The tastes of freedom

This week, like Jews around the world, I've been getting ready for Passover. Usually one part of the story will float around in my mind each year, and it becomes a kind of theme for me. This year, I've been thinking of something that happened after the Jews left Egypt. While wandering in the desert, subsisting on the 'manna from heaven,' the people began to complain, and wax sentimental for their lives under Pharoah in Egypt:

"We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt for free, the cucumbers, the watermelons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic!" (Numbers 11:5)

Only a short time after being bent double under the yoke of Pharoah, the taste of freedom has become stale. The exciting flavours of bondage take on an allure in retrospect, and the people yearn for the delicacies that they used to eat, 'for free.' Jewish commentators like Rashi point to this as the key distinction. The food wasn't 'free,' the people were laboring, and dying, in return for their meager portions. What was free was the lack of responsibility. As slaves, the Jews had no agency, and therefore no choices to make.

As we make changes to our eating habits, for our health, for ethical reasons, and for communal and global well-being, many of us experience times of longing for the tastes of our former lives. Sometimes as we wander in the desert, we lose touch with why we made these choices in the first place. Up and down the aisles in the store, we wander, looking for something we can eat. Feelings of frustration, of longing for foods we used to eat, and even for the state of ignorance that let us 'freely' eat, without thought for our health or the implications of what we bought and ate can overwhelm us.

The story of the Israelites continues: Moses, the exasperated baby-sitter, asks God what he is to do with this intractable lot. I'll send them the meat they ask for, to eat for a month, until it sickens them, replies God. Like us in our modern day, the Israelites fall back into old habits, and sicken themselves.

According to Jewish tradition, the time of wandering in the desert, after the exhilaration of the sudden liberation from Egypt, was a necessary process to prepare the people for the entrance into the promised land, and the responsibilities of governing themselves.

The reason this story has been my Passover theme this year, is the parallels to be drawn as we change our lives, from the bondage of unhealthful foods and living, to the true liberation of commitment to responsibility to ourselves and our communities. We cannot leap, in one bound, from one way of living to another. We must allow ourselves to 'wander,' to relapse, and to experience the frustration of sometimes feeling out of step with the world around us - it's part of the process.

May the spirit of liberation be with all people, and may we eat and be merry!