Finding the Small Joys: Parshat Beha’alotcha 5781

Parashat Beha’alotcha offers us a moment of deep emotional tension in the wilderness. The Israelites, newly freed from slavery, cry out—not for power or land—but for meat, for cucumbers, for leeks and onions. It’s easy to dismiss their craving as trivial or ungrateful. But what if that reading misses the deeper truth? What if, instead, we recognize in their longing not weakness, but the remarkable strength of the human spirit to seek out joy—even in memory—while navigating pain and uncertainty? For an enslaved people, the taste of a cucumber wasn’t just a preference. It was a lifeline. A flavor tied to survival, to hope, to the stubborn insistence that life, even in hardship, was still worth living.

We often approach Torah with the assumption that any complaint from the people must be a failure of faith. But perhaps it’s time to reread this moment with compassion. Why do we penalize the Israelites for holding onto the only tangible remnants of comfort they had? A tradition that places a drop of honey on the corner of a page to sweeten a child’s first taste of Torah understands that joy is sacred—even when it’s small. The Israelites were not unappreciative; they were human. And the Torah, if read generously, honors that humanity.

Being made b’tzelem Elohim—in the image of God—means more than striving for divine perfection. It means that our experience of the world, our longings and contradictions, our mistakes and yearnings, are part of the sacred story. Free will, after all, comes not just with the power to choose well, but with the inevitability of falling short. A tradition that refuses to be stagnant must also build space for the “oops,” for growth, for transitions. As I’ve said before, “absolutes stop the story. Our story never stops.” Judaism lives in motion, in perspective, in hypothesis. We evolve. And in doing so, we reflect the dynamic, compassionate, complex nature of the Divine itself.

So rather than shaming the people for longing for what once sustained them, we might honor their ability to carry memory and joy into an uncertain future. A people who can find sweetness in cucumbers and strength in stories are not weak—they are resilient. May we learn to read Torah not just as critique, but as celebration of the human capacity to endure, to feel deeply, and to keep moving forward.