Our Gemara on Amud Beis notes the irony that whilst the Jewish people had a standing center of worship, they were praying for the welfare of the entire world. Even so, their enemies destroyed this powerful beacon of Godly benefit to the entire world.

⁦Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Woe unto the nations of the world that lost something and do not know what they lost. When the Temple was standing, the seventy bulls sacrificed on the altar during the festival of Sukkot atones for them. And now that the Temple is destroyed, who atones for them?

This had me thinking about the concept of the despised person within the system. Often in organizations as well as families, one particular so-called troublemaker is identified as the problem.  However, a more accurate description is that they are the ones who react to the problem. That is a big difference. Reacting to a problem in a system is not the same as having a problem. Let me illustrate with the following example:

Imagine a well-intentioned rebbe who nevertheless drones on and on, and runs his class in such a way that he assumes his students should be automatically interested in his material, without allowing for any type of change in pattern, discussions, questions, commentaries, stories etc. Instead of being a 7th grade rebbe, he styles himself as some sort of Rosh Mesivta. Now, who can blame him? That’s what he really wanted to do, that’s what he still has hopes to do if he should be lucky enough to rise up amongst the ranks. However, right now he’s teaching a bunch of immature seventh graders. That’s the reality.

After the first 25 minutes or so, as the rebbe monotonously plods through the Shiur, Shloime, the so-called problem kid, starts to get restless. He makes funny noises, is told to quiet down. Of course he can’t fully control himself because he does have some anxiety and focus issues (you can call it ADD if it makes everyone happy and the pharmaceutical companies well off), and so there is some amount of disciplinary back-and-forth between Shloimie and Rebbe. As it escalates, all of this is quite entertaining to the other relatively well-behaved classmates. You see, they have more self-control and more respect and they themselves won’t yet act out, but Shloimie is providing much needed distraction and comic relief for the rest of the class. So probably they won’t need to act out.

The Rebbe imagines that if only he could throw Shloimie out of the class, everything would go so much better, because after all, Shloimie was the one making all the trouble. But here is the reality: Shloimie was simply the weakest link in the chain, so he’s the one who snaps first. If he was not in the class the next weakest child would start to act out. If it takes 25 minutes for Shloimie to become bored and act out, it takes 30 minutes for Yankel to do so. It doesn’t matter, because the problem is not the children, they are simply reacting to the problem. The problem is the Rebbe who does not understand the developmental needs of his students and wishes he was a Rosh Yeshiva giving a pilpul shiur while he, as of yet, is not. 

Taking this further, even if the other children were respectful and well behaved, the problem doesn’t go away, it just stays submerged. Students may still be suffering, not learning as much as they should, developing hatred and revulsion toward Torah studies, and suffering in silence.

This is known as systems thinking, and in the 70s, the family therapist pioneers turned the entire psychological and diagnostic treatment process on its head. They began to realize that people who were so-called “sick”, or had diagnoses, were merely what they called the identified patient. In fact, the identified patients were simply acting on complex and painful anxieties and other emotions that were native within the family, and possibly even legacy burdens from deceased relatives (think Holocaust survivors). Just like Shloimie who relieved the rest of the class by becoming bored and by acting out, so too more sensitive more insightful members of a family might be acting out painful feelings and emotional conflicts that everyone is feeling but not acknowledging.

This can happen within corporations when you have whistleblowers, and even in entire countries. This is how we can understand this Gemara. The Jews were hated and oppressed, but why? Like modern day antisemitism it seems to be completely irrational. What grave offenses and international crimes did the Jewish people commit? Was believing in one God and having an independent culture so threatening that we needed to be eradicated? Or was there something that we knew, something that our very existence called out, that no one could stomach? It all started when Abraham smashed his father’s idols, when Joseph the lowly prisoner and slave boy dared to advise the most powerful man in the world, and when Moses stood up to his adoptive father, Pharaoh. The Jew throughout history is the outsider, the one who is in the system enough to understand it but also out of the system enough so as to challenge it. 

Jews are overrepresented in any field of study, science or art that requires fresh perspectives and a willingness to think out of the box. The startling statistical fact is that though Jews represent 0.2% of the population, they represent more than 20% of the Nobel prize recipients since inception. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates ) This cannot be explained easily but I believe the Jewish stance of an “outside insider” is a major contributor.

What does all this mean? Sometimes when you experience an unpopular, disturbing, or annoying voice within your family, within your company or even within your community perhaps it should not be squelched. Not every odd behavior should be medicated, and not every difficult to get along with person should be subdued. Sometimes we need to listen to our messages.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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