Parashat Beha'Lotecha: The Nostalgia Trap
"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be" Peter De Vries (1959)
Stephnie
has a nickname for me. She calls me an 'old soul' (S-O-U-L not S-O-L-E which
would mean something very different) because I have long had a love for music
and classic Hollywood films that mostly predate me. Give me a choice of
watching the latest 'Fast and Furious' sequel ('X' which came out last month)
or an old Humphrey Bogart film and I won't think twice before opting for the
latter.
Could it
be the fact that old movies had something they called 'star quality' in
addition to carefully written plots and screenplays that were intricately
crafted to tell a story rather than lose their way amongst a myriad of eye-popping
special effects?
These
productions still come to fore every now and again when you have a filmmaker
who cares for the artistic merits of his or her film project. However, trying
to sell their idea to the studio executives to raise the necessary capital to
finance the film is very difficult. Especially
if it is a quality ‘art-house’ movie.
I
therefore manage to be nostalgic for a time that existed before I knew what I
was being nostalgic about. It's less a case of rose-coloured glasses than
technicolored ones (in Panavasion noch!)
I've been
around a while and spoken with enough people to known that the world we inhabit
in 2023 is vastly different to the one my parents and grandparents grew up in.
Sometimes, I wonder how I would have acted had I been living twenty or thirty
years before I was born. How would being part of that generation have shaped my
thoughts and opinions? More pointedly, how do I view my own past as an adult,
trying to make sense of everything in a society that I find increasingly difficult
to comprehend.
In this
week's Parasha, we read the following:
The rabble in the midst began to have strong cravings
and once again, the Israelites began to weep, saying, "Who will give us
meat to eat? We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, the cucumbers and
the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic. But now our throats are
dry. There is nothing at all but this manna to look at."
To put
the verses into context, the 'rabble' who started complaining were the
opportunistic Egyptians and other non-Israelites who had been recognised by
Moshe as an integral part of the Bnei Yisrael. From the outset, they were the
instigators of much of the trouble that ensued, including the almost
catastrophic episode of the Golden Calf. It is these people who influenced the Israelites
and caused them to become nostalgic for the 'fleshpots of Egypt' and that
country's produce.
Their
argument might seem to be legitimate, except for a number of holes in their
collective memory.
The
Ramban shines a fascinating light on their gastronomic claims.
He states
that when the Israelites talk about the 'fish that they ate for free', they are
forgetting the fact that the Egyptian
fishermen, their overseers, used to put
them to work catching fish and they were only allowed to remove some from the
net, in order to eat them, as per the local custom for all fishermen. Hardly
something that could be considered a 'free meal' granted the effort to obtain
it.
He adds that
the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic they mention were very abundant
as Egypt was known as the 'Garden State'. When they were forced to dig the
gardens for their slave masters, they would have naturally come across these
fruit and vegetables. He adds that, even if this were not the case and they
were working for Pharaoh himself, they would have dug up these foods in the
grounds of the royal palaces.
Rashi,
taking a different approach, says that since the Israelites were not even given
straw to make bricks, in other words 'for free', it is highly unlikely that
they would have been offered food without having to pay for it (the true
economic meaning of the term 'free'). Additionally, the Erev Rav ('rabble')
were never enslaved, so they could not legitimately complain of how their lives
had been impacted in their home country.
As for
the water, the Israelites lived in Goshen which was situated in the Nile Delta,
so it was readily available, along with the fish they cite. Their daily
existence was anything but pleasant, living as slaves for over two hundred
years.
We know
that our memories are clearly selective in nature, especially when it comes to
putting forward an argument. Whilst their recollections of the food they ate
was no doubt accurate (keeping in mind that this was a relatively short while
after they'd left Egypt), they conveniently omitted to include the conditions
by which they came across said consumables.
As if to
add insult to the injury they have caused, they then proceed to criticize the
heaven-sent Manna which the Torah reminds us (in the next verse) was:
... like coriander seed, and was like bdellium in
colour (white). The people went around gathering it. Then they would grind it
in a mill or crush it in a mortar. They cooked it in a pot and made cakes from
it. It tasted like cakes made with oil.
It sounds delicious. Did they have to gather it under the threat of being beaten?
The
Torah's next verse tells us that:
When the dew fell over the camp at night, the manna
would fall upon that.
They
simply had to step outside their tents and this Divine food parcel was ready to
be picked up. Gd's very own Deliveroo without the service charge added!
Rashi
explains that the manna tasted of anything a person wished it to, aside from
the list of foodstuffs that the Israelites cited in their complaint. The reason
being that these were harmful to nursing mothers (according to the Sifrei, a
Midrash) which gives the parable of a king who provides his son with any food
he wants except for those that are dangerous. His son then complains that the
reason he's not being given these items is because his father doesn't love him.
So, with the manna, which, had it tasted of garlic, cucumbers etc, could have
injured any of the Israelite women who were nursing their babies. In other
words, Gd's gift was being spurned by the people to whom it had been given and
the examples they chose to cite were those that were damaging to some of their
female kinfolk.
Returning
to my original quotation regarding the veracity of nostalgia, this is prima facia
evidence of how our views can be distorted by our desires. It is very easy to
look at the past wearing those spectacles, but whilst longing for bygone days,
we don't realise how fortunate we are to be living in an age when so much is
better than it used to be.
I
recently wrote about my great-grandfather passing away at an early age
following a gall-bladder operation. Would he have had a better chance of
survival these days? Very possibly. I like watching old movies, but had I
been around at the time they were made, I probably wouldn't have had the luxury
to view or appreciate them on the kind of media that exists in this present
day, such as DVD or Blu Ray. I imagine that the quality of the images viewed in
the cinema could never match the digital remastering that invariably enhances
their production values.
From all
accounts that I've read about, post-war life in the UK in the late 1940s, ‘50s
and early '60s was quite grim for many people. When my parents arrived in this
country in 1963 from New York, they couldn't believe that their initial abodes
didn't have central heating and as a result they experienced the ferocious
British winter without adequate protection.
It didn't
matter if The Beatles were topping the charts at a time when the living
room was the only warm spot in the house due to the location of the fireplace.
Who could honestly appreciate great music in a freezing cold bedroom?!
It is
easy to become despondent when the news we hear is continuously negative and we
naturally hark back to what we consider as having been 'simpler days'. Perhaps
we should take a moment to appreciate what we have and look at the kind of
lives we lead and the items we can purchase or services we can access that
we could never have imagined existing twenty years ago. Who would have believed
that we could order anything we desire and have it posted through our letterbox
or brought to our doorstep in shopping bags? Perhaps nostalgia isn't worth the
time and effort spent dwelling upon.
We will
read in subsequent Sidrot of how Gd punished the Israelites when they
complained. Had they appreciated the manna and indeed all of Gd's beneficence,
our ancestor's entry to the land of Israel would have been a great deal
smoother (and sooner). It is a lesson that we can all learn from.
Nostalgia
isn't what it used to be, because it never was as we wish it were. It is like a
trap that tries to convince us that our lives used to be better than they
actually were.
Whilst it
is comforting to think about earlier periods in our journey, especially when we
experience challenging times, we should appreciate how blessed we are to be
here and how, despite everything, the present is never as bad as we think it
is.
We've
made it through the week and that is certainly something to appreciate and yes,
celebrate. Raise a glass to usher in the next seven days.
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