The Torah tells us that the Jews went from Aileem to the Midbar Sinai, the Sinai desert. The very next pasuk reads “And the Bnei Yisroel complained against Moshe and Aharon in the Desert” (Their complaint? “Would that we had died by the hand of Hashem in Egypt, sitting around pots of meat and eating bread to satiation! You have brought us out to this desert to kill us with hunger!” Hashem responded by granting them Mon, Manna, and the Slav, quail)
We know they were in the desert from the first pasuk. Why is it repeated in the second verse?
Some kinderlach said that the complaint only resulted because they were in the desert, far from any source of food. Being in the desert led to their hunger. So the Torah is remarking that although they had complained, this was understandable, for they were in the desert.
I suggested that until now all the complaints were practical. When they had no water, they came to Moshe and asked simply: “What should we drink?” Now, however, they were comparing their situation with what they had in Egypt. They considered themselves miserable because of a comparison they had drawn. In addition, they were revising history as well. They pictured life under the thumb of Egyptian oppressors (who had been bludgeoning them to death) as happy and idyllic. They claimed to have been sitting around pots full of meat and eating their full of bread. And why did they imagine so? The pasuk hints; for they were now in the desert, far removed from the realities of Egypt, and thats how their minds began playing tricks on them.
Whats the lesson here? Be wary of trusting memory, both your own or someone else’s. Too often we have a memory that things had been great at a certain time, when the reality had been quite different.
Beware.
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