Library of Sermons

If you were following along with the Torah portion today, you might understand why it is a bit of a frightening parsha for me to begin to serve as a leader of a congregation. The section we read today contains a nightmarish vision of a community pushed beyond its limits with leadership struggling to manage the kvetching and threats to their authority. I sure can’t wait to be a Rabbi! The Israelites leave Mount Sinai, and just as after they left Egypt, their attitude turns around 180 degrees. They start craving meat and longing for the good old days of Egyptian servitude, where there was at least real food—not just this freeze-dried manna day in and day out. It’s amazing that even 3500 years ago Jewish people were still longing for a meat kiddush!

This craving then leads to an outbreak of weeping. The Torah tells us:

ַו ִיּ ְשׁ ֨ ַמ ע ֹמ ֜ ֶשׁ ה ֶא ת ־ ָה ֗ ָע ם ֹבּ ֶכ ֙ה ְל ִמ ְשׁ ְפּ ֹח ֔ ָת י ו ִ ֖א י שׁ ְל ֶ ֣פ ַת ח ׇא ֳה ֑ל וֹ ַו ִ ֽיּ ַח ר ־ ַ ֤א ף ְי ְי ְמ ֔ ֹא ד וּ ְב ֵע י ֵ ֥נ י ֹמ ֶ֖שׁה ָֽרע׃

Moses heard the people weeping, every clan apart, each person at the entrance of his tent. The LORD was very angry, and Moses was distressed.

It is interesting that the Torah notes not just that the people were crying, but also details that each family joined together and wept at the doors to their tents. Identifying these additional specifics, the Spanish medieval commentator Ibn Ezra imagines that the families joined together just as they would do, to mourn a lost loved one, and that the Torah mentions their place at the opening of their tents to specify that this mourning was done in public. Ibn Ezra seems to be pointing us to two issues with their behavior: the dramatic and the public nature of the mourning. According to him, the Israelites treated this moment of hardship and hunger as extremely as the experience of losing a loved one, and they made sure to publicize their upset so that it would spread discontent throughout the community.

I have a slightly different interpretation. What is most notable to me is that the Torah in this verse moves from Moses hearing the people crying as a whole nation, then each clan separately, then finally each individual in front of their tent. It is at that point that God becomes angry and Moshe distressed.

It is as if the people of Israel through their crying is dissolving into tribal groups, clans, and finally into completely unrelated individuals. Their unity is tested, and the entire project of the exodus is put at risk. Indeed, Nachmanides (Ramban) argues that a verse preceding this story, telling of the Israelites marching FROM God’s Mountain—as in away from it— points to their behavior here being the result of a spiritual distancing from the moment of revelation and the reception of the Torah.

And yet in another way, this division into familial groups and even into individuals with their own particular grievances seems to me completely natural in a time of disagreement. Though the Torah puts their complaint in a generally negative, rebellious light, that need not be the whole story. Framed differently: is it not natural that people might panic when leaving a spiritually powerful moment and then being thrust yet again into the unknown desert? In times of distress, we all fall back into our clans, our groups, our more personal support systems—over the impersonal unity of the broader populace.

Furthermore, the act of standing at the door of their tents does not need to be seen as a rebellious one, but rather a plea for their cries and distress to be heard, as groups and individually.

And in fact, the Torah narrative itself seems to somewhat vindicate this interpretation, providing two resolutions to this story of strife. One places the blame on the people’s complaints, and the other places the blame on the leadership structure. When Moshe offers, perhaps, the most dramatic cry to God in the Torah, that he would rather die than sink under the weight of this rebellious people, God offers two responses. One will give the people so much of the meat they crave that they become sick of it and ultimately die from eating it. The other, by contrast, will seek to fix the leadership structure that made the people feel disenfranchised in the first place, by spreading out the leadership among seventy elders from the tribes, instilling each of them with Moshe’s spirit.

The fact that there are two solutions is instructive. It’s clear that the story of these complaints created unnecessary division and strife in the populace, with the people forgetting all that God had provided them through the manna, and the miracles of the exodus and revelation. This fear of moving forward into their journey and clinging to an imaginary past of plenty in Egypt divides the people from one other, from Moshe, and from God’s presence. Yet God’s solution of more democratized leadership—with different elders representing each tribe and family— acknowledges that something was indeed wrong with the system of leadership as it stood—and not only because of the burden it placed on Moshe. In this plan, the solution to fracturing into family or interest groups is not to simply tell everyone “They should just be one happy family,” it is to create leadership structures to make people feel more heard, more supported, more cared for.

This is the tightrope we all walk as human beings, as a community, and as a people. We are called by God to acknowledge all the good that is already in our lives, all that has been a blessing to us, without taking it and those around us for granted, even when things get rough.

Yet we are also a people who are called upon to speak up with things are not fair, when people feel left out or left behind, or when changes need to be made to the current system. When we do so, especially within our communities, we try whenever possible to “dan l’chaf zechut / assume the best intentions in people”—even and especially when our perspectives are divergent. Still, that does not mean we should not lovingly and carefully rebuke our fellows when a situation is unfair and hurting people.

So, the Israelites in this parsha were in fact guilty. Their march away from the ecstatic, unifying experience of receiving the Torah at Sinai gave way to factionalism, lack of appreciation for the blessings all around them, and unfairly judging their leader without having compassion for his plight. Yet the reason for this was not totally their fault—Moshe’s singular hold on leadership was not sustainable no matter how humble and Holy he was. Their journey into the unknown future gave the people no real support structure to hold on to, no feeling of being truly heard, as they cried out each person at the opening of their tent, clinging to the groups that understood them.

And God and Moshe—even in their respective anger and distress—knew in some way that this reaction of the people was partly a result of their own errors in assessing the people’s needs and giving them a voice. And so, this parsha points us to real life situations when no singular party is completely to blame; when we are right to speak out, but only when we do not lose our compassion for those who do not share our views, or our appreciation for all that continues to be a blessing for us. I bless us then that each of us recognizes and holds on to the blessings of our community, even as we seek a more vibrant, just future for all those in it. Shabbat Shalom.