If you read much of the self-help literature out there high self esteem and a commitment to change should magically change your life. If all you need is to have high self esteem and be committed to your goals, then you too can be rich, successful and keep to a healthy diet. This week in the Torah, we run into several situations which point to why most people’s experiences are very different than this. They are the stories which point to resistance to change. Probably the incident most known from this portion shows us one kind of resistance.
1. And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Kushite woman whom he had married; for he had married a Kushite woman. 2. And they said, Has the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Has he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it. [Numbers 12]
Miriam’s slander and leprosy is as an issue of Moses ignoring his wife by the Sages. Yet most don’t understand the reason for Moses to stay away from his wife. According to the Talmud, this was one of “Three things that Moses did of his own understanding, and the Holy One, blessed be He, gave His approval”. [Shabbat 87a] Moses made up mitzvot without God’s permission, yet God approved. Many are familiar with the story of the revelation at Sinai, when all the people heard God. There is some preparation before hand:
15. And he said to the people, Be ready by the third day; do not come near a woman. 16. And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the sound of a shofar exceedingly loud; so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. [Exodus 19:15-16]
After Sinai, Moses reasoned that he might have to speak to God in this manner at any time. God notes in rebuking Aaron and Miriam that Moses kept the level of prophecy he had at Sinai:
6. And he said, Hear now my words; If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream. 7. Not so with my servant Moses, for he is the trusted one in all my house. 8. With him I speak mouth to mouth, manifestly, and not in dark speech; and he behold the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? [Numbers 12:6-8]
After Sinai, only Moses is granted the direct revelation that everyone experienced that day. Miriam and Aaron are not granted this. Moses thought he had to maintain the level of preparation all the people did before the Revelation at Sinai at all times. In order to do so he continually avoided his wife. [Shabbat 87a] His avoidance did not sit well with Miriam and Aaron, who believed that the marital obligations of Moses towards his wife were critical, and thus their words against him.
Moses changed on Sinai, and became a unique person who had a unique mission. The expectations of the normal Israelite did not apply to him, but the expectations of family who knew him before Sinai was the same. Miriam didn’t understand the difference in Moses, and so expecting him to be the same Moses she knew since his birth, criticized her little brother. One immense source of resistance to personal change comes from our family, friends, and those we are closely associated with. With change in ourselves there is a required change in those around us, who may not want that change. They might be comfortable with the way things are, or are afraid of how that change might change them. But most times, one does not even see the change in the person changing and continues to treat that person just like they always did. Miriam still sees her little brother, not the only man in history who talks to God face to face, or the only man until the destruction of the temple to author halakah. When Moses doesn’t act like her little brother, she gets upset.
All we hear is about Moses in response to Miriam’s criticisms “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any other men which were upon the face of the earth.” [Numbers 12:3] We do not hear a response, because he didn’t know what to say. He loves his siblings but doesn’t want to hurt them, and anything he could say would do so, and indeed break into argument. Like many people in this situation, he may fear he will lose support from his family in what he is trying to do. Moses, however, has the intercession of God. Generally that doesn’t happen, and instead we are in a bad spot, unable to respond to the criticism of our changing for the better, because it seemingly makes things worse for those close to us, and subsequently for us. We can hope for understanding, but that may not be there. The only response for many, so as to not to have an ugly situation with those they love is to buckle under, and not change. The risk of losing what one already has outweighs the reward if one does change. Such people never make it to their personal promised land so they don’t hurt those who don’t want them to undertake the journey, and so those people do not abandon them. Yet, the best we can do is getting them away from us, just as Miriam spends time away from Moses with her bout of Leprosy.
Such is external resistance, often slowing things down. Yet there is another resistance that can be truly fatal to one’s personal journey across the wilderness. That is the internal resistance to change. We read about such resistance in the cravings of the people for something other than their diet of manna.
4. And the mixed multitude that was among them had a strong craving; and the people of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us meat to eat? 5. We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; 6. But now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes. [Numbers 11:4-6]
As the Torah points out, they shouldn’t be complaining
7. Now the manna was as coriander seed, and its color as the color of bdellium. 8. And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it; and the taste of it was like the taste of fresh oil. 9. And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it. [Numbers 11:7-9]
Manna was the food granted the last time the people complained about not having anything to eat after crossing the Red Sea. This time as well, these people's request is granted but at a high cost:
31. And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, about a day’s journey on this side, and about a day’s journey on the other side, around the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. 32. And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails; he who least gathered gathered ten homers; and they spread them all abroad for themselves around the camp. 33. And while the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very great plague. 34. And he called the name of that place Kibroth-Hattaavah; because there they buried the people who had the craving. [Numbers 11:31-33]
To give into your internal resistance is death to the whole venture. Of all the things to use as a way of describing internal resistance, nothing is better than food. This week, when I got on the scale for the first time in a month, I read a number I was not pleased with: 206. That same scale read 194 last year at this time, and 191 the year before. What happened? The answer is simple. I gave into cravings. Be it a hot fudge brownie sundae, sweet potato chips, or virtually anything I’d eat at McDonald’s, what I eat got the best of me. Resistance to my healthy diet is everywhere.
Cravings will do it to you almost any time. Playing with my e-mail while I’m supposed to be doing something else is another craving that gets me. All of it is resistance to what really matters. But unlike the external resistance of others this is more insidious – it is the yetzer ha-ra, our evil inclination. As the rabbis note when it entices, it is as frail as a spider web, but with time it becomes as strong as cart ropes [Sukkah 52a]. One ice cream sundae two years ago leads to me continually breaking my diet. “This is the last one” is a common reply from the Yetzer Ha-ra when we see something we crave.
Craving does something else too. Cravings increase the value of what we are craving beyond its real value. Note how slaves who probably never got such foods wax nostalgically about the abundant foods of Egypt. One would think by their description, slaves ate like they were at the midnight buffet of a cruise ship all the time, never having to pay the bill. Of course this was illusion. What was truly incredible food stuff, manna, was ignored for this illusion. When we have resistance, we do the same things. With a diet, it’s how delicious that candy bar will be. Yet after eating it, I’m not satisfied. Just one square of that chocolate bar won’t show up on my diet, but how often does eating one square become eating the whole bar, or two or three bars, because there was no satisfaction in just the one square?
Like Miriam remembering a pre-Sinai Moses, the resistance is anchored in the past, to what we once had “We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for nothing.” The people cry, “Now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all” Keeping the present the same as the past is what resistance is all about. What is ahead is bad, according to the yetzer ha-ra, what you already have is good and comfortable, don’t go about changing it. For example my yetzer ha-ra continually comments “I’m familiar and comfortable with being alone and independent, why would I want to mess that up with a relationship?” “Loneliness I might compliant about but can handle. I can’t handle break-ups, betrayals or having someone else running my life” It continues inside of me, stressing the bad parts of growing. Like the manna, It ignores or even denigrates the good. It does not think of the bitterness, and tight places of my personal Egypt, my personal slavery.
The most important lesson of all from the Story in Numbers 11 is that the people who gave into their cravings die instantly. This is not a salmonella outbreak taking a few days to kill – they choke on their food because they give into their cravings so much they do not even chew it, nor look at what they are eating, and thus it kills them. We may not die instantly but our lives can be as one who is dead from giving into resistance, both internal and external. Giving into my own resistance will leave me for dead. I would be a fourteen year old computer geek who truly had no life, isolated from everything and everyone but his Apple II, as obsolete and meaningless as that antique computer. I would be that until the day of my physical death from clogged arteries or some such diet related condition. There is only one way towards life, and that is to change and improve. We cannot go back into slavery nor can we stay still in the wilderness. We can only move forward. We must fight the internal and the external resistance, though it is far from easy. It already has a strong grip on us. But to survive and get to our promised lands, it is a battle we must win.
There is one more type of resistance to take into account. It is the most insidious and the most dangerous. In the story of B’midbar, the wilderness, it kills all 600,000 Israelites but two. It fuels all other resistance, and mutates into even more dangerous forms. In next week’s portion we’ll talk about this danger of all dangers.
No comments:
Post a Comment