How Not to be an Ingrate

Rashi offers a very interesting commentary on the ethos of gratitude as the Book of Devarim opens. Hashem has commanded the Jewish people to not provoke the people of Edom, the descendants of Eisav, the sworn enemy of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are commanded to deal with Eisav's offspring in a congenial way.

Rashi, on the verse, comments that the Jewish people need to show gratitude to Hashem for having protected them for 40 years in the desert. How do they do this? By lifting their heads up high, Rashi writes, and by not haggling with the people of Edom. Pay them a fair price, show them largesse, don't make yourselves into nebachs, but lift your heads up high, pay a little extra for the service and show that Hashem has given you everything he promised.

This is in sharp contradistinction to the servile approach Yaakov took prior with his brother Eisav. There, confronted by Eisav's 400-hundred men, each a seasoned warrior in his own right, Yaakov prepares by praying, offering him immense numbers of herds as a gift, and if all else fails, readies himself for battle.

There, in Parshat Vayishlach, Rashi comments that Yaakov's intent was to tell Eisav that he had not stolen his blessing; rather, he was offering it fully to his older brother, with a multitude of livestock.

Here, though, the tides have turned. No longer in a position of weakness, the Jewish people are practically invincible. No enemy has succeeded in surmounting them, and they have left Egypt with great wealth, not through the initial livestock Yaakov had amassed in the house of Lavan, but through Hashem's great generosity, depleting the wealth of what theretofore had been the wealthiest country in the world, amassing great capital and growing it when Joseph sold grain to poor and wealthy country alike. There was no stopping the Jewish people, and Hashem, Rashi explains, was telling the Jewish people, to nickel and dime Edom, to bargain for water and food, to ask for pity rather than a brotherly right that would be paid for fully – and some – anything less would have been a lack of appreciation to Hashem Himself.

There is a well-known expression in the Talmud, "Poverty cannot be extant at a time of wealth." When you have it good, don't flaunt but use it to aid others, to show them that you're on their side, to show them that you're not trying to one-up them, or milk them for all their wealth, but rather, use it to fulfill its true goal, create a divinely inspired better humanity where you can share your prosperity with your fellow man.