And just like that, we have moved from the glorious period of preparation to persistent, limitless complaining. The early chapters of Numbers which chart the orderly, regal march of souls ready to enter the promised land quickly fall into a quagmire of complaints, crying and longing for the Egyptian past. The assault experienced by the reader -- what happened? why now? -- is paralleled by Moses’ anguish. God is angry, and Moses is deeply distressed, and he turns to Him with a tumult of accusatory, embittered words.
“And Moses said to the LORD, “Why have You dealt ill with Your servant, and why have I not enjoyed Your favor, that You have laid the burden of all this people upon me?..”
The people weigh him down, crushing his spirit. Moses experiences the people’s unhappiness on a personal level; even more, he assumes that their complaining reflects God’s direct rejection of him. After all, he speaks to the people for God, and to God for the people. Strung out from the demands of leading and mediating, he feels an absence of love from both ends: the people and God.
It is hard to say what exactly moves Moses to cry out to God, ‘I can’t do this anymore!’ Is it the unvocalized murmurings? Crying at their tents? Or is it their request for meat in the middle of the desert? Perhaps the piling up of discontent - despite all his care and attentiveness to them-- pushes him to despair.
Consider his metaphor. As he says to God -- am I their mother? Did I carry them, or birth them, that I should feel prepared, somehow, to provide for them no matter what comes?
Mothers who carry babies in the womb (rechem) are expected to extend mercy (rachamim), care, sustenance to their babies -- even in a world without resources. Motherhood so defined is an exercise in radical giving, even erasure of the self, in both literal and metaphoric senses. A tenuous arrangement, but held together.. until the complaining starts.
For children, articulated complaints represent their burgeoning self-actualization, a healthy sense of separation from their parent. But for the parent, the experience can cut sharply into the effort of caregiving and evoke despair or a sense of futility. How could they fixate on what I did not provide, against the landscape of so much giving?
In response, God embraces Moses, the strung-out parent, back into the love narrative: “You don’t have to do it all alone.”

Dr. Tammy Jacobowitz is the chair of the Tanakh department at the SAR High School in Riverdale, NY

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