This gemara mentions two stories of ingratitude: Adam blaming the sin in the garden on Hashem for providing him with a partner and the Jewish people complaining about the manna that God employed to sustain them in the desert.

It also mentions that Moshe called the people ingrates when they didn't request Divine help in achieving hearts sensitive to religious ideals. What connects this failure to request with ingratitude? The Tosafot explain that people who are not grateful often prefer to not have favors done for them because they resent feeling beholden to anyone else. Thus, the same personality trait that prevents someone who received a gift from saying thank you can also prevent that person from accepting gifts in the first place. Rashi, on the other hand, explains that they did not recognize the things in question as a good. In other words, Adam truly thought that Eve was not a boon, the Jews in the desert truly did not want manna and the Jews Moshe addresses did not perceive a more religiously sensitive heart as something positive. For Rashi, the central question is not whether one knows how to express gratitude but whether one can recognize the good in the first place.

There seem to be two aspects to becoming a grateful person. The first requires that we swallow our pride and admit that others have done favors for us and verbalize out feelings of thanks. The other demands an awareness of what things in life are t ruly valuable. A mistaken scale of prioritites can lead us to reject or underappreciate the beautiful gifts offered by others. To avoid the pitfall of ingratitude, we must take a two pronged approach that includes both recognizing the good and admitting the good.

Postscript: The above analyisis does not deal with the question of why asking for Divine help in acquiring religious hearts is not a violation of human free will. For an approach to this question, see the Maharsha's commentray on the this talmudic page.

Return to Aggadot Home