This week we pick up our story with the Israelites having just fled Egypt, and faced with all the dangers of the wilderness – Pharaoh’s army behind them, the Sea of Reeds before them, uncertainty about how they are going to get food and water in the desert, and looking to an uncertain future.
The Israelites’ reaction to these constant struggles is to complain to Moses relentlessly, and to disobey God’s commands at every turn. At each moment of danger or distress, God sends a miracle – God saves them from Pharaoh by parting the Sea, has Moses bring forth water from a rock, brings the Israelites to an oasis where they have ample food and water. But after each time, they forget the good that God has done and focus only on the hardship before them.
They cannot trust in the future, no matter how many times God comes through for them. God gives them quail at night and manna in the morning. They are told to take only one day’s worth of manna at a time, but the Israelites do not trust that the miracle will be repeated, so they take two days’ worth, and the extra manna spoils and becomes inedible. Then Moses tells them to take a double portion on the sixth day so they will have some for Shabbat, as they are forbidden to go out and harvest on Shabbat. But they go out anyway and, of course, there is no manna.
The Israelites keep complaining, they never learn to trust and have faith. For this, they were made to wander in the wilderness for forty years, until the slave generation died out and the next generation grew up. This new generation, forged in the desert who did not know slavery, was better equipped to face the challenges of settling the land promised to them, to fight for their ancestral right to the land, and to learn how to be one nation.
We are facing our own wilderness right now, full of dangers and fears. But unlike the Israelites, we cannot rely on God or miracles to provide for us. We must work ourselves to face our fears, to defeat dangers, and to come out the other side. As long as we work together as one community, we will survive.
-Rabbi Bonnie Margulis
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