A desire for more ‘things’ will not make us content

Numbers 8:1-12:16

Zechariah 2:14-4:7

By RABBI AMY EILBERG

Not long ago, I heard a bar mitzvah boy give a d'var Torah about the difference between what we want and what we need.

In an engaging and funny way, this seventh-grader analyzed the ways in which our culture encourages us to believe that we need more and more things. With striking wisdom for a person his age, he articulated the spiritual truth that contentment lies in noticing that we really have everything we need and more.

This boy understood that far more than did the Israelites in the Torah, who had so recently witnessed direct evidence of God's great power.

This week's parashah tells a complex story about the Israelites' longing for what they thought they needed.

"The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; the Israelites, too, wept and said, 'If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our soul is dry; we have nothing! Nothing but this manna before our eyes!'" (Numbers 11:4-6)

As the story is told, the people were sick and tired of the monotonous manna, their only food day after day after day. (Remember, though, that, as the midrash imagines it, the manna was magic food: It tasted like whatever food one longed for.)

The people grew weary, discontent, unable to tolerate the boredom and anxieties of their momentous journey. They fell into believing that their uneasiness could be relieved if only they had meat, or at least, the familiar foods of Egypt. They longed for the "good old days," when they had many foods to eat "for free." In a striking idiom, they say, "Our soul is dry," as if Egypt was the place where they were nourished and whole.

What a remarkable delusion. Egypt was the place where they were nourished? In Egypt the food was free?

The classical commentators are astounded by this language. Sure, there was no charge for food in Egypt, but they were given nothing but straw with which to make mortar and bricks through years of hard labor and oppression.

The essence of their experience in Egypt was that they were not free. Now, in this moment of unease, their memory of the horrors of slavery and persecution was completely wiped out. All they could remember was the food.

Desire is like that. It is true for us as much as for the "riffraff," for a motley crew of newly freed slaves. When we get caught in the delusion that things will make us feel better, we are capable of forgetting the essence of life. The desperate chasing after more possessions, more amusements, more honor, can make us ignore that which is most nourishing, most inspiring, most precious in our lives.

Enslaved by desire, we cannot see the beauty and awe in the present moment. We can only long for the menu of yesterday, or anticipate what will satisfy us in the future.

Yearning for what was, imagining what might be, one grows less and less able to notice the only source of contentment -- what is present in our lives right now.

As in many such biblical stories, God responds with violence. Here, an enraged God responds to the Israelites' cry by sending a punishingly large amount of quail, followed by a terrible plague just as the people finished eating their meat. The text tells us that the place where all of this happened was called Kivrot Hata'avah, or the graves of desire, "because the people who had the craving were buried there" (Numbers 11:34).

The name of this place tells the whole story: Desire can destroy what is best in life. The tale invites us to ask ourselves: What do we fail to appreciate in our lives when we are dominated by craving? How often do we forget essentials when we are convinced we must have more, do more, earn more? How free can we be when we are focused on what we think we need, rather than on all that we have?

May this powerful story speak to us clearly in our own time and place, encouraging us to reject our culture's worship of acquisition and instead to choose freedom and contentment.