Behalothecha: Hope

Behalothecha: Hope

Hope is not a light, it is the dream of light. Hope is strongest in time of trouble. Aaron kindles the menorah in the desert.  There is light in a hostile  place without direction.  

As the travels through the desert proceed, the people become nostalgic for Egypt.  Nostalgia is the enemy of hope and progress.  It is a distorted memory that the past was better than the present and the future. For the nostalgic, things will likely get worse.  

The former slaves remember the free food. What free food? They were forced to produce a daily quota of bricks and  had to gather the straw on their off-hours.  When the slave remembers her food as free, there is a distortion of reality favoring the past.  There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. I am often offered a free lunch.  It comes with a free educational opportunity , sponsored by a drug company.  Free. Nothing ain't worth nothing, but its free. 

Despite the absurdity of the confabulation, Moshe wants to satisfy this plea for meat in the desert.  But Moshe anticipates Malthus (consider the name).  The resources are not sufficient to the need.   There is not enough cattle and sheep and fish to feed 600,000 families meat  for a month.

 This perception of limit can have terrible consequences.  If the world's needs are greater than its resources, the nation must secure its own, even if it means others will starve.  According to Timothy Snyder, this was the motivation for Stalin and Hitler. Whether or not this distortion of survival of the fittest really motivated the villains themselves, I am certain it appealed to some of their constituencies. I see it playing in America now. 

Gd is the ultimate source of hope.  To the atheist in the foxhole, Gd is another name for hope.  Thus Gd is the road to peace

Learn from the past.  Hope!