Leading a nation through a desert is no walk in the park and story after story in the Book of Bemidbar demonstrates that the Israelites are not easy charges. When the nation complains that a manna-only diet is not to their liking, Moses turns to God to express his frustration at being the one responsible for all their needs.

The heaviness that Moses uses to describe the impossibility of caring for the people reminiscent of Moses’s very first conversation with God. That exchange, also fraught with emotion, took place at the burning bush, where Moses expressed his reluctance to lead. “Moses said… ‘No man of words am I… for heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue am I” (Exodus 4:10).

Dr Erica Brown, in Leadership in the Wilderness: Authority and Anarchy in the Book of Numbers connects his reservations about leadership with incidents such as this one: “Moses complained to God that he could never lead the people because he was unable to make small talk. He was preoccupied with heavy, weighty matters. He lacked sympathy for the petty concerns of the small-minded, a problem that would continue to haunt him in days of Israelite thirst and hunger.”

His word choice from the burning bush encounter reverberates in this parashah: Moses never wanted to have to smooth out the wrinkles in the people’s day-to-day existence.

The “heaviness” reflects the challenges of leading a nation during a time of major transition and evokes the almost physical sensation of being weighed down by the needs of those for whom we care.

Moses’s difficulties throughout the wilderness demonstrate that caring for others is not a one-time commitment, but rather a constant series of actions that involve stepping up and responding to the needs of others.

Dr  Mara H. Benjamin, in The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought, explains obligation through the lens of parenthood. Becoming a mother — a role to which Moses compares his own in his outburst — is choosing to commit to another person, becoming subject to what Dr Benjamin calls the “Law of the Baby.” Yet, she explains, we cannot know the true nature of the commitment until we are already within it.

Moses agreed, albeit grudgingly, to be the leader of a people, but he could not have anticipated what they would really need from him. When we commit to others, we take a leap of faith.

Love for the other and belief in the importance of our mission guide us as we navigate the hard times that inevitably come. The burdens that Moses shouldered throughout his career underscore the nobility of his commitment and his faithfulness to his role continues to inspire us as we weigh our own obligations in life.