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