42 | JUNE 16 • 2022 

I

have long been intrigued by one 
passage in this week’s parshah. After 
a lengthy stay in the Sinai desert, the 
people are about to begin the second 
part of their journey. They are no longer 
traveling from but traveling to. They are 
no longer escaping from 
Egypt; they are journeying 
toward the Promised Land.
The Torah inserts a long 
preface to this story: it 
takes the first 10 chapters of 
Bamidbar. The people are 
counted. They are gathered, 
tribe by tribe, around the 
Tabernacle, in the order in which they are 
going to march. Preparations are made 
to purify the camp. Silver trumpets are 
made to assemble the people and to give 
them the signal to move on. Then finally 
the journey begins.
What follows is a momentous anti-
climax. First there is an unspecified 
complaint (Num. 11:1-3). Then we read: 
“The rabble with them began to crave 
other food, and again the Israelites 
started wailing and said, ‘If only we 
had meat to eat! We remember the fish 
we ate in Egypt at no cost — also the 

cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and 
garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; 
we never see anything but this manna!’” 
(Num. 11:4-6).
The people seem to have forgotten that 
in Egypt they had been slaves, oppressed, 
their male children killed, and that they 
had cried out to be freed by God. The 
memory Jewish tradition has preserved of 
the food they ate in Egypt was the bread 
of affliction and the taste of bitterness, 
not meat and fish. As for their remark 
that they ate the food at no cost, it did 
cost them something: their liberty.
There was something monstrous about 
this behavior of the people and it induced 
in Moses what today we would call a 
breakdown:
He asked the Lord, “Why have you 
brought this trouble on Your servant? 
What have I done to displease You that 
You put the burden of all these people on 
me? Did I conceive all these people? Did 
I give them birth? … I cannot carry all 
these people by myself; the burden is too 
heavy for me. If this is how You are going 
to treat me, please go ahead and kill 
me — if I have found favor in Your eyes 
— and do not let me face my own ruin.” 

(Num. 11:11-15)
This was the lowest point in Moses’ 
career. The Torah does not tell us directly 
what was happening to him, but we can 
infer it from God’s reply. He tells him to 
appoint 70 elders who would share the 
burden of leadership. Hence, we must 
deduce that Moses was suffering from 
lack of companionship. He had become 
the lonely man of faith.
He was not the only person in Tanach 
who felt so alone that he prayed to die. 
So did Elijah when Jezebel issued a 
warrant for his arrest and death after his 
confrontation with the prophets of Baal 
(1 Kings 19:4). So did Jeremiah when 
the people repeatedly failed to heed his 
warnings (Jer. 20:14-18). So did Jonah 
when God forgave the people of Nineveh, 
seemingly making nonsense of his 
warning that in 40 days the city would be 
destroyed (Jon. 4:1-3). The Prophets felt 
alone and unheard. They carried a heavy 
burden of solitude. They felt they could 
not go on.
 Few books explore this territory more 
profoundly than Psalms. Time and again 
we hear King David’s despair:
I am worn out from my groaning. All night 

Loneliness
andFaith

SPIRIT

A WORD OF TORAH

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

