Letting Go of Grievances
Yom Kippur Morning 5785
October 10, 2024
Rabbi Alan Cook
Sinai Temple, Champaign, IL
My best friend in eighth grade, Rony, did not get along well with our English teacher, Ms. Rosen. Time has fogged my memory of what their specific clashes were, but Rony would frequently be singled out to redo an assignment due to sloppiness, or to take an additional turn reading in class to prove that he was paying attention. The fact that Ms. Rosen also served as the middle school administrator at our small day school only provided them with additional opportunities to antagonize one another. And whenever Rony would protest against some unfair consequence, real or imagined, that Mrs. Rosen had imposed upon him or upon the class as a whole, Rony would whine, “That’s not fair.” In turn, Ms. Rosen would memorably respond, “Nobody ever promised that life would be fair.”
The exchanges were memorable enough that they were immortalized in our eighth grade yearbook. And neither party was permanently scarred by the verbal sparring; Rony has gone on to great successes as an innovator in the fields of medical robotics and virtual reality, and Ms. Rosen had a 49-year career as a teacher and administrator. I won’t dwell on whether Ms. Rosen’s refrain was a pedagogically sound rejoinder to Rony’s 13-year-old complaints, but I think it is a notion that all of us would do well to reflect upon in regard to contemporary societal behavior.
Rabbi Sharon Brous, building on a teaching from her colleague, Reverend Ed Bacon, shares a story that serves as a counterpart to those who, like Rony, are dismayed by the world’s apparent injustice:
In every story of our lives, we can be the victim, the hero, or the learner. This is a choice.
Say I get the opportunity to travel somewhere beautiful for a few days, but when I get off the plane, I discover that my luggage has been lost. The victim asks, “Why does this always happen to me? My trip is ruined!”
The hero reports, “I stayed completely calm. I just gave my info to the baggage representative and made my way to the hotel. No way will this spoil my vacation!”
But the learner determines that she will, from that point forward, only fly with carry-on.
Amidst all the rage and sorrow of our time, we gravitate naturally toward the victim or the hero narrative. There is comfort in both.
But my dear pastor friend says: don’t be either. Be a learner. Ask yourself: How can I grow from this encounter?[1]
In recent years, we have become a nation—perhaps one could argue, an entire world—steeped in grievances. One can quibble about when exactly our culture shifted in this manner; sociologist and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, in the mid 19th century, already identified that Americans were, “forever brooding over advantages they do not possess.”[2]
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni published a book earlier this year called The Age of Grievance in which he explores the significant uptick in Americans’ desire to publicly air their grievances. He observes that, “the American soundtrack has become a cacophony of competing complaints.”[3] Bruni notes that many of our interactions have devolved into “a contest of deeply felt grievances during a time when the aggrieved have lost—or lost interest in—the ability to see beyond their slights to a common good in which they don’t get all that they want.”[4]
On top of the tendency to amplify every personal slight—real or perceived—into outright attacks on our very existence, we also are fed a steady diet of political speeches and media reporting that, in Bruni’s words, “accentuates the idea that we…exist not as one big tribe with shared interests, but as dozens of little tribes with separate—and worse yet, competing—interests.[5] So how do we resist the urge to become mired in our grievances, whether individual or tribal?
The internal feedback mechanism that kicks in when we react to a grievance with righteous indignation is intense, and somewhat self-perpetuating. Yale lecturer James Kimmel, Jr. writes that “your brain on grievance looks a lot like your brain on drugs. In fact, brain imaging studies show that harboring a grievance…activates the same neural reward circuitry as narcotics.”[6]
Yom Kippur asks us to confront our grievances. The act of teshuvah exercises our interpersonal skills such that we seek to make amends with those whom we may have aggrieved, and we strive to reconcile with those whom we feel have inflicted grievances upon us.
The book of Jonah is a parable about grievance and its impact. Jonah’s initial grievance with God comes at the outset of the text: he believes that it is pointless to make the journey to Nineveh to preach God’s call for repentance. As the final chapter elucidates, he believes that God is so merciful that the destruction of the city will not be carried out, regardless of how sinful the Ninevites may remain. But Jonah’s personal grievance is then more starkly exposed. He sits pensively, reflecting on the events and awaiting his next divine commission. God causes a gourd plant to grow and provide Jonah much-needed shade from the elements. When a worm destroys the plant, Jonah is distraught and greatly aggrieved, “So deeply that I want to die.”[7] The book then concludes with God scolding Jonah for playing his “grievance card.” God is stunned by Jonah’s narcissism: he bemoans the demise of a single plant, because its disappearance has adversely impacted him, but he is unable to find compassion for the 120,000 citizens of Nineveh.
The Book of Jonah ultimately has little to do with whether or not the Ninevites learn to repent. It’s about Jonah learning humility and overcoming his narcissism to understand that the world does not revolve around God needing to assuage his personal grievances. The true teshuvah in the book is never explicitly expressed, but is implied by Jonah’s silence at the conclusion. We can only hope that his eyes have been opened to the fact that he is not the main character in the universe, and that empathy for others is an important character trait.
Jonah is not unique in expressing the desire that his personal grievances be resolved ahead of any other issues the world may be facing. Bruni refers to a sort of “oppression Olympics” that has seized contemporary thought, with many of us jockeying to have our own interests recognized as paramount.[8] Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis notes that “people have been led to believe that they are owed something, and it’s very difficult to accept that they might not be.”[9]
But we’re not owed anything; as Mrs. Rosen was fond of reminding Rony, “Nobody ever promised that life would be fair.” The issue is that we haven’t developed the toolkit to take the steps to assuage our grievances—or we’re too lazy to haul it out and use it. Wallowing in our grievances is much easier, and more satisfying. As Bruni states, “Grievance simplifies and clarifies everything, providing a ready explanation for lingering frustrations, painful humiliations, [and] unmet goals.”[10]
This is not to say that all grievances are invalid; it would be unwise and unkind to suggest that in every case when one is upset, they should merely “suck it up” and “turn the other cheek.” I don’t know about you, but I only have so many cheeks to offer.
But more seriously, I think a key issue in these “oppression Olympics” is that nuance has largely been lost. When every situation that doesn’t break in your favor becomes a DEFCON-level grievance, that’s an unreasonable and self-defeating way of experiencing the world. Bruni puts it this way:
“When you give people the message that their feelings are paramount, that they should be protected not only from harm but also from disappointment, and that the world is a morally simple place, how could they not react to unfulfilled desires and unpleasant developments with a sense of grievance?”[11]
We are seeing this happen not only in our social interactions with one another, we see it writ large in the American political arena as those aspiring to every level of political office seek to amplify our grievance about one issue or another in the hopes that we will be riled up enough to agree with them and mark their names on our ballot. It’s not inappropriate to be passionate about a cause, but we can move beyond the “pervasive impulse to see malice and conspiracy behind every bush, burning or otherwise.”[12] Can we learn to channel our passions about key issues in meaningful and productive ways?
Over the summer, we experimented with a series we called “Conversations at Sinai.” Lil made some reference to this program in her Rosh Hashanah address. We were noticing that there was an increasing feeling of angst in our community—around the state of the world, the Israel-Hamas conflict, the rise of anti-Semitism, and a host of other topics. Held on two separate evenings, Conversations at Sinai invited participants to come to a safe space and share their thoughts, their concerns, and perhaps even some of their grievances with one another in a gently moderated session. Our first effort had about twenty five participants; the second had slightly less attendance. That turnout may seem small, given that we are a congregation of about 250 households, but it was a start. The only way we have any hope of understanding one another and moving beyond our grievances is if we learn to communicate with others. That’s what being in community is all about. Following the fall holidays, and continuing through the end of the secular year, we will offer an opportunity at least once a week to be present at Temple and connect with one another. Some of the evenings will be dedicated to conversations like we had this summer; others may be less formal—a chance to play bridge or poker or mah jong, or an opportunity to discuss a favorite book or TV show. The point is to provide a forum that allows us to bask in the holiness of relationships. In this way, we’re following the advice of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg who says, “Anything that gives people the chance to work with other people who are different from them and get results matters, and it could help cut through pessimism or anger or division or polarization.”[13] And by the way, if you’re inclined to discount Secretary Buttigieg’s comments because you disagree with his politics, I invite you to examine that grievance. We needn’t dismiss a person out of hand just because their values or beliefs don’t align with our own.
It’s my hope that these Conversations at Sinai will accomplish a number of things. First, I hope that it will diminish some of the sense of isolation which some of you have expressed to me that you’ve been feeling. If we aspire, as I do, for Sinai Temple to be a heimishe environment—a “family of families,” as some have called us—then we need to intermingle with one another more. This will help us to support one another through all the seasons of our lives. Many times during recent years I have heard—particularly during the High Holiday season—“Oh my goodness, I see so many unfamiliar faces, I feel as though I don’t know people at Temple anymore.” Conversations at Sinai will provide low-pressure opportunities to meet people outside of your particular cohort and appreciate what others contribute to the makeup of our congregation.
But a second goal is to help us assuage our angst, anxiety, sadness, and sense of grievance that we may be carrying with us. The world can be a frightening and frustrating place, and carrying those heavy feelings around with us allows grievance to fester and turn into anger—Jonah is a key example of that. Having a forum in which to express oneself, even if your conversation is with someone who disagrees with you, can begin to break down the silos that separate us, and encourage us to look at things from an alternate perspective.
Bruni offers that the challenge that our grievances present to our socialization with others is that they make us “turn… inward, as we focus on our wounds and what we’re owed for them, rather than outward, where the possibility of some measure of the change we say we want exists.”[14]
For if we really want to make change, then it falls to us to transform our grievances and kvetching into constructive actions. Grievances left unchecked can devolve in dangerous ways into violence and other destructive behaviors. But if we can channel our convictions that something is Just. Not. Right. into meaningful activism and advocacy. then our grievances can perhaps bear positive fruit. Too often, however, we allow pundits and politicians to rile us up and make us indignant without suggesting alternative courses. Bruni notes, “We [tend to] stay in a clutch of anger that’s never converted into action, because the means for that transformation is never specified.”[15]
In the conclusion of his book, Frank Bruni opines that “Humility is the antidote to grievance.”[16] He suggests that if more of us exhibited this quality—if we didn’t see ourselves as the pampered diva stars of our own movie in which all the others with whom we daily interact are merely insignificant supporting players—we might be able to move beyond our insistence that our individual grievances are of paramount importance. Instead, we could focus on the broader ills plaguing our society, and work together to enact significant change for the good of all.
Our efforts at teshuvah that we pledge to undertake today require an equal degree of humility. If we admit that our choices and actions have not always been for the common good, if we have the humility to own up to our faults, our tradition tells us that we can look forward to being lovingly embraced by God, and to the generations that come after us benefitting from God’s blessings. We undertake the actions related to repentance on this holiest of days not merely for our benefit, but because we recognize that in lifting ourselves up to be the best we can be, we also elevate out community.
My teacher Mrs. Rosen was right, much as it might dismay my friend Rony; there are far too many aspects of human existence that are inherently unfair, and nobody ever promised us otherwise. However, we have a choice in how we respond to the challenges and unfairness placed before us as stumbling-blocks. By moving beyond our grievances to channel our energy into positive action, we can begin the work of making the world a little better and a little more fair.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah,
May we each merit to be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life and Blessing.
[1] Rabbi Sharon Brous, Jewels of Elul
[2] Alexis deTocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835
[3] Bruni, Frank The Age of Grievance, 2024, p. 5
[4] Bruni, p.29
[5] Bruni, p. 155
[6] Cited in Bruni, p. 63-64
[7] Jonah 4:9
[8] Bruni, p. 164
[9] Quoted in Bruni, p. 121
[10] Bruni, p. 24
[11] Bruni, p. 119
[12] Bruni, p. 35
[13] Quoted in Bruni, p. 229
[14] Bruni, p. 195
[15] Bruni, p. 143
[16] Bruni, p. 248
