Manna -- the miracle and the meaning: Beshalach 5785

The miracle of the manna that fell from heaven and nurtured millions of people for forty years is one of the focal points of this week’s parsha. The Jewish people obviously needed daily nourishment simply to survive. However, the rabbis of the Talmud injected another factor into the miracle of the falling manna. They stated that “the Torah could only have been granted to those that ate manna daily.” The necessity for the manna was thus directly associated with the granting of the Torah to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai. No manna, no Torah. Why is this so?

Most commentators consider that only a people freed from the daily concerns of earning a living and feeding a family could devote themselves solely to Torah study and the life values that acceptance of the Torah mandates. Torah is a demanding discipline. It requires time, effort and concentration to understand it. Neither cursory glances nor even inspiring sermons will yield much to those who are unwilling to invest time and effort in its study and analysis. This was certainly true in this first generation of Jewish life, newly freed from Egyptian bondage and lacking the heritage, tradition and life mores that would, in later generations, help Jews remain Jewish and appreciate the Torah.

The isolation of the Jewish people in the desert of Sinai, coupled with the heavenly provision of daily manna and the miraculous well of Miriam, together created a certain think-tank atmosphere. This atmosphere enabled Torah to take root in the hearts and minds of the Jewish people.  

In his final oration to the Jewish people, recorded in the book of Devarim, Moshe reviews the story of the manna falling from heaven but gives it a different emphasis. He states there that the manna came to teach that “humans do not live by bread alone but rather on the utterances of God’s mouth.”

To appreciate Torah, to truly fathom its depths and understand its value system, one has to accept its divine origin. Denying that basic premise of Judaism compromises any deeper level of understanding and analysis. The manna, the presence of God, so to speak, in the daily life of the Jew, allowed the Torah to permeate the depths of the Jewish soul and become part of the matrix of our very DNA. The Torah could only find a permanent and respected home within those who tasted God’s presence, so to speak, every day within their very beings and bodies.

The rabbis also taught us that the manna produced no waste materials within the human body. When dealing with holiness and holy endeavors, nothing goes to waste. No effort is ignored, no thought is left unrecorded in the heavenly court of judgment. Even good intentions are counted meritoriously.

Let us feel that we too have tasted the manna.

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein

Manna, midrash and mishnah

[Jeremy Phillips writes] Here's the devar Torah I gave yesterday at se'udah shelishit for parashat Eikev.

Shabbat shalom to all and sundry! I hope you’re enjoying your se’udah shelishit. We have all manner of delicacies here: salmon, herring, rogalech—but there’s one thing missing from the table that we find in today’s parashah: it’s the mon.

Mon, the manna from Heaven, occupies a prominent place in the lives of the dor hamidbar. It makes its debut in Parashat Beshalach, where it gets its name from the fact that our ancestors hadn’t a clue what it was. Mon is really a play on words: it’s an Aramaic homonym: it can mean “what” and it can also mean “a food ration”.  It’s a similar play on words to something we increasingly rely on in our joined up 21^st century lives: the WhatsApp, or as some people call it, the WhatsUp.

So mon gets a plug in this week’s leining, at Devarim 8:3:

וַיְעַנְּךָ, וַיַּרְעִבֶךָ, וַיַּאֲכִלְךָ אֶת-הַמָּן אֲשֶׁר לֹא-יָדַעְתָּ, וְלֹא יָדְעוּן אֲבֹתֶיךָ:  לְמַעַן הוֹדִיעֲךָ, כִּי לֹא עַל-הַלֶּחֶם לְבַדּוֹ יִחְיֶה הָאָדָם--כִּי עַל-כָּל-מוֹצָא פִי-יְהוָה, יִחְיֶה הָאָדָם

And He, i.e. God, afflicted you, and made you hungry, and fed you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers knew, so that He will make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that emanates from the mouth of the Lord does man live.

There are many midrashim associated with the mon. One is that it tasted like whatever you wanted it to taste like. This makes it a sort of celestial opposite to the ubiquitous Pot Noodle. The Pot Noodle comes in many different flavours but they all seem to basically taste the same, the mon was the same substance for everyone, but its taste was always different in their mouths.

Another popular midrash has the mon falling at the doorstep, or should that be the tent-flap, of the totally righteous, and then falling proportionately further away, depending on how wicked you were. It’s a lovely concept, but can we take it literally? If it was factually true, I doubt that Korach’s credibility with his followers would have stood so high, what with everyone watching him trudge right to the edge of the camp every morning to fetch his distant breakfast. Be that as it may, we can’t ask a kashya on a midrash, so we should let the matter drop.

Mon also has an interesting place in the Torah sheb’al peh, since it has a cameo role in Pirkei Avot, at Avot 5:8 when it is listed as one of the 10 (or is it 13, or 14) things created on erev Shabbat bein hashemoshot.

So what’s the big deal with mon being created on erev Shabbat? According to Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (in his Visions of the Fathers) there’s a common thread that joins all the items that God created a split second before Shabbat: they would all have been unnecessary had Adam HaRishon not sinned. But because he brought sin into the world and internalized it, God had to create a panoply of things that would enable us to face a life in a world in which sin existed. So to purify us and get us ready to receive the Torah and inherit Eretz Yisrael, we now had to go down to Mitzrayim, then we had to be brought out again, given the Aseret Hadibrot, taught to read and write and to be able to build a Temple with a mizbe’ach on which we could bring offerings to serve as a kaparah for whatever we had been up to. So …

…If Adam HaRishon had not sinned, we would never have left Gan Eden in the first place. We would never have needed the rainbow, Miriam’s well, the mouth of Bilaam’s donkey or any of the other items created bein Hashemashot. This only leaves one outstanding issue: why did God leave it till the last minute before making these things?

Here again we have an answer, and it lies in the power of teshuvah—something that, according to the Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer, was created even before God made the world. Teshuvah has its own creative force. If you commit a sin, you bring evil into the world and this is bad news—for you, and for everyone else. But if you do teshuvah, your sins are forgiven and, once you achieve kaparah, the stain, the blemish of your averah is laundered away. Better still, if you do teshuvah me’ahavah, out of love of God rather than fear of Him and the retribution be brings, your averot are turned retrospectively into mitzvot.  Alas, Adam HaRishon hadn’t learned this and hadn’t worked it out for himself. If he had repented before Shabbat, his sin would have been wiped out, the world would be back to its pre-sinful state, we would all be living a life of simple innocence before God and we wouldn’t even be wearing figleaves. So God held out till the last minute before making his final list of creations—just in case Adam HaRishon made it in time. Anyway, that’s how and why God created mon just before Shabbat came in, and many fine Jewish families all round the world emulate God by leaving everything till the very last moment before Shabbat comes in.