Nostalgia is rarely honest. We tell ourselves we miss a particular meal, a familiar scent, or a place we once called home. We blame our dissatisfaction on lacking the comforts of an earlier chapter of life. Yet if we actually get those things we long for again, we often discover that they were never the true object of our longing. The intensity of those kinds of desires often reveals that we are searching for something much larger. What we missed was something harder to name: a feeling of belonging, certainty, possibility, or connection. The tangible memory becomes a stand-in for something deeper and less accessible: The object of longing is concrete; the longing itself is not.
The complaint of Bnei Yisrael (the Children of Israel) in the wilderness in Parashat Beha’alotcha suggests that they are suffering from this kind of nostalgia.
“The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!’” (Numbers 11: 4-6)
Really? It’s easy to read these verses and be struck by the utter lack of perspective. God, too, seems to acknowledge and judge the nature of these complaints. On the surface, they seem to be lamenting a lack of culinary variety. Standing between slavery and redemption, they weep not for freedom lost but for fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. How could a nation rescued from Egypt romanticize its menu? Yet beneath their fixation on food lies a profound human struggle—not with hunger, but with yearning itself. Their tears suggest a deeper ache—one that neither meat nor manna could fully satisfy.
The commentator Ibn Ezra comments that the word hasafsuf, or “riffraff,” is used to describe Bnei Yisrael, who were previously referred to as an erev rav, or a “mixed multitude” back in the Exodus story. Suddenly, this same diverse group of people are now described as the instigators, noisy complainers, and chaotic liabilities.
What is strange is that the lack of food variety seemed to be fine before. In fact, not too much earlier in Bnei Yisrael’s wandering in the wilderness, the manna from the heavens was actually miraculous. Masechet Yoma 75a describes the magic of manna:
The Gemara returns to the same verse: “We remember…the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic” (Numbers 11:5). Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi debate the verse’s meaning. One said: They tasted the flavor of all types of food in the manna, but they cried because they could not taste the tastes of these five foods that they mentioned. And one said: They tasted the flavor of all types of food, as well as their textures. The sensation was so strong that it seemed to them like they were eating those very foods. However, with the foods they listed, the people tasted only their flavor but not their texture.
How is it that the same manna enjoyed by a hopeful, freedom-bound mixed multitude (erev rav) devolved to the symbol of numbness and despair to an indifferent riffraff (hasafsuf)? The sensation of manna was so palpable, so realistic, that Bnei Yisrael could lick their fingers in delight. And just as quickly, that same source of sustenance drove Bnei Yisrael to reminisce about their days of enslavement.
Perhaps the existential issue of our people in the desert was in that initial verse:
“The riffraff felt a gluttonous craving.”
The JPS translation judges the craving by calling it “gluttonous,” a negative term, but the translation is actually quite basic, underlying a feeling that is far more primal and fundamental.
The verse says that the riffaff “hitavu ta’ava.” Literally, they craved a craving.
This riffraff craved the ability to crave.
Wandering had numbed Bnei Yisrael’s ability to wonder, to taste, to feel, to delight. It’s a feat to transcend the ability to crave particularities, but troubling if it blocks our hearts from experiencing desire. The same detachment that once allowed them to leave Egypt without hesitation now threatened to dull their capacity for relationship—with one another, with themselves, and even with God. A life free from distraction can create space for holiness, but a life emptied of longing risks becoming spiritually inert. Manna was meant to teach dependence on God, not indifference to the world. When even miraculous bread loses its flavor, the danger is no longer appetite but apathy.
Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger, or The Sefat Emet, saw Bnei Yisrael’s craving as a missed opportunity for higher holiness:
“…This advises to perfect one’s desire. When one connects their will to a mitzvah and good deeds, their desires become linked to holiness and Hashem. This attachment ensures that even when faced with other desires, one remains connected to Hashem. The ingrained holiness protects these desires from becoming corrupted, enabling one to uplift all desires to Hashem. One must believe that even foreign desires can be for the good, helping to form a true desire to serve Hashem. Learning from these desires how to properly fulfill Hashem’s will allows one to elevate all desires to Hashem” (Sefat Emet, Parshat Beha’alotcha 2:3)
The problem isn’t craving meat, the Sefat Emet challenges. It’s the inability to see beyond the meat and channel that craving into a higher desire, a more Divine one.
Bnei Yisrael needed that numbness, that lack of desire, in order to enter the depths of the wilderness. It was a protective layer, like that of the Divine cloud enveloping the Tabernacle. Numbness enabled this mixed multitude to leave Egypt hastily, pack lightly, and follow Moshe faithfully.
But now, in the midst of the unknowns, Bnei Yisrael expresses a feeling that is all too real and raw: We want to begin to feel again.
How often in our own lives do we use tangible things as clouds protecting us from our deep feelings of longing? Wanting or even insisting on a certain kind of meal, smell, or experience is perhaps the most basic way to articulate an often-overlooked feeling: wanting the indescribable warmth of that which is familiar to us all.
Perhaps one day we can aspire to the spiritual heights of the Sefat Emet, in which we can channel each encounter with yearning into higher faith. May we experience holiness not when we stop yearning, but when we learn what our yearning has been trying to tell us all along.