TORAH PORTION

GLADYS LANGWALD MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP

Patience: A Virtue
That Is Often Ignored

RABBI RICHARD C. HERTZ

Special to The Jewish News

T

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42' FRIDAY: JULY 14: 1989

I

he Torah portion for
this week tells of the
single blot in the long
and memorable career of
Moses as leader. It is the story
of the waters at Meribah.
The children of Israel had
been wandering in the desert
for 38 years. The old genera-
tion had died out or was dy-
ing; a new generation was
growing up. Hardships and
sacrifices of the people had
become so great that they
went to Moses once again
with their complaints. "Why
have you brought us into this
wilderness for us and our
beasts to die here?"
The lack of water was
something so essential in the
desert for the people and their
flocks. Moses was bidden by
God to take his rod and
assemble the congregation
and speak to the rock before
their very eyes to see that it
give forth water. It was to be
a miracle from God to demon-
strate once again to the
thirsty people that their God
was taking care of them.
But what did Moses do?
Moses struck th rod twice
with his rod. Water gushed
forth. Instead of it being a
miracle from God, it was a
physical act by Moses strik-
ing, not once, but twice, and
thereby losing his patience,
revealing his lack of trust in
the Divine word.
For this minor transgres-
sion committed in frustra-
tion, the punishment given to
Moses was that he, like the
others of his generation,
would die without entering
the Promised land.
The impatience of Moses
reminds us of many things.
Patience is one of them. Life
is made up of little things
that make all the difference
in the world. It's the little
things of life that make us or
break us. They upset us. They
keep us from being at our
best.
We personally and in-
dividually cannot alter the
course of human events. Few
of us reach positions of
decisive influence. Most of us
are heroes only to our
families. Our names never get
into Who's Who, only in the
telephone book and the
obituary column. -
Life, for most people, is not
made up of epic-making deci-
sions or historic respon-

Hertz is rabbi emeritus of
Temple Beth El.

sibilities. It is made up of
never ending continuation of
little things related to our
jobs, our homes, our families,
our circle of friends. Big
things show what a person
can do. Little things show
what a person really is. It's
the little things that we do
and say that mean so much.

Hukat: Numbers
20:7-13;
Micah 5:6-6:8.

How patient are you? Franz
Kafka, whose mystical
writings are having a rebirth
of popularity, called impa-
tience the cardinal sin of our
time.
It is not necessary for all
people to be great in action.
The greatest and most
sublime power may often be
simple patience. It
strengthens the spirit,
sweetens the temper, stifles
anger, extinguishes envy, sub-
dues pride, bridles the tongue,
restrains the hand.
A recent study of the
American family shows this
interesting conclusion: Of all
the qualities that make for-
good child-parent relation-
ship, patience stood first on
the list.
What would friendship be
without patient understan-
ding? What would education
be like without patient
teachers? What would com-
mercial offices be like without
patient instruction in
business procedures?
Many of the hardcore pro-
blems of national life require
patience. Race relations is a
field where vast strides have
been made in a comparative-
ly short time, but racism is far
from being solved. Under-
standing, forbearance and
mutual respect — in a word,
patience — will have to be ex-
ercised for a long time to
come before Americans of all
races and creeds learn to walk
the earth like men instead of
stalking like beasts.
Cultivated patience seems
like such an obviously simple
virtue. The trouble is that it
is so foreign to the tempera-
ment of modern city dwellers.
We rush about in a hurry. We
are impatient with our
families, our neighbors,
ourselves, even with the delay
in traffic.
In the Orient the art of pa-
tience has been highly
developed. The West needs to
learn this difficult art. We
want to get everything over in
a hurry — nuclear disarma-