Loneliness and Faith (Rabbi Sacks on Beha'alotecha, Covenant & Conversation)

The Office of Rabbi Sacks

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to the Covenant & Conversation series, Rabbi Sacks’ commentary pieces on the weekly Torah portion, exploring ideas and sharing inspiration from the Torah readings of the week. This audio from Rabbi Sacks was recorded in 2020. To read and download the written essay, and all translations, click here: https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/behaalotecha/loneliness-and-faith/. This week we are featuring the written essay entitled 'Is a Leader a Nursing Father?' written by Rabbi sacks in 2012. Find it here: https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/behaalotecha/is-a-leader-a-nursing-father/ For intergenerational discussion on the weekly Parsha and Haftara, a new FAMILY EDITION is now also available in English, French and Turkish: hhttps://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversa…e-with-the-world/ ----- For more articles, videos, and other material from Rabbi Sacks, please visit www.RabbiSacks.org and follow @RabbiSacks. The Rabbi Sacks Legacy continues to share weekly inspiration from Rabbi Sacks. With thanks to the Schimmel Family for their generous sponsorship of Covenant & Conversation, dedicated in loving memory of Harry (Chaim) Schimmel.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Balotaha, loneliness and faith. I've long been intrigued by one passage in this week's Parasha.
0:07.4	After a lengthy stay in the Sinai Desert, the people are about to begin the second part of
0:12.2	their journey, they're no longer traveling from, but traveling to. No longer escaping from Egypt,
0:18.4	they are journeying toward the promised land.
0:27.0	The Torah inserts a long preface to this story. It takes the first ten chapters of Bermidbo.
0:33.0	The people are counted, they're gathered tribe by tribe around the tabernacle, in the order in which they're going to march.
0:35.6	Preparations are made to purify the camp.
0:42.3	Silver trumpets are made to assemble the people and give them the signal to move on, then finally the journey begins. What follows is a momentous anticlimax. First there's an unspecified complaint. Then we read the rabble with them began to crave other food. And again, the Israelites started wailing and said if only we had
0:55.9	meat to eat we remember the fish we had in Egypt at no cost also the cucumbers melons leeks
1:02.0	onions and garlic but now we've lost our appetite we never see anything but this manner
1:07.2	the people seem to have forgotten that not long before there had been slaves, their male
1:14.0	children were killed, they cried out to be freed by God. The memory of Jewish tradition
1:21.1	has preserved of the food they ate in Egypt was the bread of affliction and the taste of bitterness,
1:26.1	not the meat and fish.
1:28.0	As for their remark that they ate the food at no cost, it did cost them something.
1:33.0	It cost them their liberty.
1:35.8	There was something monstrous about the behavior of the people, and it induced in Moses
1:40.6	what today we would call a breakdown.
1:47.4	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?
1:52.4	Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? I can't carry all these people by myself.
1:58.3	The burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you are going
2:01.7	to treat me, please go ahead and kill me if I've found favor in your eyes, and don't let me face
	...

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