When I was about eight or nine years old, I wrote a letter to the President of the United States. My older brother was not keeping his fish tank clean, I told the president, and I was distraught at the possibility that the fish might die.
My mother apparently intercepted that letter before it reached the mailbox. I don't remember any other details of the incident, but I do have a pretty good sense of how I felt... because it is a familiar feeling even decades later.
What was I feeling? Outrage, righteous indignation - and a sense of unfairness - because he got the fish tank when I was the one who wanted it (and was, of course, the one more worthy of having it). My concern for the fish may have been genuine, but I imagine that my distress was primarily due to my sibling envy and sense of unfairness.
The Torah is full of expressions of envy, particularly (although not always) between siblings. In the book of Genesis alone, there are many famous examples: Cain and Abel, Sarah and Hagar, Jacob and Esau. This week's Torah reading comes from the book of Numbers, much later in the Torah, and here the sibling situation is more mature and complex.
The scene is in the wilderness, after the Exodus from Egypt. Moses is busy dealing with some serious kvetching from the people, when his sister Miriam and brother Aaron suddenly do a bit of their own kvetching. Here is what the Torah tells us (in Numbers 12): "Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married, saying 'He married a Cushite woman!' And they said, "Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us as well?' And the Lord heard it."
Can you picture the situation? Here is Moses getting all the attention as the miracle-working leader of an entire nation. His siblings, perhaps only whispering to one another, say "What makes him so great? He's hardly Mr. Perfect. For God's sake, look at his marriage! It's not fair that he gets all the glory."
God responds, calling Miriam and Aaron out and angrily reminding them who's Boss. Miriam is then stricken with a skin disease, and is shut out of the camp for seven days. (Why just Miriam and not Aaron? Story for another day....)
The traditional way of understanding this story in the Torah is to say that Miriam is punished for gossiping about Moses. I prefer to read Torah differently. To me, a story like this is about consequences. Do this, and this happens. When we get righteously indignant about someone else having what we want... we suffer. We're the ones who get a headache, or a stomach ache, or whatever. And if in our indignation we speak negatively of that person to someone else, then we really suffer - creating distance between ourselves and other people, symbolized by the way Miriam ends up outside the camp for seven days.
So that's what happens when we act on an internal sense of unfairness or wanting. And what happens when we are the object of someone else's feeling of unfairness? That's the other teaching in this story. Going back to the passage I quoted, listen to the very next line: "Now Moses was a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth."
The Torah goes on to tell us that God responds to Miriam and Aaron with anger - but Moses in his humility doesn't respond at all! The God portrayed in the Torah often seems to have what nowadays we would call an "anger management issue," but Moses - at least in this situation - does not. What does Moses do? At first nothing; but then he does something very striking - he prays for Miriam's healing. A beautiful prayer - the shortest prayer recorded in the Torah - "God, please, heal her please." He's not gloating, he's not arrogantly saying "you see, God is on my side." He's simply expressing his compassionate wish for Miriam's well-being in that moment.
In those inevitable moments in our own lives when feelings of envy and dissatisfaction arise, may we choose to respond to those feelings with compassion - both for ourselves and for others.
My mother apparently intercepted that letter before it reached the mailbox. I don't remember any other details of the incident, but I do have a pretty good sense of how I felt... because it is a familiar feeling even decades later.
What was I feeling? Outrage, righteous indignation - and a sense of unfairness - because he got the fish tank when I was the one who wanted it (and was, of course, the one more worthy of having it). My concern for the fish may have been genuine, but I imagine that my distress was primarily due to my sibling envy and sense of unfairness.
The Torah is full of expressions of envy, particularly (although not always) between siblings. In the book of Genesis alone, there are many famous examples: Cain and Abel, Sarah and Hagar, Jacob and Esau. This week's Torah reading comes from the book of Numbers, much later in the Torah, and here the sibling situation is more mature and complex.
The scene is in the wilderness, after the Exodus from Egypt. Moses is busy dealing with some serious kvetching from the people, when his sister Miriam and brother Aaron suddenly do a bit of their own kvetching. Here is what the Torah tells us (in Numbers 12): "Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married, saying 'He married a Cushite woman!' And they said, "Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us as well?' And the Lord heard it."
Can you picture the situation? Here is Moses getting all the attention as the miracle-working leader of an entire nation. His siblings, perhaps only whispering to one another, say "What makes him so great? He's hardly Mr. Perfect. For God's sake, look at his marriage! It's not fair that he gets all the glory."
God responds, calling Miriam and Aaron out and angrily reminding them who's Boss. Miriam is then stricken with a skin disease, and is shut out of the camp for seven days. (Why just Miriam and not Aaron? Story for another day....)
The traditional way of understanding this story in the Torah is to say that Miriam is punished for gossiping about Moses. I prefer to read Torah differently. To me, a story like this is about consequences. Do this, and this happens. When we get righteously indignant about someone else having what we want... we suffer. We're the ones who get a headache, or a stomach ache, or whatever. And if in our indignation we speak negatively of that person to someone else, then we really suffer - creating distance between ourselves and other people, symbolized by the way Miriam ends up outside the camp for seven days.
So that's what happens when we act on an internal sense of unfairness or wanting. And what happens when we are the object of someone else's feeling of unfairness? That's the other teaching in this story. Going back to the passage I quoted, listen to the very next line: "Now Moses was a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth."
The Torah goes on to tell us that God responds to Miriam and Aaron with anger - but Moses in his humility doesn't respond at all! The God portrayed in the Torah often seems to have what nowadays we would call an "anger management issue," but Moses - at least in this situation - does not. What does Moses do? At first nothing; but then he does something very striking - he prays for Miriam's healing. A beautiful prayer - the shortest prayer recorded in the Torah - "God, please, heal her please." He's not gloating, he's not arrogantly saying "you see, God is on my side." He's simply expressing his compassionate wish for Miriam's well-being in that moment.
In those inevitable moments in our own lives when feelings of envy and dissatisfaction arise, may we choose to respond to those feelings with compassion - both for ourselves and for others.