The Torah portion for this week is B'Ha'alotkha. As with many portions, there are several stories in it, but I would like to focus on one of them, which tells us about one of the complaints of the Children of Israel in the desert. Here is my version, a somewhat updated one.
The Children of Israel and all the other people with them developed a craving and they all began to cry together, "Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish and the squash and the watermelons and the onions and the garlic that we ate in Egypt." Apparently, they did NOT remember the hard slavery!
They continued: "And now, all we see is the manna." It should be pointed out here that the manna was a perfect food and was itself a big miracle that G-d gave them every day they were in the desert.
At this point, both Moses AND G-d got angry. Moses began to complain to G-d about the difficult people and this heavy burden. He really wanted to just die!
G-d told Moses to gather 70 of the elders of Israel and promised that they would help Moses with this matter. G-d also instructed Moses to say, in rather dramatic fashion, to the people, "G-d will certainly give you meat, and you will eat it, not one day, not 2 days, not 5 days, not 10 days, not 20 days, but a WHOLE month, until it comes out of your noses!"
Moses simply could not believe this, and he began to argue with G-d. But G-d told him, "You'll see if this happens or not."
And so Moses told the people about all this and gathered the elders, and they began to prophesy. It's not clear to me how this helped Moses, but he seemed satisfied.
And then a strong wind came that brought thousands of quail from the sea. For a whole day and night and the day after, the people gathered the quail and ate them. But while the meat was still in their teeth, a terrible plague occurred which killed many of them. It's written that they called the name of that place Kivrot Ta'avah ("Graves of Craving").
So, what can we learn from this story?
First, let's talk about cravings. Do we not have many cravings that we know are not good for us and not healthy? It's also hard for us to control them, isn't it? My mother of blessed memory used to say that we are creatures of habit. In general, this is good, in that we don't have to think about everything we do. But when we have a bad habit, it is hard for us to change it.
There's another lesson from this story, I think. Only a short time before this story takes place, the Children of Israel had come out of hard slavery in the Land of Egypt. According to our tradition, this was the greatest miracle in history! Besides that, every day they had the manna, which was a perfect food for their needs. It was also a big miracle. Nevertheless, they continue to complain many times against Moses and against G-d.
I'm afraid we are not all that different from them. We live in the Land! Is not this the greatest miracle of the modern world? Every day, we see the flowers, the butterflies, and all the good things that are in this country. We have comfortable homes, beautiful clothes, and all manner of healthy (and even not so healthy!) foods. But how many times do we complain, even about small matters that are not all that important.
I would like to encourage all of us to think about the good things in our lives and not to complain!
Shabbat Shalom!
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