if you don’t mind, what is the Reform position on Genesis exigesis?

do you also think that Adam and Eve existed as spirits before the world was made and observed Yahweh botching creation? therefore, deciding to incorporate and “helping” God to repair the world?

Rav Soloveitchik points out that Moses had already endured crises far worse than this one. The gravest had been the sin of the Golden Calf, when God nearly destroyed the nation. Yet Moses never panicked, never despaired, never abandoned his people. On the contrary, he defended them with courage and determination.

So what changed here?

“And Moses said to the Lord: Why have You dealt ill with Your servant? Why have I not found favor in Your eyes, that You place the burden of all this people upon me? Did I conceive this entire people? Did I give birth to them, that You should say to me: Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries an infant?” (Numbers 11:11–12).

This sounds like the Moses of the beginning of Exodus — the inexperienced leader who complains: “Lord, why have You done evil to this people? Why did You send me?” (Exodus 5:22). But there, Moses had only just confronted Pharaoh for the first time. Why does the mature Moses suddenly despair now?

Let us analyze the situation. No one committed idolatry in the formal sense. No one murdered, stole, or violated the Torah’s prohibitions. There was no sexual chaos, no rebellion threatening Moses with stoning. On the surface, this was “only” desire — hence the name Kivrot HaTa’avah, “the graves of craving.” One might even call it a modern place: the graves of hedonism.

Unlike the sin of the Golden Calf, Rav Soloveitchik explains, the motivation here was entirely different. At the Golden Calf, the people acted out of fear. “For this Moses, the man who brought us up from Egypt, we do not know what has become of him” (Exodus 32:1). Ramban explains that they sought a replacement leader to guide them. The Kli Yakar adds that the mixed multitude feared that if Moses did not return, they themselves would be expelled from the camp. The people were anxious about uncertainty and abandonment.

But here there is another kind of idolatry — not idol worship itself, but the pagan mentality: the worship of appetite, of endless variety, of desire without boundaries and without satisfaction. “The people rose up all that day and all night and all the next day, and they gathered the quail; even the least gathered ten homers” (Numbers 11:32). By Rambam’s calculation, ten homers amount to over 2,000 liters.

This is not hunger. It is frenzy. No human being could consume such quantities. Rav Soloveitchik argues that one who rejects this principle of the discipline and restraint of desire is ultimately unworthy of entering the Land of Israel.

At that moment Moses understood that the story had reached its turning point. He immediately grasped the implication: “If this is how You deal with me, kill me now, if I have found favor in Your eyes, and let me not see my misery” (Numbers 11:15).

Now let’s wait 38 years untill we can enter the promised land. That generation is not fit and will need to die in the desert.