Have you ever reexamined a moment in your life through rose-colored glasses? Imagine a past job. It began great but then turned sour very quickly. The job came to an abrupt end; the experience was painful and demoralizing. Yet a few years later when reflecting on that time in your life you remember only the good fleeting moments while completely ignoring the awful overall experience. For some, thinking about only the good helps us cope better. After all, it's better than remaining stuck in a mindset of regret or anger. However, we also need to remember that having selective nostalgia for those moments in our lives (remembering the good, ignoring the bad) can be damaging.
In this week's Torah portion, B'haalot'ha, "The people took to complaining bitterly before God." This theme of incessant complaining appears many times throughout the Book of Numbers. "If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions. [But here in the desert] there is nothing at all but manna!"
Remember the setting: the Israelites had been freed from slavery in Egypt. Egypt was brutal and cruel. But God freed them and Moses led them; through the Sea of Reeds, into the Wilderness, and then to Sinai where they received Torah. Everything should've been looking up. However, life in the desert was hard and unpredictable. And this led to litanies of complaints and a longing for what the Israelites thought they remembered was the good life in Egypt.
The Israelites remembered the food they ate. The verse that describes so specifically the fondly remembered food is unusual for the Torah; more often that level of detail would be left out. What the Israelites forgot while they remembered the food was the crushing bondage under which they lived. They recalled the experience of slavery through rose colored glasses, remembering the few and fleeting good moments in Egypt while forgetting the suffering they endured every day.
We remember the past, in all its complexities so that we don't forget about it. Even the most difficult moments in our lives can teach us something about ourselves, our resilience, our capacity to grow, even to forgive and move on. Acknowledging the past is important; so is looking to the future with optimism as we journey forth, just like the Israelites, possibly into the unknown. We hold on to the lessons learned from our life's experiences, remembering it for both the good and the bad. We do not want to return to that awful job; we don't want to return to Egypt. We want to make it to the Promised Land, remembering how we got here and looking forward to what the future may bring.
Because of the Israelites inability to truly look forward, they will have to wander for forty years. As we go forward, may the past teach us lessons that will help look to a bright future that will take fewer than forty years to fulfill.
Natalie Young
Songbook, and the Shalshelet Festival Songbook. Her songs have been featured at URJ Biennials, American Conference of Cantors conventions and various concerts and festivals around the country. Many of her songs have been recorded by other artists. 
