Beha'alotecha - Hidden Agendas

There is an old adage that one can describe Jewish History in three sentences:
1. They tried to kill us
2. We won
3. Let's eat.
On the face of it, an episode in this week's Parsha seems to suggest our love of food is as ancient as our Nation itself. However, with a little investigation, this is not as straightforward as it may appear in the Torah.

The Israelites have been wandering around the desert for over a year. They have been fed with the manna, which the midrash tells us could taste of anything they desired, watered through the miracle of Miriam's well, protected from the sun, sand, scorpions and snakes by the Ananei Hakavod, the Clouds of Glory and had their every whim answered.
So why are they complaining and looking at the complaint, there do seem to be some strange anomalies.
Firstly, they are asking for meat and then immediately talk about the fish that they describe as eating 'for free' in Egypt. As far as I recall, they didn't get anything gratis there. They even had to make their own bricks!
Even if you can appreciate their complaints, the entire paragraph is quite puzzling and who are the rabble?
Our Sages were also troubled by this passage and their first priority was to identify this 'rabble;

We've met these people before. Let's look at the Exodus from Egypt:

Rashi explains whom the 'mixed multitude' were:

When do we meet these people next?
When Gd tells Moses to go back to the Israelites who are encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai.

Rash informs us that:

Back to this Parsha's episode:

Rashi informs us that:

Rashi has presented a watertight case for the Prosecution against the Eruv Rav, the 'mixed multitude' whose constant desire was to cause the Israelites to rebel against Gd and Moses. It wasn't enough for them to initiate the construction, idolatrous and immoral worship of the Golden Calf. They had seen the way Gd and Moses dealt with that situation. Now, they were actively causing the people to complain again, this time through the medium of food.
The eminent Medieval Sephardic commentator, Sforno (Ovadiah ben Yaakov who d.1150) tells us something revealing about their request for meat:

So, according to the Sforno, the request for 'meat' was never really about the food. It was in addressing their lustful desires. He refers back to the first verse of this chapter:

If we add up all the pieces, we can see that the 'rabble' are not interested in the food per se. They are actively inciting the Israelites to test Gd and at the same time influence them to return to their idolatrous Egyptian ways. After all, these troublemakers were never really interested in converting - as Rashi quoting the Midrash writes about Gd's comments to Moses: "You thought it a good thing that proselytes should be attached to the Shechina — now they have corrupted themselves and have corrupted others."

And if we examine the strange comment about receiving "free fish" in Egypt, Rashi completes his argument by adding:

Along with testing Gd and attempting to entice the Israelites, the 'coup-de-grace' were their attempts to wrest the Israelites away from the Torah and its commandments. Their grumblings were simply a calculated way to attack the very soul of the nascent Israelite Nation and how did they go about it? By appealing to their most basic instincts. Witness continuation of the verse:

The best way to influence people is to appeal to their basic desires. By focusing on the various foods and mentioning them by name, they have succeeded in diverting the Israelites' attention away from the manna. Not only that, but you make the food itself seem as unappetizing as possible. The Torah proves this by telling us in the next verse that:

The Torah is reminding us of the miracle of the manna as a counterpoint against the argument presented by the rabble.
Gd was providing everything the Israelites could wish for, but they were trying desperately to deny the existence of Gd, His Torah and his ability to sustain the entire Nation, which underscores the commentators' explanations proving that this battle of wills never was focussed on the food. At the heart of the conflict was a struggle for the very soul of the Israelites between Gd and the Eruv Rav, the rabble.
These last few weeks have witnessed a similar situation in our times. Following the brutal and racist killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the grassroots Black Lives Matter (hereafter referred to as 'BLM' movement have justifiably vented their anger and disappointment at their treatment by a number of Police Officers.
Anyone who cares about equality and fairness can empathize with their feelings of resentment and frustration, particularly in light of Mr Floyd's barbaric detention and murder. However, the modern-day equivalent of the Eruv Rav have attached themselves to the movement and in doing so, have deliberately and cynically used this discontent as an excuse to commit crimes. These include the burning of shops and looting; daubing a synagogue in Los Angeles; breaking the window of another in Richmond, Virginia along linking the murder of Mr Floyd by claiming that the Israelis trained the Police in using in the kind of tactics that were employed against Mr Floyd. This is nothing short of a blood libel, the kind of which were employed frequently against Jews in the past.
Other branches of this contemporary Eruv Rav have used the death of Mr Floyd as an excuse to deface and destroy statues in this country such as daubing the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square and covering a statue of Queen Victoria in pink paint in Leeds. In doing so, they are bringing the cause espoused by the BLM campaigners into disrepute and flooding the fields as it were, instead of building the bridges that are so needed to heal our communities. It is therefore extremely gratifying to see that members of the BLM movement are doing their best to repair the damage by cleaning off the filth that was illegally displayed in their names.
The Israelites of the past should have cast off the rabble that continuously caused them to lose their way. Had they done so, the episode described in this week's Parsha could have been easily avoided. With the beautiful gift of manna provided by no-less than Gd Himself, they really had naught to complain about. Similarly so, BLM possesses a genuine desire to improve the lives of the people they represent. If they wish to succeed, they must work stringently to distance themselves from those who seek to harm their cause.
As long as we let these members of the Eruv Rav 'take over the show' in whichever guise they present themselves, we compromise the advances that we have made and set our agenda back significantly. A movement as important as BLM cannot afford to host those of its 'members' who have a hidden agenda.
Not in Arabian deserts of the Torah or in any contemporary city.
Shabbat Shalom.