Lust, Paganism, and Jewish Leadership

At the heart of this week’s Torah reading of B’ha’alotkha—which covers a bewildering assortment of disparate topics—is the incident of the quail. As the Israelites in the desert complain about their diet, which consists only of manna, Moses becomes frustrated with his responsibilities and God feeds the people quail “until it comes out of their noses” before striking them with a plague. Arguing that, but for this incident, the messianic era would have begun already during the time of Moses, Joseph B. Soloveitchik explores the link between lust and the pagan mentality and concludes with reflections on leadership and the state of American Jewry. (1978; audio, 1 hour and 41 minutes.)