Last Saturday night I received a call from someone looking for a Rabbi. The woman I spoke to was calling on behalf of her daughter’s best friend’s step-father who was suffering from a terminal form of cancer. He had been moved to home hospice care, and it did not look like had much longer to live. He had been totally disconnected from anything Jewish, but now he wanted a Rabbi to pray with him and help him find peace. They had tried to find a Rabbi through the hospice chaplain but were unable, so they looked on the internet and that’s how they found me.
These kinds of visits are something I’m privileged to get the opportunity to do, but not really the easiest part of my Job. Although making visits like this was part of my rabbinic training, it’s not something I have had much experience with. Not really knowing what to expect, somewhat apprehensive and a bit nervous, I went to go visit him on Monday afternoon. While all the details of my visit are not relevant, I would like to share a reflection I made while in his home because it impacted something I noticed in the Parsha which I had never seen before.
I’m not making a judgment on the family’s behavior. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for them. I’m simply making an observation. There was a great strain on the family from needing to take care of him, in their home, 24 hours a day. On top of that, he was on medication that was making him angry, mean, and difficult to deal with. Their patience was wearing thin. The tension in that house was palpable. There were moments where I could tell that my presence was a comfort not because of anything I did, but simply because I had not been dealing with the frustrations of providing care for him, and I was able to be more patient with him than he had experienced recently.
All week I was thinking about how powerful patience can be. Unfortunately, more often than not, when patience is really needed it’s more difficult to come by. As they say, patience is a virtue. But I think the virtue of patience is incredibly subtle and its importance is really felt when there is a lack of it. Since this was what was on my mind when I was studying the Parsha this week when I noticed that Moses was an incredibly patient man.
If you think about the Parsha, why would Pharaoh let hundreds of thousands of people who work for free just pack up and leave? Imagine the turmoil such an event would have on Egyptian economy. Who would do all the work that the slaves had been doing, how would the government pay to fill those empty positions? When you think about it like that, you can begin to understand why Moses did not want to take this Job as God’s messenger. More than one time since the end of last week’s Parsha through the beginning of this week’s Parsha Moses tries to refuse God’s command to go to Pharaoh and free the slaves. Such a task was bound to be an incredibly frustrating experience. But Moses did it anyway.
Let’s think about what it must have been like for Moses. Before each plague he would go to Pharaoh, once getting to his meeting with Pharaoh, Moses would tell him that God was instructing him to let the Jewish people go. Pharaoh would refuse, the plague would come, and then Moses would have to go back to pharaoh. Sometimes with a hardened heart, Pharaoh would immediately refuse to give in, other times the plague scared him enough to say he would let them go if Moses would just stop the plague. Pharaoh would then change his mind and Moses would have to go through the whole song and dance again. This process kept repeating itself with every new plague. Every time Moses would say pretty much the exact same thing to Pharaoh that he had said the last time. It's very impressive to me that throughout this week’s Parsha there is no evidence of him getting frustrated with having to do the same thing over and over again and repeat himself over and over again.
Most people, myself included, lose patience very quickly when we have to keep repeating ourselves. Maybe you’ve heard the term, “it’s like beating your head against the wall.” It seems like Moses was beating his against the wall with Pharaoh, but throughout the entire story Moses remains cool, calm and collected.
The importance of patience is subtle, there isn’t a clear lesson to be learnt from Moses’ patience because it doesn’t change the story at all, and everything just progresses without most of us ever paying attention to this detail.
The value of patience is really most obvious when we observe the lack of it. Let’s take an example from this week’s Parsha. When Moses came to tell the Jewish people that he had come as God’s messenger to deliver them to freedom they didn’t pay attention to him. The Torah says it was because of their קוצר רוח, short spirit. Many bible commentators explain this phrase as impatience. The Jewish people were so frustrated with their situation that their impatience to be freed wouldn’t allow them to believe in the messenger of their deliverance.
Another example which really drives the point home is an episode from later in Moses’ life. We will read about it later in the torah. The Jewish people were complaining to Moses because they had no water. After a long time in the desert, with the people’s seemingly never-ending list of complaints, Moses was no longer able to remain patient. God had commanded him to talk to a specific rock in front of all the people and it would bring forth water. In frustration instead of talking to it, Moses hit the rock with his stick. This event, where Moses finally loses his patience, is seen to be his greatest flaw as a leader.
For anyone who has children of their own or who has ever worked with children you might be able to relate to this. It amazes me how it seems to that since he was born, my son, Yonah has had an amazing ability to be particularly difficult when I have less patience. I joke that it’s like he’s got a patience radar, but there’s some truth this. Babies can sense and respond negatively to our frustration. That’s just one example. I’m sure if each of us reflects on our lives we can come up with countless examples of where our relationships with other people, particularly those who are closest to us: Our family, friends, and co-workers, have been negatively affected when we lose our patience.
There are always things that strain our patience. The reality is that patience isn’t always easy to come by. We all know people who can be particularly difficult or sometimes we are just tired, hungry, cranky, etc. So the question I have is if the Torah is teaching us about Moses being patient, does it give us advice on how to be more patient in our own lives?
I think the most helpful piece of advice that the torah provides for us with regard this is that we need to consciously make an effort to be more patient. Before sending Moses to speak to Pharaoh, God warns Moses that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart, meaning Moses should expect pharaoh to be stubborn. Knowing that, Moses was able to show a great deal of patience throughout the story. Similarly, if we expect a need to be more patient, we can consciously try to be more patient. We don’t need a warning from God to know that people will be difficult. I challenge everyone here to consciously make an attempt to be more patient especially in situations where we know it might be difficult and see if it makes a difference.
I’ll close with a confession: When Naomi andI first moved to Nashville, we couldn’t help being surprised with how long our conversations with Nashvillians were; it was bit of culture shock for us. Not that these conversations were actually excessive at all, or that we didn’t enjoy talking to people, but it was just a different than what we were used to. You have to understand, coming from NY where even if you see a close friend who you haven’t seen for years to say more than, “hi, how are you, it’s so great to see you,” could be considered a long conversation. We didn’t expect that people might actually want to talk to us for a few minutes. We were afraid that people would sense our impatience and think we were being rude. So one day we realized that the only reason we are getting impatient is because we are expecting these interactions to be like the incredibly impersonal ones we were used to in NY. After a day or two when we realized that we needed to change our expectations we immediately felt that impatience disappear and our fear of being rude along with it.
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