The desert grumbling intensifies in this week's Parasha, Behaalotecha. It has always astonished me that our memory of a difficult past can so easily drift into rose-tinted nostalgia (lockdown is a case in point). And so it is with our ancestors who dreamily remember the food they ate in slavery, seemingly forgetting the subjugation, forced labour, and utter lack of freedom. Fish, melon, cucumber, leeks, onions and garlic... the sweet taste of slavery.
The opposite seems true too - we often don't see what's good about this moment, today, choosing instead to long for things to be different.
May we be able to look back to the past with realism and may we each be able to appreciate what's good in the here and now.
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