Jacob said: "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my justice has passed away from my God" (Isaiah 40:27). This was Israel speaking — the whole nation's complaint condensed into one verse. The Holy One is not paying attention. He has forgotten us. Exile has gone on too long.
Rabbi Shmuel reframes the complaint with a question from Lamentations: "Why should a living man complain about his sins?" (Lamentations 3:39). The answer is: he shouldn't, because the complaint that comes from your own sins is a complaint you have no standing to make. But the rabbis were not heartless — they acknowledged the distinction between suffering that comes from your own choices and suffering that feels disproportionate to anything you've done. The first requires repentance, not complaint. The second requires patience, and maybe prayer.
Rabbi Shimon goes further: "Why should a person complain? Is it not enough that he is alive and sees this sun?" The point is not toxic positivity — it's perspective. The exile is real. The suffering is real. But the capacity to question God, to bring the complaint before the heavenly court, to use Isaiah's words to frame your grief — that capacity itself requires being alive. The very complaint is the evidence of the life that makes the complaint possible. Jacob was not forgotten. The fact that he could say "I have been forgotten" was proof that something was still listening.