I want to talk a bit about bitterness, specifically how our bitterness can destroy us. I promise I’ll get there, but first, a word about my grandmother.
My grandmother lived with us during her final years and she used to love to come to synagogue every week. She enjoyed following the stories in the Torah. I sometimes sat next to her and she would would lovingly, with humor, offer advice to the characters in the stories. Of course we read the same stories each year, but she would jokingly advise the characters to act differently this time around so they would avoid their terrible fate.
When we got to the story about Joseph each year, she would urge him, Joseph - don’t brag so much in front of your brothers. Remember what they did to you last year?
Of course each year when we read the story, it plays out the same way. Joseph ignores my grandmother’s advice and brags to his brothers. They throw him into a pit and sell him into slavery. And when there’s a famine in the land of Canaan, the brothers go down to Egypt and whom do they face, asking for food? Their brother Joseph, whom they don’t recognize because it’s been awhile and he looks different.
He looks Egyptian. New haircut, new outfit.
Joseph is bitter. How could he not be? He is looking at the people who initially left him to die and then sold him into slavery. How could he not be bitter?
He will put them to a great test - partly to see if they have changed but also, I would argue, to cause them some pain. Payback time.
We could debate whether Joseph was justified in causing his brothers considerable emotional distress.
It seems that Joseph thought everything through carefully. He is like the author of a small play, the composer of a mini-symphony of revenge. He has thought through everything. Except one thing.
I don’t believe he thought through how much his bitter plan would actually hurt himself.
You see - as much as the brothers are suffering, Joseph seems to be suffering even more.
He is isolated. He is neither here nor there. וישימו לו לבדו ולהם לבדם Vayasimu lo l’vado v’lahem l’vadam. One of the sadder verses in the Torah, it describes how Joseph eats all by himself. He can't eat with his Israelite brothers for sure, but the Egyptians also won't eat with them since he isn't one of them. He is isolated from the Israelites and isolated from the Egyptians. He is a community of one.
It’s all coming crashing down - some of it his fault, some of it his brothers' fault. Second to the king, fancy clothes, adoration of the masses - blah blah blah - he is miserable. The longer he allows his bitterness to rule over him, the longer he remains a prisoner. A prisoner of his own bitterness.
How often do we become prisoners of our own bitterness?
We say, I’m not going to go to the simcha because of what he or she did or said. Or I’ll go but I’ll sit on the side and not have a good time.
I’m not going to give so-and-so the satisfaction. Or I’ll teach them by doing x, y and z.
Or, more broadly, we don’t allow ourselves to take flight, to achieve our potential, because we are dragged down by animosity over what other people did do us.
There’s a woman who lives and works as a therapist in California. She survived Auschwitz and had a child after the war, despite the doctors telling her she shouldn’t. She is 90 years old, still working, and she helps her clients to understand that they have more choice than they realize. In a word, she helps them not to become imprisoned by their own bitterness.
Her name is Dr. Edith Eva Eger and I got so interested in her story that I read more and watched her speak in a few videos, including a Ted Talk that she gave in her hometown of La Jolla, California.
Dr. Eva Eger described the horrors she witnessed and endured and also what she learned. Here are a few of the insights that she shared.
The first, she learned from her mother. As her family was being rounded up and sent off to Auschwitz her mother told her and her sisters, “They will try to take away everything from us, but they can’t take away what’s in our minds.”
From this, Dr. Eva Eger learned, and his subsequently taught, that our thoughts, our dreams, our responses - are more under our control than outside circumstances.
Dr. Eva Eger described the absolute anguish of living in the barracks in Auschwitz. She said that at a certain point, she decided that instead of asking, “why me?” She would ask, “What now?” What am I going to do now?
And she shared one more insight. She described how much of her survival depended on other people, on cooperation rather than competition.
Dr. Eva Eger’s conclusion is that we “can choose what the horror teaches us. To become bitter in our grief and fear … Or to hold on to the childlike part of us, the lively and curious part, the part that is innocent.”
Dr. Eva Eger’s story, like the story of many of her contemporaries, is horrible beyond what most of us can possibly imagine.
I share elements of her story because her insights can be helpful to all of us who have ever felt bitter for whatever reason and who have allowed the bitterness to take over. I don’t suggest that we necessarily forgive the people who contributed to our bitterness - maybe we should, maybe we shouldn’t, that depends on a variety of circumstances. But I do suggest that we look at ourselves and ask ourselves if we are being harmed, or in any way held back, by our own bitterness.
Though Joseph initially is consumed by bitterness, he eventually recognizes that he needs to take responsibility for his life, that he needs to find his own curiosity and drive, that he will do better to live in cooperation with others than in competitive isolation.
So I ask us each to think about the times that we have allowed the question “why me” to rent too much space in our souls, the times that in trying to punish others we have largely punished ourselves. The times that we have become prisoners of our own bitterness.
And then to ask ourselves the next question: What now?
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on December 8, 2018
"Joseph and His Brothers," Anton Franz Maulbertsch, 1745
My grandmother lived with us during her final years and she used to love to come to synagogue every week. She enjoyed following the stories in the Torah. I sometimes sat next to her and she would would lovingly, with humor, offer advice to the characters in the stories. Of course we read the same stories each year, but she would jokingly advise the characters to act differently this time around so they would avoid their terrible fate.
When we got to the story about Joseph each year, she would urge him, Joseph - don’t brag so much in front of your brothers. Remember what they did to you last year?
Of course each year when we read the story, it plays out the same way. Joseph ignores my grandmother’s advice and brags to his brothers. They throw him into a pit and sell him into slavery. And when there’s a famine in the land of Canaan, the brothers go down to Egypt and whom do they face, asking for food? Their brother Joseph, whom they don’t recognize because it’s been awhile and he looks different.
He looks Egyptian. New haircut, new outfit.
Joseph is bitter. How could he not be? He is looking at the people who initially left him to die and then sold him into slavery. How could he not be bitter?
He will put them to a great test - partly to see if they have changed but also, I would argue, to cause them some pain. Payback time.
We could debate whether Joseph was justified in causing his brothers considerable emotional distress.
It seems that Joseph thought everything through carefully. He is like the author of a small play, the composer of a mini-symphony of revenge. He has thought through everything. Except one thing.
I don’t believe he thought through how much his bitter plan would actually hurt himself.
You see - as much as the brothers are suffering, Joseph seems to be suffering even more.
He is isolated. He is neither here nor there. וישימו לו לבדו ולהם לבדם Vayasimu lo l’vado v’lahem l’vadam. One of the sadder verses in the Torah, it describes how Joseph eats all by himself. He can't eat with his Israelite brothers for sure, but the Egyptians also won't eat with them since he isn't one of them. He is isolated from the Israelites and isolated from the Egyptians. He is a community of one.
It’s all coming crashing down - some of it his fault, some of it his brothers' fault. Second to the king, fancy clothes, adoration of the masses - blah blah blah - he is miserable. The longer he allows his bitterness to rule over him, the longer he remains a prisoner. A prisoner of his own bitterness.
How often do we become prisoners of our own bitterness?
We say, I’m not going to go to the simcha because of what he or she did or said. Or I’ll go but I’ll sit on the side and not have a good time.
I’m not going to give so-and-so the satisfaction. Or I’ll teach them by doing x, y and z.
Or, more broadly, we don’t allow ourselves to take flight, to achieve our potential, because we are dragged down by animosity over what other people did do us.
There’s a woman who lives and works as a therapist in California. She survived Auschwitz and had a child after the war, despite the doctors telling her she shouldn’t. She is 90 years old, still working, and she helps her clients to understand that they have more choice than they realize. In a word, she helps them not to become imprisoned by their own bitterness.
Her name is Dr. Edith Eva Eger and I got so interested in her story that I read more and watched her speak in a few videos, including a Ted Talk that she gave in her hometown of La Jolla, California.
Dr. Eva Eger described the horrors she witnessed and endured and also what she learned. Here are a few of the insights that she shared.
The first, she learned from her mother. As her family was being rounded up and sent off to Auschwitz her mother told her and her sisters, “They will try to take away everything from us, but they can’t take away what’s in our minds.”
From this, Dr. Eva Eger learned, and his subsequently taught, that our thoughts, our dreams, our responses - are more under our control than outside circumstances.
Dr. Eva Eger described the absolute anguish of living in the barracks in Auschwitz. She said that at a certain point, she decided that instead of asking, “why me?” She would ask, “What now?” What am I going to do now?
And she shared one more insight. She described how much of her survival depended on other people, on cooperation rather than competition.
Dr. Eva Eger’s conclusion is that we “can choose what the horror teaches us. To become bitter in our grief and fear … Or to hold on to the childlike part of us, the lively and curious part, the part that is innocent.”
Dr. Eva Eger’s story, like the story of many of her contemporaries, is horrible beyond what most of us can possibly imagine.
I share elements of her story because her insights can be helpful to all of us who have ever felt bitter for whatever reason and who have allowed the bitterness to take over. I don’t suggest that we necessarily forgive the people who contributed to our bitterness - maybe we should, maybe we shouldn’t, that depends on a variety of circumstances. But I do suggest that we look at ourselves and ask ourselves if we are being harmed, or in any way held back, by our own bitterness.
Though Joseph initially is consumed by bitterness, he eventually recognizes that he needs to take responsibility for his life, that he needs to find his own curiosity and drive, that he will do better to live in cooperation with others than in competitive isolation.
So I ask us each to think about the times that we have allowed the question “why me” to rent too much space in our souls, the times that in trying to punish others we have largely punished ourselves. The times that we have become prisoners of our own bitterness.
And then to ask ourselves the next question: What now?
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on December 8, 2018
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