Netvort Parshas Beshalach 5770: Eating Each Day
By
Rabbi Joshua (hungrily known as The Hoffer)
Hoffman
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!13!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With
thanks to the Almighty, beginning our thirteenth (!!!Bar mitzvah!!!)
year.
In memory of my mother, Yoninah bas Tzvi Hirsch,
whose twenty-ninth Yahrzheit occurs this Wednesday night/Thursday,
the thirteenth of Shevat. May her memory be a blessing.
After
the nation escapes the Egyptian army through the miracle of the
splitting of the Yam suf, it begins to traverse the wilderness.
Along the way, various complaints about the conditions of travel are
made. First, at Marah, they complain that the water is bitter.
Next, in the wilderness of Sin, they complain about a lack of food.
God responds by proving them with quail and with manna. The
provision of quail continued for one month, while the provision of
manna continued for their entire sojourn in the wilderness.
Interestingly, Rabbeinu Bachya writes, in his commentary to parshas
Beshalach, that the manna was meant to prepare the people for the
receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Although we have, in the past,
explained this to mean that since manna tasted like whatever a
person imagined it to taste like, the people were forced to
employ their imagination when eating the manna. This was important,
because their imaginative faculty needed to be developed in
order to be able to receive prophecy at Mt. Sinai. I would like to
offer a different, less mystical way of understanding Rabbeinu
Bachya, based on an idea I saw in a recent book by Rabbi Dr. Abraham
I. Twerski.
Rabbi Twerski writes, in his book A Formula
for Proper Living, that the manna, which came each day for that
day alone, taught the people to take each day as a separate,
independent unit. The Ramban says that the people began to complain
about their lack of food after they had been traveling for a
considerable amount of time and did not see any indication that they
were reaching their final destination. They therefore thought that
they may die there. The manna, which came in discreet units of
one day's supply at a time, indicated to them that the proper
approach to their journey was to take each day as it came, and not
worry about what would happen the next day. Rabbi Twerski pointed out
that this idea was used by Bill Wilson, who founded Alcoholics
Anonymous in 1935, in treating recovering alcoholics. He said that
if you tell an alcoholic that he can never drink again for the rest
of his life, he will not be able to manage it. However, if you tell
him that tomorrow is not in our control, and he should only
concentrate on today and make sure that he doesn't drink any
alcoholic beverages in the course of that discreet unit of time, he
has a chance. Through this approach, along with the rest of the
techniques used in the twelve-step program, thousands of people
have been able to control their addictions over the past 75 years.
This idea, however, says Rabbi Twerski, finds its origins in the way
that the manna was supplied to the people in the wilderness, one day
at a time. I believe that this idea can also help us understand
how the manna prepared the people for receiving the Torah at Mt.
Sinai.
King Shlomo teaches us, in Koheles, 2:14, that the
wise man has his eyes in his head, while the fool walks in darkness.
Rashi, in his commentary to that verse, cites a midrash which says
that the fool looks at the entire corpus of Torah and says that it is
too immense for him to ever complete. Therefore, he does not study at
all. The wise man, however, says that he will study a chapter or two
a day and in that way will, over time, accumulate a great deal of
Torah knowledge. Torah must be approached on a day-to-day basis,
just as the manna was given on such a basis. Perhaps this is also
part of the meaning behind the Torah at Mt. Sinai. While the Sefer
HaChinuch explains that the count was one of anticipation, to
indicate how eager the people were for the arrival of the day that
they would receive the Torah by making a kind of countdown until the
arrival that day, perhaps another purpose for the count was to ready
the people to approach Torah on a day-to day basis. This approach
would help them manage the enormity of Torah, not becoming
discouraged by the seemingly insurmountable task of learning it in
its entirety. In addition, it would teach them that each day is of
great importance and should not be wasted by involving oneself in
meaningless pursuits since a day lost cannot be recovered.
The
supply of the manna on a daily basis trained the people to
appreciate the importance of each day in a very real way. They could
not take extra manna and save it for the next day, because it
would spoil. They had to go out each day and gather the portion
supplied for that day alone. If they did not do so, they would simply
go hungry. The prophet Amos (8:11) teaches us that days are coming
when God will send a hunger in the land, not a hunger for
food, but to hear the word of God. Reb Shlomo Carlebach, in his song
based on that verse in Amos, said that the prophet was speaking of
our generation which is hungry for Torah. The way in which the
manna was supplied to the people, then, additionally taught them that
their need for Torah was similar to their need for food, and that
without their daily measure of Torah study, they would be left
with a spiritual hunger, just as a failure to collect their daily
supply of manna would leave them with a physical hunger. The manna,
thus, was, in a variety of ways, an instrument of preparation for
that great experience at Mt. Sinai, when the Torah was given to the
Jewish people.
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