"… and also the Children of Israel wept again, saying, "Who shall feed us meat?" We remember the fish that we would eat in Egypt" (Bamidbar 11: 4).
It's an interesting way to make this request. "We remember the fish we ate in Egypt … we want to eat meat." I could understand, "We remember the MEAT we ate in Egypt, therefore we want to eat meat." but why would the remembrance of fish lead to the desire to have meat?
The Kedushas Levi explains as follows:
As we know, the entire Jewish nation lived off of the mun throughout their stay in the desert. And that mun tasted like anything the person wished for it to taste like. You want a hamburger, no problem. Pizza? No problem. The mun tasted according to the "customer's order."
However, there is a natural limit to this. Let's take somebody from New York, who never reached a high spiritual level by eating a hamburger at Ken's Diner in Chicago. The person from Chicago would enjoy the mun that was infused with the taste of the holy Burger Buddy™, but the New Yorker would never be able to have that same taste. At most, when he desired a hamburger, it would probably taste like a street rat.
So, explains the Kedushas Levi, the one thing that the Jewish people, at that point, did not yet taste, was kosher meat, since they only recently received the laws on how to slaughter and prepare animals in a kosher way. Therefore, they remember the fish that they ate in Egypt … but they wanted kosher meat, which they obviously don't remember, so they could enjoy it's taste in the mun.
All, the more so, I would like to add, on with our spiritual endeavors.
Let's say a person learned a certain tractate in the Gemara, but despite his attempts, he did not understand it well. Or perhaps he did certain mitzvos to the best of his abilities, but he was never able to do it fully and properly.
Perhaps, when Moshiach comes, we will have the opportunities to revisit those tractates or mitzvos, because we already have their "taste" in our memories, and this time around, we will be able to learn and do them properly. And those that we never had a connection to because we never tried? Perhaps those might be lost to us? I certainly hope not. But still … this idea gives us encouragement, that even if we cannot accomplish what we wish to accomplish in our lifetimes, whatever we "tasted" will be remembered in the future and will provide us for future growth.
With that, I wish you all an amazing Shabbos!