Beha’alotecha: Who will give us meat?
In this week’s parsha (Torah portion), the Israelites are deeply unhappy with their menu options.
1 The people were looking to complain, and it was evil in the ears of God... The Lord heard and His anger flared, and a fire from the Lord burned among them, consuming the extremes of the camp.
2 The people cried out to Moses; Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died down…
4 But the multitude among them began to have strong cravings. Then even the children of Israel once again began to cry, and they said, "Who will feed us meat?
5 We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free of charge, the cucumbers, the watermelons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.
6 But now, our bodies are dried out, for there is nothing at all; we have nothing but manna to look at."
(Numbers 11:1-6)
The text is clear: the inclination to complain came before the actual reasons for the complaint. Rashi writes:
Who will feed us meat?: Did they not have meat? Does it not say, “Also a great mixed multitude went up with them, and flocks and cattle” (Exod. 12:38)? You might argue that they had already eaten them. But when they were about to enter the Land, is it not written that, “the children of Reuben had much cattle'' (Num. 32:1)? The answer is that they were seeking a pretext.
In other words, they had the meat they needed. They had plenty of sustenance in the manna that was given to them, which they so quickly wave away as “nothing.” They needed a pretext for their craving, and food was the one they chose.
What brings on this overwhelming craving in the first place?
Most of the commentators point to the sentence a few verses earlier:
They traveled a distance of three days from the mountain of the Divine…
(Numbers 10:30)
The Israelites needed a breather from the connection they shared with God. Consciously or unconsciously, their complaining and sharp cravings helped them to psychically put distance between themselves and the Divine energy they felt at Sinai.
The motivation for this retreat could have been fear of the unknown ahead of them. Perhaps they felt a desire for the known of Egypt, in all its narrowness, over the wide, expansive mystery of the desert
The retreat could also be, as the Ramban suggests, a retreat from the responsibilities and commitments of following God and God’s laws. Perhaps they are feeling reluctant to grow up and commit themselves to a larger truth, searching instead for easier and quicker means of satiation.
Avivah Zornberg, citing Ha’amek Davar, argues that the Israelites run from God because the intensity of God’s love for them is too much for them to trust or handle. “The people exchange the spiritual ecstasy of Sinai for the physical pleasures of bassar – meat or flesh,” she writes. “Turning aside from a fascination with God (mei-acharei Ha-Shem), they obey an impulse to flee from the intensity of Sinai to the simpler pleasures of the flesh.” (Bewilderments, 69).
The Torah is often referred to as a love story between God and the Jewish people. In my own personal story of love, I know the retreat section very well. For many, many years, I wanted love and connection so badly, craving for it filled every pore in my body And yet at the same time, like the Israelites, I dated the wrong people and looked in the wrong places because I was afraid. I wasn’t sure I could trust my own essential love-ability. I kept thinking that the thing I needed in order to be whole, to be beautiful, and to be loveable was somewhere outside myself. Dropping that endless quest meant taking a big exhale and standing in the vulnerable space of who I already was, seeing myself as loveable enough.
Zornberg, again quoting Ha’amek Davar, argues that the Israelite’s problem wasn’t that they had desire, it was that they resented their desire as a “reminder of their vulnerability” (74). So they crave meat and special food to try and end that intolerable feeling of raw vulnerability and hunger. The Israelites think, if I can only get that thing that is outside of me, I will be at peace. It has to be better somewhere else – even back in Egypt – than it is here, in the place of vulnerability and not knowing and wanting.
God’s exasperation with this line of thinking is clear:
Because you have despised the Being-ness Who is among you, and you cried before it, saying, "Why did we ever leave Egypt?"'"
What you really want is right here! God says. Stop running away. Stop looking anywhere else.
It’s not about the meat, of course, and never was.
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s mission is to develop and teach Jewish spiritual practices so that individuals and communities may experience greater awareness, purpose, and interconnection.
Learn more: jewishspirituality.org
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