Two Minute Torah Podcast

Beha'alotcha 5768 by Sherri Vishner

Hi! My name is Sherri Vishner, and for a few more weeks, you can find me working as the KOACH Associate at the University of Florida's Hillel. Welcome to another edition of KOACH's Two Minute Torah podcast, a project of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

When I first glanced through Parshat B'ha-alot'kha, many of its stories stood out as things I could easily and happily talk about. Since that would take much longer than 2 minutes, I decided to look more closely at a section I have studied a little bit before and feel a personal connection to. Chapter 11 opens with the Israelites complaining before God and Moshe that they want meat to eat. “If only we had meat! We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt…” Num 11:4-5. The story continues with God sending down quail, so much that the people eat and eat until it ‘comes out their nostrils'. As they're still eating, God brings forth a plague, which kills all those who craved the meat. Commentators disagree over what exactly the plague was and why the Israelites died, but all agree this was a punishment for something they did wrong. As a vegetarian, I have often used this as a source-text for why God wants us to be vegetarian. God didn't want us eating meat, so conditioned us to feel sick from it.

I decided to look a bit deeper at this story and how it might relate to another story in this Parsha. Seemingly unrelated events often occur in the same Torah Portion because something can be learned from connecting them. The establishment of Pesach Sheni is also presented here and I wanted to see how these 2 stories might be connected. What do they have in common and what are the differences?

When the Israelites crave meat, they complain to God saying ‘we want meat' and ‘why did we leave Egypt'. By all accounts, slavery in Egypt was horrible- most especially towards the end- and yet they want to go back! Anything but following after God. Contrary to this, Pesach Sheni comes about when a group of men approach Moshe, concerned that they are being left out of the mitzvah of offering the Paschal Sacrifice because they are ritually impure. They sincerely want to offer the sacrifice and be connected to God and the rest of the community, but aren't currently able to. God hears their request and establishes a second chance one month later. While it would certainly be easy for me, as a vegetarian, to say that the reason the Israelites were punished after craving meat is because God wanted us to be vegetarian, I think we can learn something more from this.

So, if the meat itself wasn't the problem, what was? I think the answer lies not with the actual request but with how the request was made. It's not that the request for meat was so preposterous (maybe) but that the Israelites went so far as to wish they were back in Egypt! Talk about being ungrateful. God may be perfect, but everyone (including God) wants to feel appreciated. God just brought 10 plagues against the Egyptians to free us and then drowned them all in the Red Sea. And our response to bland and monotonous food is ‘we want to go back'!

Father's Day is coming up, but let's not wait to tell all the people important to us- ‘thank you' ‘I know you're looking out for me', ‘I appreciate you'.

Shabbat Shalom