The Greeks didn’t question Zeus; Christians don’t debate with Jesus; and Muslims don’t even converse, let alone argue, with Allah
“When I was a teenager, it used to terrify me when I entered non-Jewish households. No one raised their voices. They talked elegantly and meaningfully about absolutely nothing. With nuances! … Who could really know anything of people who were so unshouty?” I read these words—written recently by Guardian reviewer Linda Grant in reference to a London play about a modern Jewish family called Two Thousand Years—with the thrill of cultural recognition: I too grew up in a “shouty” Jewish household—albeit in Toronto, not London.
The play coincides with the publication of an interesting new book, Born to Kvetch. In tracing the history of Yiddish as a pre-eminent language of complaint, author Michael Vex provides a less mordant approach to the same theme, voluble Jewish angst, a trope so recognizable it immediately conjures up a slew of entertainment-world examples. For Jews have a near-monopoly on kvetchiness as stage comedy: From Jack Benny through Jackie Mason, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Seinfeld (and his parents), and my personal favourite, Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm), the kvetchy Jew is a staple of American comedy.
Why are we Jews so argumentative? Complaint is, after all, but a hint of one’s willingness to engage in more aggressive disputation. As the rosters of academia, the legal profession and the punditry attest, Jews are disproportionately drawn to arguing a case.
Blame it on the volatile, but (formerly) sociable God of the Hebrew Bible. The Greeks didn’t question Zeus; Christians don’t debate with Jesus; and Muslims don’t even converse, let alone argue, with Allah. But then, the highest ideal in our constitution, the Hebrew Bible, is neither love, salvation, contemplative withdrawal, nor reflexive submission. It is the ideal of active, worldly, temporal justice (“Justice, justice shall you pursue”—Deuteronomy 16:20), which isn’t a unitary truth, but a matrix of human rights achieved through passionate advocacy .
The Bible’s narratives allegorically record our ancestors’ belief that God merely prescribes justice; human vigilance ensures it is respected. That is to say, our relationship with God—and by extension, all powerful people or systems—is rooted in speaking truth to power. In three peoplehood-defining biblical episodes—arguments with Abraham, Moses and Job—a totalitarian God changes mood and plans in response to ardent human prompts to uphold His own principles.
When God tells Abraham that he intends to wipe out the wicked of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:23-32), he invites refutation. Abraham boldly recalls God’s own prohibition against injustice, and negotiates with the Almighty to save the towns for the sake of 10 innocent people (they bargain down from 50).
After the exodus from Egypt, when the bored Israelites in the desert “murmured” against God (polite for “kvetched”) and built a golden calf, God tells Moses He will “put an end” to the idolators. Moses mounts an effective rebuttal and “God relented from the evil that He had spoken to do.”
A bewildered, suffering Job futilely seeks the process of justice: “Oh, if only God would hear me … let me read his indictment … I would justify the least of my actions,” while God, sidestepping the issue, boasts of his omniscience and omnipotence, which Job had never questioned. Morally, Job is in the right. His final declaration: “God may well slay me; I have no hope/Yet I will argue my case before Him” is the philosophical DNA of Jewish civilization. In the end, God returns Job to good fortune, effectively admitting that the man’s plea for justice trumps the value of omnipotence. That principle established, God never again argues with Jews, but Jews have never stopped arguing with Him.
All of which explains our atavistic impulse to kvetch, rather like practicing our scales in preparation for an impromptu command performance before the King of kings. But as a courtesy to our gentile friends, we try to tone down our kvetchiness in their presence. A joke illustrates:
Mr. Cohen, a patient at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital, asks to be transferred to the Jewish General. Concerned for the hospital’s image of cultural sensitivity, an ombudsman interviews him. He asks: “Is there something wrong with your medical care here?” Mr. Cohen replies, “Oh, I can’t complain about the care here.” “Is it the food?” “Oh, I can’t complain about the food here.” “Is it the nurses?” “Oh, I can’t complain about the nurses here.”
“Then why do you want to be transferred to the Jewish General?” “Because there, I can complain.”
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