From: JoshHoff@aol.com
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 3:44 AM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Cc: BigBLUE16@aol.com
Subject: Netvort:parshas Eikev, 5768
Body
and Soul
By Rabbi Joshua (gastronomically known as The Hoffer)Hoffman
Moshe, in admonishing the nation to adhere to all of God's mitzvos,tells them
to remember all that,during their forty years in the wilderness, God led them
and afflicted them in order to test their fealty to His mitzvos.He then tells
them,"He afflicted you and let you hunger, then He fed you the manna...in
order to make you know that man does not live by bread alone,rather by
everything that emanates from the mouth of God does man live"(
Devarim,8:3).This verse,as a unit,does not seem to cohere. Rabbi Jacob Hertz,
in his commentary, explains that ,through the manna,God taught His nation that
man has not only a body, but also a soul,and a person should not think that he
can exist by providing for his body alone while neglecting his soul..While this
statement is certainly true,and this lesson does emerge from the
experience of the nation in the wildernes, it is not at all clear how the
manna, in particular,taught them this lesson.
Rabbi Avraaham Korman,in his work HaParshas LeDoroseiha,re-formulates a
teaching of the great kabbalist, Rav Yitzchak Luria, in which he states that
through the manna,the people were able to understand that the physical
aspects of man and his soul need to work together.,and that the physical
aspects of the world are sustained by God.I believe that this teaching can be
derived from our verse,based on a teaching of the Maharal of Prague, in his
Novella to the Aggados of the Talmud Bava Basra, 74 (my thanks to
my chavrusah, Dr. Henry Hersh of Washington Heights, for pointing this Maharal
out to me)..He writes there that the word achilah, generally translated
as 'eating,' actually has a much wider meaning. For example, in the
beginning of parshas Eikev, Moshe tells the people that, in Eretz
Yisroel,"you shall devour ( ve-achalta) all of the peoples that the
Lord,your God delivers to you ( Devarim, 7:16).Although most commentators
explain the word 've-achalta' used here to mean devour, in the sense of
destroying, Maharal gives a much different explanation. He says that the word
'achol' means to provide for someone's needs.In the case of the nations in
Cana'an that the Jewish nation will 'devour,' what Moshe is saying is that each
of the nations has a certain national characteristic ,a certain talent that
characterizes the nation.This is, in fact,true of all of the seventy
nations,and the Jewish nation needs to adapt each of these characteristics and
use them for its overall goal in this world. When Moshe tells the people
that they will devour these nations,what he means is that they will take over
the various characteristics of these nations,thus providing for their own
national needs. According to Rav Kook,once the Jewish nation adapts these
characteristics,it then places them in the prism of their connection with
God,and thereby purifies each of them.In any case,we see from the Maharal that
the term for eating actually means to provide for one's needs. Transferring
this meaning to the experience that the nation had with the manna,we can
then say that when God fed manna to the nation,he was providing for their
needs,meaning that through the manna He made them aware of the intrinsic
connection between body and soul. However,we still need to understand what it
was about the manna that taught the people this message.
The midrash tells us that a feature of the manna was that it tasted like
whatever the person who was eating it thought about,or wanted it to taste
like.What was the purpose behind this feature? Why couldn't the manna simply
taste like the most delicious food imaginable? I would like to suggest
that God wanted the people to develop their powers of imagination, as a means
of readying them for His upcoming revelation at Mt.Sinai ( my thanks to the
author of tikkun rachel@gmail.com, a
weeky parsha mailing,for inspiring this idea, although her approach in
answering the question is somewhat different). According to some
major medieval Jewish philosophical writers ,the imaginative faculty plays
a major role in the attainment of prophecy. While the Jews were in Egypt,they
had no opportunity to use this faculty,and there was now a need for them to
change this situation. By leaving the taste of the manna up to the imagination
of each person, God was forcing them into a situation in which they
had to develop their imagination as part of the process of eating their
daily bread. Interestingly,Rabbeinu Bachya, in parshas Beshalach,writes that
the special nature of the manna prepared the people for the revelatlon at
Mt.Sinai,but he does not explain how this occurred. Perhaps,then,it was the
very use of the imagination as part of the experience of eating the manna that
helped prepared the people for the attainment of prophecy that they achieved at
Mt.Sinai. Although this level of prophecy was not sustained after the
experience of the revelation,,the Ramban writes, in the beginning of parshas
Terumah, that the purpose of the mishkan was to carry over the experience
at Mt.Sinai into the daily life of the people, albeit in a less public way.
Moreover,when Yehsohua complained to Moshe that Eldad and Medad were
prophesying in the camp,Moshe replied that he would like all of the people to
be prophets ( Bamidbar,11:29).. The continued consumption of the manna
throughout the forty years in the wilderness helped aided the people in the
achievement of this ideal.
Although the experience of the manna was unique to the wilderness,the connection
between body and soul that it taught applies to the eating of ordinary food,as
well, through the institution of berachos, the blessings we make before we
eat. There is a halacha which is derived from a verse in this week's parsha (
Devarim,11:15) which requires a person to feed his animal before he
partakes of his own food.The Torah tells us"and I will give grass in your
fields for your cattle and you will eat and be satisfied." The simple
meaning of this verse, as once noted by the late Rabbi Dr. Louis Rabinowtiz of
South Africa, is that God will provide food for our animals, which will, as a
result, become robust and provide us, after their slaughter, with some tasty
steaks. However, the Talmud (Berachos, 40) learns from the order of events in this
verse that a person should feed his animals before he himself eats. Rav
Avrohom Yitzchok HaKohein Kook, in his commentary to the aggadic sections of
the Talmud, Ein Ayah, explains that whereas a human being, when he is
waiting to eat, can engage in other activities, which involve the intellect, an
animal does not have that option. Its sole concern is satisfying its hunger,
and every moment that we withhold its food is a kind of torture. That is why it
is more important to feed the animal than to indulge in our own food( see
Netvort to parshas Eikev,5764,for more on this).. Following our
explanation of the workings of the manna,in teaching man the connection between
body and soul,we can say that when man is hungry, he has an opportunity to
contemplate the fact that it is God who provides him with his food,and,in this
way, connect the physical act of eating with the spiritual underpinning of his
connection with God. and his dependence on Him. Although most
berachos are not Biblically ordained,the author of the medieval halachic
work,Shibolei HaLeket, writes that the requirement of reciting one hundred
berachos each day,which is also attached,by the Talmud, There is another a
verse in this week's parsha,"And Now, Yisroel, what does the Lord your God
ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love
the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul" ( Devarim, 10,
12),from which the Talmud derives a requirement to recite one hundred blessings
a day.) The Hebrew word for 'what,'- 'mah'- can easily be read as 'meah,' which
means 'one hundred.' This requirement is generally understood to be rabbinic,
not actually derived from the verse, but connected to it merely through a hint.
There is, however an opinion among medieval authorities, mentioned in the
halachic compendium Shibbolei HaLeket, that the institution of one hundred
daily blessings is of Biblical origin. This opinion is difficult,since almost
all berachos,with the exception of Birchas HaMazon, or 'grace after meals' and
perhaps the blessings over the Torah,are only of rabbinic origin.Rav Yosef
Dov Soloveitchik, however,explained that,according to the Rambam,the idea
behind the requirement of reciting one hundred blessings a day is to turn to
God constantly throughout the day,and thereby attain the fear and love of
God,which are Biblical requirements ( see Netvort to parshas Eikev,5758,for
more on this).. Thus,the model of the manna,through which the daily
activity of eating taught the nation how to keep body and soul together through
the act of eating, has been carried over into our daily activity of
eating ordinary food,as well, as well,when seen with the proper perspective.In
this way, we can constantly remind ourselves that,indeed,man does not
live on bread alone.
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