Recently we have been reading news about wealth in the United States and the growing divide. This is an important issue as 20 million Americans are unemployed. The implication is that somehow the superrich are responsible. This type of argument is an old one and problematic, yet has some truth, while at the same time not being true.
When our son, Josh was a toddler, we had a short vacation in Bethany Beach. At one point he asked for frozen custard, and when Carol asked him, what if you don’t like it, her replied “I haven’t tried it, yet.” So we took for frozen custard, and after one lick of the custard said “No more.” He had enough and it was the principle of the matter that he was expecting something, once he had it, he was satisfied.
In a similar way, when we took our son Michael to his first July 4th celebration in Takoma Park. While I was carrying him he would shudder when the fireworks displays went off. With his face facing my chest for protection, his arm pointed up and said “More.” Life has that explosive quality sometimes, yet we shudder and say “more.”
On the negative side, another time, after buying an ice cream cone for Josh, while he was in his stroller he kept watching it drip on his clothing. I said “if you don’t eat it, I am going to throw it away into the next sewer we pass” You see, I had a suit on and had to carry him across our building lobby would have been a mess. So at the corner, he screamed as I threw it away. I had had enough. Months later, when grandma and grandpa visited, the first thing he said was “one time I had an ice cream cone and daddy threw it in the sewer.” Josh’s revenge!
Is anyone ever satisfied with what they have? If we were satisfied, then what would motivate us to earn or go on? Yet, is it a matter of accumulation of wealth and objects? For others it might be power and achievements that are accumulated? When are we satisfied?
It seems that no matter how much money a person has, we are always looking for additional money, a type of game with real-life consequences. There are people who have talent for business, mathematics, stock picking, art investing, and full careers as artists. Many of them ‘make it’ financially and some have what the author Steven D. Leder called “More Money Than God.”
Some of the wealthy are well known to us, such as Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, the former Mayor of NY City, Michael Bloomberg, Steven Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Charles and David Koch…
Most of these people have more money than Kings or Queens, some have more money than the entire gross domestic product of most countries in the world. Is that so bad that they have this talent as long as it is legal? Is it a blessing or a curse?
George Bernard Shaw was once quoted as saying that “Communism is poverty for everyone.”
In Jewish tradition were are taught: Who is happy? One who is happy with their lot!
Ben Zoma says:
Who is rich?
The one who is appreciates what he has…
(Talmud—Avot 4:1)
In the famous handshake moment of Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Rabin uttered the words: “We say to you today in a loud and a clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough!”
Enough is Enough! There comes a time when we say genug! Enough!
How many wars, how many young people, how many bombs does it take to say enough of war? Yet the opposite is true as well: How many lives lost, people displaced, killed, or turned into refugees does it take to say we have had enough and will not stand for it any longer?
“One who has one hundred wants two hundred” (Koheles Rabbah 1:34); “One who loves money will not be satisfied with money” (Koheles 5:9); “One who increases possessions increases worry” (Koheles, 2:8)
G. B. Shaw, playwright and modern thinker re-marks: “As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.” He also said:
“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
This brings to mind some of our current political discussion. Does the government have the right to tax the wealthy to pay the bills of the rest of the population? The answer would seem to be ‘yes’, as long as it is within reason, and responsible. Yet, does it mean that the government can actually eradicate poverty, or illness, of even joblessness? We can make a case that the efforts may make a serious dent in the statistics.
Back to the super wealthy issue. If prejudice arises as it has in the past knowledge that ‘Jewish’ people somehow have the money, success, and are easy to identify, you have what happened in pre-Holocaust Germany – Kristallnacht. An attack and boycott of anything Jewish. In a way this is happening to Israel with the Boycott, Divest movement. Singling out Israel for boycott, when its neighbor in Syria has displaced over 5 million, and killed 130,00 of its own citizens (and not subject to boycott), is clearly Anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.
Class warfare suggests that Venezuela, where it is a reality, that the government can declare that everyone can line up at a local store which they declare as having high prices, and people can pay little or nothing to have what they want until the business is totaled, bankrupted. This is a form of Fascism which targets the ‘haves’, anyone the government says has something, and pits the ‘have nots’ against them. The result being disaster.
Are people in our society admired for their monetary gain? Yet they can be hated as well. As long as there is a will to live, people are interested in the metaphor of a ladder of life, climbing up that ladder of success.
A lovable story of people who did make it in life shows the nature of people. A wealthy and generous woman who spent her life giving away her fortune at events to support charities, tzedakah projects, institu-tions, and arts, would also enjoy spending her time with friends. When seated around the table, the group of individuals who all originally came from working class backgrounds, following dinner would take out their lottery tickets and compare numbers. These people had great success, yet it was fun for them to try to win in life, to take another chance. Did they know they had already won?
Did they need that? No, not really. Yet it is human nature for them and for us, that the living strive to enjoy life, to explore it, to take a chance, to say as long as I am alive I have a nature which is full of life. For the creative person it is no different, as they wish to create as their life: Music, Art, Dance, Literature…
There are people whose nature is giving. They also ask when is giving enough, or giving back enough? Interestingly, people who experience the satisfaction of life find ways of giving back to family, friends, communities, charities. Also, the arts are a way of giving back as what makes our world better? Inventions, ideas, poetry, films, courage, beauty in many forms.
In Ecclesiastes Rabbah we learn:
A baby enters the world with hands clenched, as if to say, The world is mine; I shall grab it!
A person leaves with hands open, as if to say, I can take nothing with me.
Kris Kristofferson, actor, songwriter, performer, said in an interview this week: “I’d liked to be remembered as an honest. creative person who tried to do the right thing.”
In love relationships, we can also say ‘Enough,’ or it could never be enough in a positive sense, or ‘it was enough, and thinking about that, while it may sadden me, helps me to understand the beauty of life.’ As my colleague, Rabbi Stanley Rabinowitz always said: “When life is good, we can never have enough.”
A wonderful prayer recited every day says: Elu Devarim – These are things of which there is never enough – Acts of kindness and charity, hospitality, honoring one’s father and mother, visiting the sick, dowering the bride, making peace, escorting the dead to their resting place, the study of Torah.
Shabbat Shalom