A Complaint is a Gift

Next time you are on Lexington Avenue, I want you to stop to appreciate the beautiful church that sits between 75th and 76th – the church of St. Jean Baptiste. Over the past few years I have attended a variety of interfaith meetings there, not to mention dropping my children off at the Broadway Babies program hosted in their auditorium.

Whether or not you have ever been inside, I am guessing you do not know the incredible story of how the building was built. The church has been around for hundreds of years, one of the oldest in New York. It was historically a humble structure, a far cry from the fancier churches closer to the Fifth Avenue mansions. As the story goes, one Sunday in 1910, Thomas Fortune Ryan, a prominent Roman Catholic financier, arrived a bit late for high mass. The church was over-crowded, bursting at the seams – standing room only – and Mr. Ryan had to stand for the duration of the service. After mass, Mr. Ryan approached Father Letellier, complaining about what had happened, insistent that the church was too small to accommodate all its parishioners. Father Letellier listened intently, absorbing his congregant’s displeasure, but he was also not a man to fumble and stumble. When Mr. Ryan pressed to know what it would take to build a new church, the Father responded: “not a penny less than $300,000.” Mr. Ryan replied at once “Very well, have your plans made up and I will pay for the church.” And so it was. Mr. Ryan, a disgruntled congregant, went on to become the benefactor of one of the most beautiful churches on the Upper East Side, if not all of New York City.

It is an amazing story, all the more amazing because it is true, told to me not long ago by the present pastor of the church. A story of how a complaint was turned to a gift – it is actually something that happens more often than you might think. I just received an email from the alumni association of my alma mater, the University of Chicago. It told a story that you may have seen reported in the paper – the story of Carolyn Bucksbaum who bristled at the arrogant physician who brusquely dismissed her intuition about her ailment. She turned out to be right; the doctor was wrong and the doctor never even bothered to apologize. Mrs. Bucksbaum came to believe that as much as they must master the science of medicine, physicians should also learn compassion and empathy, in other words, bedside manner. And so it was that last week, the University of Chicago found itself on the receiving end not of a complaint, but a gift – to the tune of 42 million dollars – for the establishment of the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence.

For reasons that are not difficult to figure out, I love these stories of complaints being transformed into gifts. But no week more than this one, on Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath of Repentence, are these stories relevant, not in terms of physical gifts, but another kind of gift. The idea that the complaints we receive – which you and I are so often on the receiving end of – difficult as they are to hear, can be understood as gifts towards personal transformation. After all, for the past two days of Rosh Hashanah, every rabbi has told every Jew that this is the week to come clean with those we love most, to communicate openly and honestly about where we must be better; not only that we must be vulnerable about our own shortcomings, but we should forthcoming about what we need from others. In other words, we need to complain! To truly take in the message of the season, we must be willing to give and receive complaints – complaints about each of us.

Now I know what you are thinking. Rabbi, you have got to be kidding me: a complaint is a gift?! Who likes to hear a complaint? Nobody. None of us tends to handle it well when someone complains. The standard response is to kvetchers is to shut off. We look at the speaker, nodding intently as they tell us what we did wrong; meanwhile, a switch flicks in our head, the shields go up, and like in a Peanuts cartoon, the voice of criticism is transformed into an indistinct “wah, wah, wah.” Occasionally, when we are really on our game, we engage in a series of mental gymnastics while the person is complaining to us. We say to ourselves, “Oh, they think they are complaining about me, but this is really about their bad marriage, unhappy job, something that happened in their childhood, or they are just plain nuts.” Anything rather than allow for the possibility that their complaint could actually be valid. Most often, when someone complains, we tighten up – physically and emotionally. We feel personally attacked, our temperature rises, we crouch down into a defensive position, and before even hearing the full complaint, we are already working on a vicious response. We hate complaints, because we hate to be wrong and we hate all the stuff that comes with being wrong, like being reflective, introspective, apologetic and experiencing other awkward sentiments we would rather avoid. And the only thing worse than being wrong is someone telling us that we are wrong. Nobody likes complaints and I’ll be the first to admit it.

But with all the qualifiers stated, in the spirit of the the new year, come with me on a mental experiment, this working hypothesis that under certain circumstances, complaints can be gifts.

First of all, complaining is in the DNA of our people. From the very moment we left Egypt, the Jewish people have been habitual kvetchers. Too much food, too little food, when will get to the promised land, when can we go back to Egypt? From Moses, to the Rivers of Babylon, to Gilda Radner’s “It’s always something,” Jews have a rich tradition of perpetual dissatisfaction.

Remember the story of Sadie Goldstein, the Jewish grandmother, who was walking on the beach with her grandson when a huge wave crashed down, sweeping the boy into the depths of the ocean. Sadie dropped to her knees and turned to heaven praying for the return of her grandson. “Please God, I have always been a good person, a good Jew and a loving grandmother; please return my grandson to me.” Just as she is finishing her prayer, another huge wave crashes back returning the young boy to his grandmother's side. Sadie begins to cry and hug the grandson she thought she would never see again. She is overcome with joy and gratitude. She looks once more at her grandson, then looks up at the heavens and yells, “He had a hat!”

Or what about the story of the four Jewish women sitting on the beach. The first says, “Oy.” The second, “Oy vey.” The third says, “Oy vey’z mir.” The fourth turns to them and says, “Ladies, I thought we promised not to talk about our children.”

It is part of our DNA, the “Oy” chromosome, the subtext of every good Jewish joke. We know it could always be worse, but that doesn’t stop us from complaining about how it is, about ourselves and about each other. But like chopped liver and anti-Semitism, just because it’s always been around doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing. How exactly can it be a good thing to be on the receiving end of a complaint? Let me give you a few reasons.

First, of all, a complaint is an expression of a relationship. I get angry all the time, but I only complain when I care. As Elie Wiesel eloquently stated, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” If you are mistreated in a store and you can get the product elsewhere, you walk away and take your business with you. So too with people; when you don’t care about someone, you write them off. It is only when, for whatever reason, you are invested in continuing a relationship that you bother to complain. I know, it is counterintuitive, but next time someone complains to you, think of it in that way. If they didn’t care on some level, they wouldn’t bother to pick up the phone, confront you about your shortcomings and let you know where you fell short of expectations. It doesn’t make it any easier, and you still may be right and they wrong, but it may enable you to respond to the moment with a more moderated sensibility.

Second, a complaint is important because if someone is complaining, then odds are they are not the only person who feels that way. For a congregational rabbi, this is a critically important rule of thumb. I get complaints all the time, by phone, email, in person, usually at Kiddush. And whether I think I am right or wrong, I realize that whether I am actually right or wrong, there is the bigger question of perception. Our actions are often received in ways that they were never intended. A complaint, well founded or not, is a wake up call, a view into your behavior, of how your words and deeds are being received. You may have seen the exhibit at the Met, the photography of Paul Strand. Strand sought to achieve the greatest possible degree of objectivity in his portraits. So he outfitted himself with a specially fitted camera with a side mount in order to photograph a person without being noticed. So too a complaint. It is not the only angle, but it can serve as a perspective on yourself of which you are unaware. And given the laws of probability, there is more than one person picking up on that same behavior of yours. Remember rule number one: a complaint is a gift because that person cares. Just imagine how many people see that same shortcoming of yours, but because they don’t care as much as the person who did bother to complain - they just walked away. Not an easy thought for a rabbi to absorb, for that matter, not an easy thought for anyone to take in.

Third, a complaint is a gift because – drum roll please – that person could actually be right! I know, I know, it is difficult to imagine, but as the expression goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. We are proud people, we don’t like admitting that we are wrong, but at least once a year, during these ten days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the days between, we carry ourselves a little differently, we allow for a bit more humility in our demeanor. Our tone is different, our rush to judgment more cautious. A short while ago, a congregant brought a complaint to me. They did it thoughtfully, they did it privately, and they did it with love for this institution and great personal regard for me. It was a profoundly moving experience and it continues to be weeks later. It has forced me to reflect on the incident at hand, and it has forced me to reflect on how I conduct myself in the future. In a very substantive way it has brought me closer to the person, elevated that person in my estimation and I hope, made me a better human being and a better rabbi. When someone complains in the right way and when you hear it in the right way, a complaint is a tremendous gift and can be the single most important tool we have to create relationships of meaning.

There are lots of reasons, but maybe the simplest one is this. At this time of year, we need to be open to hearing complaints because this is what we ask of God. Sh’ma koleinu, “Hear our voices.” What are the High Holidays if not a liturgical expression of the most basic human need to have our voices heard by God. Milton once wrote, “Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.” On the High Holidays we place our tributes at the divine footstool, hopeful that God will be moved by our pleas. How can we possibly ask this kindness of God if we ourselves are not willing to extend the same courtesy to those we love most.

There is a tongue in cheek midrash, rabbinic legend, that the reason God instructed the Israelites to build the mishkan, the desert tabernacle, was simply because it would give them something to do instead of complaining. Some temples are built to help us avoid complaining; some churches are built because of a fortuitous complaint.

For us, the question during these Days of Repentance is what role complaints will play as we think about the structures we are building in the year to come. One thing I can guarantee you – the complaints will come. Your choice is how you will receive those complaints. This week, try to look at them as gifts, insights into what we don’t yet know about ourselves, what we need to know in order to become the people we seek to be.