Dear TBZ Community,
There is a lot of kvetching (a word rooted in Yiddish for whining or complaining) in this week’s Torah portion, Beha’alotcha. The people complain. Moses complains. God complains. Miriam and Aaron complain. Everyone seems frustrated, disappointed, exhausted, or angry. Yet when we look more closely at these stories, perhaps we can begin to understand what lies beneath the complaints.
The Israelites complain. They are in the middle of the desert, on a journey that is supposed to take them from slavery to liberation, from a past of suffering to a future of hope. But the journey is not easy. Food feels scarce. The landscape is barren. Every day requires trust that manna will once again appear in the morning. But they are tired of eating the same thing every day.
זָכַרְנוּ אֶת־הַדָּגָה אֲשֶׁר־נֹאכַל בְּמִצְרַיִם חִנָּם
We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt for free (Numbers 11:5)
The rabbis, in the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 75a), imagine something remarkable about the manna:
אַף הַמָּן, כָּל זְמַן שֶׁיִּשְׂרָאֵל אוֹכְלִין אוֹתוֹ מוֹצְאִין בּוֹ כַּמָּה טְעָמִים
The manna – every time the Israelites ate it, they found in it many different flavors.
If someone longed for bread, it tasted like bread. If they desired fruit, it tasted like fruit. It was miraculous nourishment, endlessly adaptable to human longing. But this midrash (interpretation) suggests something else as well: To experience manna in that way required imagination. It required the ability to envision something beyond what was immediately present. And perhaps the last thing people possessed in that moment was imagination. Perhaps that is what despair does. It narrows our vision. It makes it difficult to imagine that tomorrow will be different from today, that abundance can emerge from scarcity, that redemption can come even while we are still wandering in the wilderness.
Moses complains as well. When the people come demanding meat, Moses does not respond with confidence or reassurance. Instead, he turns to God and says:
לֹא־אוּכַל אָנֹכִי לְבַדִּי לָשֵׂאת אֶת־כׇּל־הָעָם הַזֶּה כִּי כָבֵד מִמֶּנִּי
I cannot carry all these people by myself, for it is too much for me (Numbers 11:14).
Moses is exhausted. He is overwhelmed. He doubts his ability to lead. He questions whether he can continue. His despair is so deep that he tells God he would rather die than continue carrying this burden alone.
God complains too. The Torah does not portray God explicitly complaining (at least not in this particular story), but God’s response is full of anger and impatience. You want meat? God says, I will give you so much meat that it will come out of your nostrils (Numbers 11:20).
God seems frustrated by the people’s inability to trust. The One who split the sea, who liberated them from Egypt, who provides manna each day, encounters a people who cannot imagine that tomorrow’s needs will also be met.
And then, a few verses later, Miriam and Aaron complain. They ask:
הֲרַק אַךְ־בְּמֹשֶׁה דִּבֶּר ה’? הֲלֹא גַּם־בָּנוּ דִבֵּר
Has God spoken only through Moshe? Has God not spoken through us as well? (Numbers 12:2)
Their complaint is rooted in jealousy, in feeling overlooked, unseen, perhaps unappreciated. The Torah frames the story through criticism of Moses’ Cushite wife, but beneath the surface lies a deeper emotional truth. Miriam and Aaron are struggling with their place in the family and in the community. They wonder whether there is room for them too.
Only Miriam is punished (a fact that deserves its own d’var Torah). But before the punishment, there’s the very human experience of envy, resentment, and hurt.
Taken together, all of this kvetching reveals something profoundly human. Beneath the complaints themselves are emotions that most of us know well.
Fear.
Exhaustion.
Jealousy.
Disappointment.
Loneliness.
These emotions are not the problem. They are part of being human. The danger comes when they harden into despair, when they pull us apart from one another, when they prevent us from imagining a future different from the present.
After Miriam becomes ill, Moses cries out:
אֵל נָא רְפָא נָא לָהּ
O God, please heal her (Numbers 12:13)!
Within the story, Moses is asking for physical healing. But I wonder whether we might hear something broader in his words.
Heal her.
Heal us.
Heal our jealousy.
Heal our anger.
Heal our exhaustion.
Heal our fear.
Heal the wounds that lead us to hurt one another.
Heal the despair that convinces us nothing can change.
Heal us so that we do not destroy.
Heal us so that we can build.
Heal us so that we can choose love over hatred and hope over cynicism.
What is striking is that when Moses tells God he cannot carry the burden alone, God does not tell him to try harder. God does not tell him to be stronger. Instead, God tells him to share the burden, gather seventy elders, create a system of shared responsibility, and build a community of leadership (Numbers 11:16-17).
The wilderness does not become easier. The journey does not become shorter. But it becomes more bearable because no one is expected to carry it alone.
Perhaps that is one of the deepest lessons of this portion, and I do not think I need to say much about how relevant these stories feel right now.
Many of us know what it means to struggle to imagine a hopeful future. Many of us know what it means to wake up each day carrying fear, grief, anger, uncertainty, or exhaustion. We know what it feels like to look at the world and wonder whether things will ever be better.
Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we sometimes lose our capacity to imagine. And when imagination disappears, despair rushes in.
But being human does not mean avoiding fear or grief. It means learning how to walk through them. It means carrying them without allowing them to define us. It means continuing the journey even when the path ahead is unclear.
And perhaps that is why Moses’ words feel so important:
לֹא־אוּכַל אָנֹכִי לְבַדִּי
I cannot do this alone.
At the center of this Torah portion is the recognition that none of us were meant to carry life by ourselves.
We were created for relationship.
We were created for community.
We were created to help bear one another’s burdens.
Especially in difficult times. Especially when hope feels distant. Especially when the wilderness seems endless.
Perhaps that is God’s answer to Moses’ despair, and perhaps it is an answer to our own. We do not carry the burden alone.
May we find the courage to share what feels too heavy to carry alone.
May we find companions for the journey.
May we hold one another through fear, grief, anger, and uncertainty.
May we nurture in one another the imagination to believe that tomorrow can be different from today.
And may we, together, find healing – for ourselves, for one another, and for our world.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia