would have been lost had you not taken the Sages’ advice.

But the main thing is not to complain. By accepting our sufferings, we are by implication accepting God’s will. That too is a kiddush Hashem, and makes the pain well worth it. Lo aleichem

Related posts:

1. Complaining
2. As Others See Us
3. On The Importance of Attending Synagogue Regularly
4. Who Help Themselves
5. Tough Jews