blogs/rabbi-huberman

God Hates Trash Talk

About ten years ago, a television ad appeared for Nike shoes, which turns my stomach to this day.

It opens with a group of ten-year-olds playing a polite game of basketball on an inner city court. A car pulls up with some NBA players who stop to observe.

Suddenly the car door opens, and one of the players yells to the boys. "Hey, you're doing it wrong. Where's your trash talk?"

As I recall, the professional players walk over to the court, and begin challenging each other with "is that all you got...?" and a flurry of insults concerning the maternal ancestry of the others. The game continues against a soundtrack of insults and name calling.

The children return to the court and begin taunting one another, mimicking the players.

The players re-enter their car, and one turns to the other and says, "Well, I guess our work here is done." The ad concludes with the company logo and slogan flashed across the screen.

There are plenty of memes on the internet glorifying "the greatest trash talk lines of all time." In essence, they summarize a philosophy too often prevalent in sports -- and in politics -- that we are only as good as our ability to demean one another.

Too often, when I watch football, the goal of the game appears to be not only to win, but also humiliate the opponent. To be honest, I find victory dances over the fallen body of a tackled quarterback, or various celebratory rituals after someone scores a touchdown, offensive.

In this week's Torah portion, we find that, according to our tradition, God weighs in on the topic of winners and losers. Indeed, the Talmud has something to say about celebrating victory with dignity.

The Torah portion is called Beshallach --"when Pharaoh let the people go"-- and it opens with the Nation of Israel standing on the banks of Sea of Reeds. We know the story. The Jewish people are pinned against the waters, with the Egyptian army approaching.

The Torah tells us that the waters part and the Israelites successfully cross to the east side. The Egyptian charioteers follow the same path but the walls do not hold. The Egyptians are swallowed by the waters.

What happens next provides us with one of the most important lessons within Jewish tradition. The Torah tells us that the Israelites began celebrating.

They sing, they dance. Some laugh, some cheer, some taunt as the Egyptians succumb to the waters of Yam Suf, the Reeds Sea.

In Biblical terms, the Israelites begin to trash talk:

"Pharaoh's chariots and his army God has cast into the sea; And the pick of his officers are drowned in the Sea of Reeds. The deeps covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power, Your right hand, O Lord, shatters the foe!" (Exodus 15:4-5).

The celebration continues as the Egyptians gasp for air.

God's angels also want to get into the act. After hundreds of years of slavery and oppression, Israel's enemy has finally been defeated. We are free at last.

Suddenly, a voice bellows from heaven. It is God. And God is not amused.

"My handiwork is drowning in the sea and you recite a song of praise before Me?" says God. (Talmud, Sanhedrin 39b).

Within these words, God sends to the angels, and ultimately the children of Israel, an important message, which still resonates and instructs us to this day. We must never define our victories by the defeat of others. It sullies and muddies what a victory actually is.

The classic 1968 film, The Lion in Winter, stars Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole as Henry and Eleanor, a king and queen of England fighting over which of their three sons should succeed them. Their eldest son, Richard, gets to the heart of the matter when he tells Eleanor: "You want Henry's kingdom for me? No, you don't care about that.... You don't care who wins, as long as Henry loses."

Indeed, our own history of pain and defeat has made us uniquely qualified to remain sensitive towards the suffering of others. Notes the Talmud, "Our elation should never make us forget the misfortunes afflicting others." (Berachot 31a).

Our ancient commentaries, Tosafot, links God's rebuke to the Jewish people that day to the Jewish custom of breaking a glass at the end of a wedding ceremony. It is also one reason why we spill out drops of wine at the Passover table. It is to remind us that our cups of victory, deliverance and celebration, can never be full while others are forced to suffer.

As the Book of Proverbs instructs: "When your enemy falls, do not rejoice" (24:17).

One summer evening in 1986, I arrived at the soccer pitch with my son Robin, expecting to watch from the sidelines, as he and a pack of seven-year-olds swarmed up and down the field chasing a ball.

Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me. "Ummm, sir? At the beginning of the season you ticked a box on the registration form which said that if necessary you would be willing to assist the coach on your boy's team."

I nodded.

"Well, it seems," said the league president, "that the coach and his assistants are part of an oil workers strike north of the city. They are behind the picket lines. Here is the whistle and the clipboard. Congratulations! You're the new coach."

That night, as parents cupped their foreheads in agony, my pack of "bad news bears" were crushed by the opposition. They absorbed the insults of the opposing team, and in some cases, returned the taunts.

But in the weeks to come, as the strike continued, I became more confident as a soccer coach. As we strategized before each game, I also had our team focus on a central motto. "We are not playing against the other team. We are playing against ourselves."

And over the next six weeks, our team climbed out of the cellar of the standings into the semifinals. We won as a team, and could always stand tall at the end of each match, happy to congratulate our opponents on "a good game."

I experienced one of the greatest sporting moments of my life during the semi finals played one Sunday morning. With the score tied at one, in overtime, my son Robin suddenly found himself with the ball, directly in front of the opposing goalie.

Afterwards, he told me, "I wasn't trying to beat the goalie; I was trying to give it the best shot I got."

Robin hardly touched the ball. It deflected off the side of his foot sending it on a slow painful course towards the net. In what was probably the longest five seconds of my life, the ball slid by the goalie just inside the left post, leading us to victory.

The goal culminated in Robin being carried off the field. Both teams were chanting, "Good game, good game."

I thought about that soccer match this week, as I reread the Talmudic story of God rebuking the Israelites for celebrating the defeat of others.

It pains me that often we fail to recognize the true enemy -- at work, on the playing field, in our families -- is not the other person, but rather ourselves.

Are we centered? Are we at peace? Do we blame others when we miss our goal? Is victory internal, or does it come at the expense of others?

It is the Jewish way, based largely on the Talmud's interpretation of this week's crossing of the sea, that victory is a blessing which comes from within.

We give thanks to God for providing us with skills and the capacity to emerge victorious, and still, after centuries of pain and suffering, we as Jews, consider it a Chilul HaShem, a desecration to God, to rejoice at the defeat of others.

For if the goal of life, according to our great rabbi, the Vilna Gaon, is to make ourselves into something better, then our victories should connect to our inner peace, our own mental and physical training, our faith, and our values.

Indeed, victory within all aspects of our lives remains within each of us. We may suffer setbacks, but each of us has the inner capacity to emerge victorious as we cross our own challenging seas.

Adversaries? The other guy? A distraction. Nothing more.

Victory lies within each of us when we incline ourselves within. It is part of the central Jewish journey.

Let us each focus on our own journeys. And when we succeed, let us give thanks. Never mind distractions.

God reminds us of this within an ageless Talmudic teaching. Let us therefore work to perfect ourselves, and let us never rejoice upon the suffering of others.

Indeed, success and failure rest within our own thoughts and actions. For we are all God's creation.

And each of us is precious in God's sight.

Shabbat Shalom, v'kol tuv.

Rabbi Irwin Huberman