D’Var Torah By: Cantor Jamie Marx

In 2005, I listened to a radio interview with a marine who had just returned from his first deployment to Iraq. The interviewer asked him how he dealt with the struggles of military life and the conditions of war. The marine answered, “You gotta love the suck.” He continued to explain that war is exhausting, terrifying, and tedious. If you want to survive, you have to come to terms with the situation and accept it, at least a little, even if you’re also moving towards making it better. At the time, I was a recent college grad suffering through an entry-level corporate job that felt pointless and mind-numbing. “Love the suck,” as I understood it, meant cultivating gratitude despite the daily drudgery, finding some patience and acceptance in a situation I was actively trying to escape. Unfortunately for me, I was too young and immature to manage it. It’s that exact combination of gratitude, forbearance, and fortitude that the Israelites lack in this week’s portion, Parashat B’haalot’cha. Mere steps into their journey to the Promised Land, the Israelites have already had enough. They’re tired of the divine manna and want meat. Manna – food that arrived miraculously each morning, tasted like whatever they wanted, was plentiful, and was easy to harvest – it was too boring for them. Anyone who has spent any time with children will recognize the complaints and responses that fill chapter 11 in the Book of Numbers. “The Israelites wept and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat free in Egypt…'” (Numbers 11:4-5). Moses doesn’t even respond to them. Instead, he cries to God in a refrain any parent might appreciate: “Why have you dealt ill with Your servant […] that You have laid the burden of all this people upon me?” (Numbers 11:11). Or, as my wife and I have joked when our own kids are exasperating us, “When are the real parents coming to pick up these children?” The Israelites’ complaint is fascinating on its own. It isn’t so much that they complain about the manna – though can’t you just imagine Moses saying, “Eat your manna! It’s good for you!” – but that they crave the meat and vegetables they ate in Egypt. The fact of their enslavement in Egypt isn’t an accidental reference. This rebellion is not against manna, it’s against freedom. There was no manna in Egypt because they weren’t a free people in need of divine sustenance. Now they are free, learning to be responsible for their own welfare. Responsibility is hard. Decisions are hard. Just as I struggled to “love the suck” as a young corporate professional, the Israelites are unable to cultivate a sense of gratitude for the literal divine blessings that surround them. When I meet with my b’nei mitzvah students and their parents just prior to beginning their one-on-one lessons, I tell them my definition of an adult: “Someone who takes responsibility for themselves, their work, and the world around them.” My definition doesn’t require reaching a certain age, nor is it built around status symbols like buying a house, having a kid, or getting married. Adults are people who take responsibility for the things within their control; who do their best work, all the time, even when their best isn’t that great; and who give back to the world in greater proportion than what was given to them. It’s boring to eat the same thing every day, but the alternatives available to a nomadic people recently freed from slavery are, let’s be honest, limited. In a moment of divine parenthood, God responds by threatening to give the Israelites so much quail to eat that they become sick of it. And what parent hasn’t felt a little wrath when their kid doesn’t want to eat the meal they’re served? Life isn’t always going to be great. We will all face challenges; when we do, we will have a choice to make. We can be like the Israelites: focused on what we lack and ungrateful for the blessings we have, or we can acknowledge that, for now, we’re not where we want to be. But we’re walking in the right direction and doing our best in difficult times, and we’re going to try to look forward to having quail for dinner again. Maybe with a side of manna.