Two Aspects of Gratitude
Understanding Aggada
Yeshivat Har Etzion
Shiur #16b:
Two
Aspects of Gratitude
By Rav Yitzchak Blau
The Rabbis taught: "'Who can assure that this
heart should remain theirs [to fear Me and observe My commandments for all
time]?' (Devarim 5:26). Moshe
called Israel 'Ingrates, descendants of ingrates!' For when the Holy One, blessed be He,
said to Israel 'Who can assure that this heart will remain theirs,' they should
have said 'You can assure.' We see
that they are ingrates from the verse '"Our souls are disgusted with the
unsubstantial bread"' (Bamidbar 21:5); we see that they are the descendants of
ingrates from the verse: '"The woman that you gave to be with me, she gave me of
the tree and I ate"' (Bereishit 3:12)." (Avoda Zara 5a)
This gemara has Moshe citing two previous
instances of ingratitude: the Jewish people complaining about the manna that God
employed to sustain them in the desert, and Adam blaming the sin in the Garden
of Eden on Hashem for providing him with a partner.
It also mentions that Moshe calls the people
ingrates when they do not request divine help in achieving sensitivity to
religious ideals. What connects
this failure with ingratitude? Tosafot explain that people who
are not grateful often prefer to not have favors done for them, because they
resent feeling beholden to anyone else.
Thus, the same personality trait that prevents someone who receives a
gift from saying "Thank you" can also prevent that person from accepting gifts
in the first place.
Rashi, on the other hand, explains that they did
not recognize the things in question as a good. In other words, Adam truly thought that
Eve was no boon, the Jews in the desert truly did not want manna and the Jews
that Moshe addresses did not perceive a more religiously sensitive heart as
something positive. For Rashi, the
central question is not whether one knows how to express gratitude, but whether
one can recognize the good in the first place.
There seem to be two aspects to becoming a
grateful person. The first requires
that we swallow our pride and admit that others have done favors for us and
verbalize out feelings of thanks. The other demands an awareness of what
things in life are truly valuable. A mistaken scale of priorities can lead
us to reject or undervalue the beautiful gifts offered by
others.
Rav Baruch Epstein (Torah Temima, Bereishit
3:12) discusses these two types of ingratitude and attempts to cite a linguistic
proof in favor of Tosafot's understanding. He points out that the Talmudic phrase
for lack of gratitude is "kafui tova." The word "kofeh" in the Talmud
means to cover, as in the phrase "kofeh alav et ha-keli," "he covers it
with a vessel" (Mishna Pesachim 6:1).
Thus, this phrase sounds like the conscious attempt to pretend that no
good was done, rather than a lack of recognition of what the good
is.
Yet perhaps we need not identify one of these two
understandings as the correct one. After all, expressing appropriate gratitude
depends upon avoiding both of the above shortcomings. To avoid the pitfall of ingratitude, we
must take a two-pronged approach that includes both adopting a decent scale of
values in recognizing that which is good and a capacity to be beholden in
admitting the good done for us by others.
[Postscript: The above analysis does not deal with
the question of why asking for divine help in acquiring religious hearts is not
a violation of human free will. For
one approach to this question, see the Maharsha's commentary ad.
loc.]
This website is constantly being improved. We would appreciate hearing from you. Questions and comments on the classes are welcome, as is help in tagging, categorizing, and creating brief summaries of the classes. Thank you for being part of the Torat Har Etzion community!